Combat and the music go hand-in-hand in action games. You don’t have the heart-pounding thrills of Doom Eternal or the unforgettable boss encounters of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance without the face-melting soundtracks those games are known for. But some games make that link an intrinsic part of the action itself, such as Hi-Fi Rush, which came out of nowhere with its rhythm-fueled character action. Now, Dead As Disco is looking to pick up that Walkman and run with it. While the eventual goal of this Early Access release is to deliver a wealth of modes, unlockables, and boss battles, the current offerings are a lot on the lighter side. Despite that, though, this is already shaping up to be another unforgettable head-bopping beat-em-up.
Charlie Disco is dead. Or, he was. At some point. He’s alive now, though, and he isn’t sure how he even died to begin with. What he does know is that his ex-bandmates have sold their souls and turned bad as part of the bargain. Charlie has to track each one down to beat some sense into them and get the band back together, but he’s also got to piece together what exactly happened to him and his crew in the first place. Unfortunately, you won’t get the full picture in this version of the game, which has been the most frustrating part of this early access debut. It’s only so frustrating, though, because what is here is really great. Every character has solid voice acting and awesome visual designs, and each story level is such a blast.
Every stage tosses you into a gauntlet of battles against fodder foes while the stage transitions, animated cutscenes play, and incredibly sick music complements every punch. Like I mentioned before, music is fully integrated into the combat in Dead As Disco. Your attacks make impact based on the tempo of the track playing in the background, creating a super satisfying effect where combat always feels perfectly timed to the highs and lows of the music you’re hearing.
It’s like a playable version of that thing movie trailers do where gunshots and explosions are timed to the percussion of the trailer’s song. It might be a little obnoxious in those trailers, but it’s awesome here. It’s also quite unlike the way rhythm combat in Hi-Fi Rush works. In that game, you’re tasked with pressing every button to the consistent bpm of the music. In this one, you can press and mash buttons as much as you want, and the animations will play out with the timing that they need. If you do time your buttons to the beat, though, you’ll be rewarded with bonus damage and perfect dodges.
All of the levels are capped off with some pretty awesome boss fights, and there’s a really solid variety to the encounters. You’ll definitely need to invest in a good amount of upgrades to stand a chance during these battles, though. Learning that the hard way means replaying some pretty lengthy sections in order to retry the battle, which got a little grating at times. Defeated bosses end up back at your home base, where you can chat with them to piece together a little more of the lore.
Wrapping up the currently available story missions doesn’t take too long, but once you’re done there you can move on to Challenge mode and Infinite Disco mode. The former gives you some scores to chase by battling it out to each of the few dozen songs in the game. The latter, though, is a more customizable mode where you’re even given the option to upload your own music into the game to battle to. It takes a little tinkering to get songs ready to go, but it’s nothing too complicated. And it’s so, so worth the effort in order to bash some baddies faces in to anime OPs and Slayyyter.
You’ve got to make some of your own fun with Dead As Disco, otherwise your time with this current Early Access version will be over pretty quick compared to the cost of entry. If you’re in it for the long-haul, though, the development roadmap for the game promises a massive amount of new content, including an entire co-op mode. We’ll have to see if the game sticks the landing once it hits 1.0, but for now it’s already off to an incredibly strong start.
