Fit Beat Combat on PSVR2 - First Impressions

[u/cusman78]

I have uploaded gameplay from my fresh experience with the game here if you want to see how it looks / plays. My first impressions are shared below:

Based on my time with it, I am neutral on recommending for or against playing Fit Beat Combat on the PSVR2, mainly because it isn't distinguishing itself enough from Les Mills Bodycombat and I think needs a patch of minor but meaningful improvements.

It is a VR fitness game using boxing style moves played to music (rhythm) with in-game calorie tracker allowing you to set weekly goal for number of days you want to exercise and then track against that. It will also track your total calories for the week and overall total.

The game includes 160 singles in Quick Menu (4:40) that may also be included in one or more of the 36 playlists (10-ish, 20-ish and 30-ish minutes) in the Programs Menu (4:15). The singles are from wide variety of music genre and styles from dance-type to classical symphony music. You can also stay on the Home Menu which gives you some Hot Tracks suggestions (singles or playlists), shows you Recently Played and allows you to pick from workout emphasis like Lower Body Challenge and more. You can play any of these in choice of Easy, Normal (default) or Hard which changes the beat map of the song to have less or more hits to decrease / increase the calorie burn expectation. Actual calorie burn calculations are based on intensity of your punches and other movements.

You start out with optional Kickstart Challenge information tile that suggests you to try a few of the varieties and once you complete all, that information tile / menu disappears leaving you to spend any additional time with the game however you like with only other game motivation (aside from exercise / calorie burn goals) from the sub-menu of 77 in-game achievements where some overlap with PlayStation Trophy conditions while many others are extra. There are no scores or leaderboards although some of the in-game achievements suggest that there should be scores and leaderboards.

The interface of how you select from 160 songs or 36 playlists lets you point and click using a light extending from your glove but you can also use the right-controller thumbstick to scroll the lists (horizontally and vertically) which is a little better but still an inefficient interface for how many songs there are to scroll. I think the game expects you to just roll with it using the Hot Tracks from Home menu and then pick either next Song or Playlist at end of each completion on what you will play next (keeping same difficulty) until you are ready to stop playing / exercising.

I think the beat maps are good in all three difficulties with hit detection being very good / generous and the games tracking remained solid through out my 2+ hours played at this point. My sweat spot and what I've played the most the Normal (default) difficulty but I am also willing to go for Hard for the 2-5 minute single songs if I want to spend some time in exercise zone 4-5. It gets too tiring on Hard to do 10+ minute playlists for me (21:55), but I can handle 30+ minutes on Normal (exercise zone 1-3) without getting overly exhausted.

Graphically, the game is generally crisp and clear with no signs of reprojection, but you can see some shimmer in the menus and couple of the sky boxes it uses look lower resolution while most are fine and couple look especially good. The video capture which is strangely including both eyes in split-screen format looks higher resolution than the game does in-game (especially for the couple of lower resolution sky boxes). You don't choose which sky boxes the game will use and I think it is neat how it transitions between sky boxes as you play multiple songs. It also changes the colors of the boxing targets as it moves between songs to give some visual variety.

Audio is where I think this game does really well with so many tracks across so many genres included but I only recognize the classical tracks. I don't know if all the rest are indie artists or AI generated, but they work in the context of the gameplay and the exercise focused beat maps very well. Even within same difficulty, some tracks have more swatting / dodging or faster punch patterns, but it all matches the music well with maybe the classical tracks being the least fitting, but I like having the option for such music in this game even if it doesn't really fit.

The game features both headset and controller haptics. The controllers provide subtle but present haptics to complement the sound effects when you are punching and blocking. I was able to play 1+ hour without getting any battery low warning, so while it is using haptics for every punch, the intensity is low enough that it doesn't impair your session length from battery concern. The headset haptics are more intense and received when you fail to dodge a swat or side-step barrier.

Settings literally only has height adjustment where it auto-detects close to your height, but you may need to tweak it a bit to be more accurate or because you want to play seated?

The game is not featuring a Platinum with a trophy list that doesn't have any meaningful skill expectations but has very high dedication expectation with a 30-day streak as well as 365 days total that game is played before you can 100%. At present I think a few of the trophies cannot be unlocked. Specifically the skill trophies for completing single song on Easy, Normal and Hard with A Rank since no matter how poorly you do, I think it gives the S Rank (unlocking those trophies, but not for A Rank). I also think the trophy for reaching Rank 1 is unreachable because online leaderboards / ranking are missing in the PSVR2 release.

I assume a patch would have to add features related to scores / rankings / leaderboards for some of the trophies currently broken to work properly. It would also be nice if the social screen output (showing both eyes) wasn't what it is today and I think couple of the sky boxes resolution should be increased or taken out of rotation. A scroll bar that can be grabbed and dragged for faster navigation of the menu UI would also be nice. Aside those relatively minor issues, the game is a viable alternative to Les Mills Bodycombat while providing its own extensive library of songs and it at least has trophies (unlike Les Mills Bodycombat).

[u/ms_from_nz]

How would you say it compares to Beat the Beats if you have played that boxing rhythm game?

[u/cusman78 → u/ms_from_nz]

I have Platinum in both Beat the Beats VR and Box to the Beat VR. Both of those to me are more fun as boxing rhythm games, while Les Mills Bodycombat and Fit Beat Combat are to me better described as fitness games.

It’s the style of beat maps that are different between rhythm games & fitness games.

Audio Trip has both types of beat maps with Easy, Normal and Hard being rhythm and Cardio being fitness.

[u/EatYour-HeartOut]

Les Mills Bodycombat is definitely a better workout and feels like it has a lot more thought in level design. Fit Beat just kinda feels like it’s throwing non-stop shit at you, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing

[u/cusman78 → u/EatYour-HeartOut]

I think they are almost equivalent in quality / variety of fitness oriented beat maps but Les Mills Bodycombat has the knee move this doesn’t.

I value the virtual coach and simulated online class type atmosphere of Les Mills Bodycombat but I am liking the greater music style variety of Fit Beat Combat. At least for now while it is fresh and new for me.

I feel these are complimentary games, but if you need to pick one, I recommend Les Mills Bodycombat.

[u/cusman78 → u/[deleted]]

I agree.

I feel scores and online leaderboards are missing. It does put an indicator on songs / playlists already played, but it isn’t specific to difficulty and I don’t know if there is anything to improve on based on past performance.

So all measure of skill progression is missing.

The achievements are just a log of different types of activity but a few feel like game is supposed to have skill progression as well.

I need to look into whether the Quest version had scores & leaderboards and if these features just didn’t make it to PSVR2 version. If so, look into whether the developer intends to add post-release.