Developers at team Awe Interactive managed to catch rhythm-shooter hype with a real finesse, and showing others how to make games in this new subgenre.

BPM: Bullets Per Minute is an addictive, innovative, and punishingly hard roguelite shooter-slash-rhythm game - and it's great.

An interesting, unique FPS for rock music and roguelike games lovers.

BPM: Bullets Per Minute is an old-school shooter with a twist, adding in roguelike mechanics as well as rhythm-based gameplay. Jump, dash, shoot and reload to the beat to advance through a host of monster-filled levels, collecting keys, coins, equipment, and stats to try and get through the seven stages that constitute each playthrough. The gameplay is fun, fast, and frantic, it looks good and sounds great, with a perfect heavy-metal soundtrack, though there are a few flaws. A lack of enemy variety, particularly bosses, as well as level variety starts to show quickly.

BPM is a well-executed, unique take on the rhythm-roguelite genre that has a lot to offer – if you can get accustomed to its demanding gameplay hook.

There is no middle ground for BPM: either you love it, or you hate it. Personally, I feel this game crosses the line between challenge and frustration, offering a learning curve that is almost impossible to climb if you are not a true FPS lover. The soundtrack is excellent and the bundle with it is worth your money, but if you're not a very, very patient person with lightning-fast reflexes and an excellent sense of rhythm, you better look somewhere else.

The few times that the RNG in BPM: Bullets Per Minute actually managed to put together a set of weapons and abilities that allowed for significant progress, the game shined, but it's just not worth the hours of suffering failed runs and mistimed shots. To borrow the game's own 90s shooter comparisons, playing BPM is like diving into Doom on Ultra Nightmare before learning how to play an FPS. The fun is still there, but it's buried under so many roadblocks and complications. The frustrating end result is a game with a great idea that bungles just about every part of the execution.