One of the many things I love about the rhythm genre is how flexible it is. There are lots of different examples of the genre expanding out beyond its humble roots in the ninetees; from Guitar Hero, to the latest in breaking it down and busting a funky move, Dead As Disco. Which apparently, isn’t as dead as we think it is…
Dead As Disco finds us in the extremely stylish shoes of Charlie Disco, the long dead drummer of a band who, for one night only, are reuniting — and giving you the perfect chance to bring the pain. Each boss has their own unique soundtrack and mechanics, and unlocks a special skill tree you can customise to your liking while you butt kick your way through the masses.
So, what’s the thing about Dead as Disco that’s made me rack up more hours than I’m embarrassed to admit? Well, that would be the funky combat; it is so well refined. Each blow you land is crisp, your own unique martial art dubbed Beat Kune Do. It’s absolutely fantastic. Landing each hit on the beat grants you bonus score and keeps your combo up, keeping you in the fight and grooving to the music.
Between each fight we go back to Charlie’s home away from home — The Dive Bar, which we can collect memorabilia to spruce up the place, as well as unlock customisable outfits for Charlie too, so that, at least, his fashion is a lot more alive than his preferred genre of music. The last thing to mention is Infinite Disco mode, which allows us to bop along to licensed music and even add our own songs. However, adding our own songs through the game manually is a bit of a faff.. Which is where modding comes in.
Modding is not usually something I’d normally mention in a review about a new game — especially one that’s still in Early Access — but the developers actively encourage using it! When you mod the game, you’ll get a message saying that while you’re using mods, the developers are totally fine with that. But because there can be mods designed to mod score, the trade-off is you can’t upload any highscores you make to the servers to track your score worldwide. This is a fair trade off. I personally modified my character, because the image of Roxanne Wolf from Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach beating the ever-loving snot out of people while rocking out to Linkin Park is honestly extremely funny to me. Yes, I acknowledge that I am a strange young man.
As a recommendation, at the very least, you should drop by DiscoMaps. They have a very good in-depth tutorial on how to install the mod to your game, as well as thousands of beat-maps that have been customised and are all ready for you to simply download, install, and rock out. This also uploads your high scores to their dedicated servers, so you can still compete for the best score if that’s your incentive.
Dead As Disco is absolutely brilliant and considering it’s only in early access, it’s only going to get better. It sold over 200 thousand copies in its first week on sale, and harkens back to, strangely, the Batman Arkham games and their fluidity of combat. Grab yourself a copy – this one is going to be a genre staple, mark my words.
Dead as Disco is out now on Steam in Early Access.