Boom Boom shake the Rachmaninov?
Classic music in Bizarre's latest.
Bizarre Creations has updated its studio blog with more information on Boom Boom Rocket, its Xbox Live Arcade rhythm action collaboration with EA.
The idea, as you may remember, is to trigger rockets in time to music as you progress at high speed through a 3D cityscape. Today's update offers more on the scoring system, and reveals that accompaniment - courtesy of composer Ian Livingstone - is actually based on existing classical music.
Bizarre insists that the game's very easy to pick up, but with the sort of depth that characterised Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. The combo bar, for example, which fills up as you match beats, doubles, triples and quadruples your points as it grows in strength, eventually allowing you to unleash a "Bonus Run".
When you do this, the graphics go mental and you get 20 seconds' worth of an 8x multiplier, suggesting that you'll need to be aware of the song structure to pick sections appropriate for mass points-accumulation. "There's nothing worse than activating your bonus run, only for the fireworks to naturally slow down and valuable points to be lost," the developer laments.
As for the music, "Boom Boom Rocket features classical tunes, but they've all been remixed to more contemporary themes. Ian Livingstone has been hammering away on the music for months now, and it's all coming together nicely. All of the songs will be recognisable to most people, and the classical compositions really suit the gameplay better than most modern pop and rock."
Boom Boom Rocket is due out this spring, and will also offer two-player support on one console and the usual online leaderboards that helped make Geometry Wars so compelling. Bizarre also notes that while GW was largely the work of Stephen Cakebread, Boom Boom has been put together by a core team of seven people, along with Livingstone and help from various people at EA's Pogo department.
For more on that, and other goings-on at Bizarre, check out the studio update. Be sure to check out our screenshot gallery too, for a pair of new visuals.