Beat Hazard 2

About

Beat Hazard 2 is a single player and multiplayer casual shooter game with a science fiction theme. It was developed by Cold Beam Games and was released on October 16, 2019. It received positive reviews from players.

Experience your music collection as never before with this intense music driven arcade shooter. Each of your songs will have its own unique ebb and flow based on the music.

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87%

Audience ScoreBased on 1,254 reviews

music248 positive mentions

stability16 negative mentions

Supports playing your own music via multiple sources including streaming services like Spotify and YouTube through the Open Mic feature.
Huge replay value with procedurally generated ships and bosses based on the music you play, along with missions, perks, and leaderboards for individual songs.
Polished twin-stick shooter gameplay with intense visuals synced to music tempo and volume, plus new weapons, modes, and ship customization options.

Excessive and intense flashing lights can cause discomfort or risk for players sensitive to photosensitive epilepsy, which may limit accessibility.
The Open Mic music recognition can sometimes be inaccurate or fail to detect songs, and music integration might require frequent pausing and resuming outside the game.
The game can feel repetitive over longer sessions, menus and UI are sometimes clunky or unintuitive, and occasional crashes or technical issues, especially in VR or Open Mic mode, have been reported.

music
1,326 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
19%
80%
1%
Beat Hazard 2 offers deep music integration by using your own or streamed tracks (Spotify, YouTube, etc.) to dynamically shape gameplay, enemy waves, visuals, and unlock unique procedurally generated ships tied to each song. While the music recognition mostly works well and enhances replayability and immersion, some users find the synchronization between gameplay and music limited or inconsistent, with variations mostly in visual intensity and enemy spawn rates rather than tightly rhythm-based mechanics. Overall, it’s a highly enjoyable, intense twin-stick shooter for music lovers seeking an interactive way to experience their personal soundtracks, though it may feel repetitive or underwhelming for those expecting a traditional rhythm game.
- “Beat hazard 2 is a music-driven twin-stick shooter that turns your personal soundtrack into explosive gameplay. Developed by Cold Beam Games, it continues the concept of the first Beat Hazard—every song you play dynamically shapes enemy behavior, weapon strength, and visual intensity. It's a seamless fusion of rhythm and arcade shooting, making your music collection the core of the experience.”
- “With the new addition of an "open mic" feature, and song detect/identifying, Beat Hazard 2 can listen in and pick up on literally any song playing on your computer. Be it from an MP3 file locally, Spotify, YouTube, or just the music playing in your current Netflix binge session. With that, comes the visual intensity and clever spawning of bosses and enemy swarms that sync up to how intense your music is.”
- “Every song will have a unique effect on the gameplay, spawning a large variety of enemies and generated bosses, as well as pumping up your attacks as the song reaches its peak. Each song also has its own leaderboards, with acrcloud identifying your music on the fly providing unlimited replayability. This further improves the replayability of individual songs and allows for friendly competition, forcing players to select perks that work well with the song. This adds to the atmosphere of the game and really allows the player to immerse into the music.”
- “But after actually playing a handful of songs no matter how different they all ended up feeling mostly the same, with the gameplay being as simple as it is you'd want the concept to make up for it but it just doesn't do enough. I attempted many high BPM songs with loud sections expecting the gameplay to match; when in reality, it just ended up being the same as any other song, just with brighter flashing lights and a few more enemies.”
- “I expected the music to have more of an effect on the gameplay (real basic stuff like enemy spawns on the beat) but this is literally just an audio visualiser with a twin-stick shooter overlaid on top.”
- “The level generation completely fails to feel as if it's driven by music, instead feeling like playing a randomly-generated stage while listening to music in the background.”
gameplay
189 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
19%
77%
4%
The gameplay of Beat Hazard 2 is a simple yet addictive twin-stick shooter where players use their own music tracks to influence enemy patterns and intensity. While the concept of gameplay tied to music is innovative and offers a dynamic experience, many users find the actual impact of music on gameplay limited and repetitive, with little variation beyond visual effects and enemy numbers. Overall, the gameplay is enjoyable and smooth but lacks depth and synchronization with the music, leading to a somewhat shallow experience despite its engaging core mechanics.
- “The entire concept of being able to base gameplay using your songs is great and what draws most people in.”
- “Each track becomes a level, and the game’s algorithm translates volume, tempo, and rhythm data into procedural gameplay that feels handcrafted for each song.”
- “Beat Hazard 2 is a music-driven twin-stick shooter that turns your personal soundtrack into explosive gameplay.”
- “But after actually playing a handful of songs no matter how different they all ended up feeling mostly the same, with the gameplay being as simple as it is you'd want the concept to make up for it but it just doesn't do enough. I attempted many high BPM songs with loud sections expecting the gameplay to match when in reality it just ended up being the same as any other song just with brighter flashing lights and a few more enemies.”
- “I expected the music to have more of an effect on the gameplay (real basic stuff like enemy spawns on the beat) but this is literally just an audio visualizer with a twin-stick shooter overlayed on top.”
- “Gameplay is very limited and the visual effects are way too much, while still managing to feel weak and insignificant.”
graphics
123 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
24%
74%
2%
The graphics in this game have been notably upgraded from its predecessor, featuring sharper, smoother visuals with vibrant lighting effects and dynamic, music-driven visuals that create a unique, intense experience. While many praise the improved fidelity and graphical variety, the very flashy, high-contrast effects can be overwhelming or problematic for photosensitive players, sometimes detracting from gameplay enjoyment. Overall, the visuals are a significant highlight that enhance immersion but may require customization to balance intensity and comfort.
- “The new rendering engine delivers sharper visuals, smoother framerates, and deeper color contrast.”
- “There has been a huge overhaul of the game's graphics compared to its predecessor, with gorgeous looking lighting effects, including new explosion graphics.”
- “With a brand new soundtrack, an all-new and revamped way of getting workshop ships and shadow operation missions, generated player ships and boss fights, better visuals than ever before (and I thought BH1's couldn't be topped!), new and powerful perk weapons, a new way of climbing the leaderboards, and really a lot of other new and great stuff makes this game a good idea to buy!”
- “The graphics are rather ugly and look a lot cheaper and are harder to grasp than BH1.”
- “Even on the lowest graphics settings the high contrast flashing was both too much and something I couldn't turn off.”
- “My second major criticism is due to the nature of the game and the way it is designed: it is extremely flashy and intense in its graphics, which therefore can cause people that are visually sensitive or seizure prone to experience terrible symptoms.”
story
83 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
13%
83%
4%
Beat Hazard 2 features no traditional story but offers deep engagement through a vast array of procedurally generated ships, each with unique shadow missions that unlock modules and perks, encouraging players to explore diverse music and gameplay challenges. This metagame of ship progression, mission variety, and customization provides continuous goals and replayability, effectively replacing a narrative with emergent player-driven content.
- “The cycle of unlocking ships and beating their missions is so satisfying that I can and do disappear into the game and come up hours later.”
- “Songs unlock randomly generated ships, with a bunch of missions to fulfill to master the ship, usually based around playing songs with certain words in the title or by certain artists, so it's simultaneously a fun blasty time but also sends you down different music rabbit holes chasing those missions.”
- “Each ship now has randomly assigned missions to complete, and this is where I spent most of my time; a lot of these forced me to play songs I never heard before, which is a big plus.”
- “☑ No story.”
- “*for players who need a clear purpose in any game, this game might feel pointless as the only goals are to score high on the songs’ leaderboards and to do all the missions for all the ships, as well as get higher and higher ranks (awarded for points collected) for your ships.”
- “*there is no story whatsoever – this is not a bad thing, per se, but it means that players looking for a good story should look elsewhere.”
replayability
34 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
32%
59%
9%
Users consistently praise the game for its extensive replayability, driven by features like unlockable perks, diverse ships, daily challenges, and leaderboard competitions. The ability to play and generate unique levels from personal music libraries or streaming services offers near-infinite variety and ongoing skill progression. Overall, the combination of customizable gameplay, active community, and music integration creates a highly engaging and endlessly replayable experience.
- “There is some good replay value here, lots of unlockables, perk upgrading, and leaderboard challenges create an environment focused on skill progression, even after unlocking everything.”
- “This music game is amazing; you can play all your favourite songs and find new songs you probably wouldn't listen to otherwise from the lightning/daily challenges. It has a lot of replay value with trying to beat other players' or friends' high scores, trying to become one of the highest on the main leaderboard, and it has a cool, active community that comes together to try to get certain elite ships.”
- “The fact that each track generates a unique level means virtually endless replayability.”
- “This should be developed a lot more until it is more playable.”
- “It was simple, yet incredibly complex with hundreds of hours of replayability, limited almost entirely by the size of your music library - the one downside, if you wanted to use a song, you had to download it from somewhere (not iTunes, unless you DRM-stripped, which nobody ever did).”
- “Although it does seem like BH2 has more replay value with all the unique ships you can unlock by playing plus the procedurally generated boss ships.”
stability
17 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
6%
94%
The game suffers from frequent bugs and crashes, including random freezes, sound and VR conflicts, and interface issues, significantly impacting stability. Many users report persistent crashes and freezing, sometimes affecting the entire PC, with troubleshooting often required but rarely resolving underlying problems. While some experience stable gameplay, overall stability remains a major concern.
- “No glitches or anything on my system and I've played it for about 4 hours already.”
- “I spent over an hour troubleshooting crashes, sound issues and VR conflicts; my playtime included one song after which the game crashed again.”
- “This second bug is much more alarming: the game freezes my entire PC for up to 30 seconds every 10 minutes or so.”
- “Most people with VR and PCs are willing to do some troubleshooting, but at some point, the problem needs to be addressed at the root rather than leaving it to your customers to fix.”
humor
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users find the game's humor to be energetic and entertaining, with funny visuals and surprising moments that keep gameplay lively and amusing. The humor often emerges from the unpredictable reactions to different songs, making it more than just a brief gimmick. Overall, players appreciate the game's ability to generate genuine laughter and fun.
- “My brother is doing a funny dance on the floor after I pumped the visuals to 300%.”
- “It's great, it's hilarious.”
- “The first time I played a song I was laughing because it gets really crazy depending on the song.”
grinding
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
12%
88%
Grinding in the game is a mixed experience: while the randomized ship system reduces tedium and gives purpose to farming specific ships for modules, the scoring and progression mechanics can feel overly grindy and time-consuming. However, some players appreciate the balanced blend of arcade action and perk-based optimization that requires just enough farming to enhance gameplay.
optimization
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
14%
43%
The game's optimization shows some issues, including video memory errors and ineffective VR performance tools, resulting in less-than-ideal performance particularly on certain VR setups. While the current VR implementation is satisfactory for some devices, overall performance could be significantly improved. Fans appreciate the gameplay but feel the experience is hindered by subpar optimization.
- “Overall, I'd like to see performance improvements, but I'm pretty happy with how VR is implemented currently!”
- “Basically, performance could be better on paper, but it isn't a total deterrent (at least for Rift; Link on Quest may be a different story).”
- “This game deftly blends old school arcade shooting with perk-based customization and optimization, using just the right amount of farming to earn improvements.”
- “Optimizations regarding the use of video memory cause it to index out of bounds and write bogus values to volatile memory.”
- “VR performance toolkit (VRPerfKit) loads seemingly, but doesn't improve performance.”
- “I'd love to give this game 5 stars and thumbs up, but I can't because it's just not optimized to perform like it should.”
monetization
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
17%
83%
Users criticize the presence of ads, viewing them as intrusive and unnecessary, while some appreciate the fair pricing and absence of loot boxes or microtransactions; however, concerns remain about the series being perceived as a cash grab and potentially misleading advertising regarding music source usage.
- “Also, the price tag is more than fair, with no loot boxes or microtransactions.”
- “With the announcement of Beat Hazard 3, the developer has confirmed the series to be nothing but a cash grab.”
- “Still, ads should be removed and not added or exist in the first place.”
- “Also, I kind of feel like the advertisement that you can use these different sources is a little misleading.”
atmosphere
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
The atmosphere is noted for being somewhat dull but intentionally contributes to the game's immersive experience, particularly enhancing the connection to the music.
- “This adds to the atmosphere of the game and really allows the player to immerse into the music.”
- “The atmosphere is pretty damn dull.”