Let's give it a sniff: UNBEATABLE

It wanted to write a normal review of unbeatable. It's another indie rhythm game that released at the tail end of last year, within days of Bits and Bops, and it was gonna review both. Talk about what they did well or badly, the technical aspects, be a huge nerd about it. But it just rolled credits on unbeatable's final chapter, and it doesn't know what this review will be like. It doesn't know what to say. It doesn't know how it should be feeling and it doesn't know if this game deserves the amount of emotions it is feeling right now. So get ready for a messy, emotional review of a messy, emotional game.

It almost gave up on unbeatable multiple times. Its first impressions were that it was a janky rhythm game with a confusing story, poorly thought out gameplay and a tone that jumped all over the place. It thinks it was right - unbeatable is all those things, but the strength of the art and music (which are amazing and really nail the rebellious vibe of the whole thing) was what kept it coming back to see through the story to the end, as it jumped between being a prison break, to a slice of life comedy, to rockumentary-style band drama, to world-ending stakes, to a meditation on trauma and loss and coping and what it means to live.

It's a game that wants to be big and important, it wants to be an artistic statement, it wants a lot. It's the most ambitious fucking thing this one has ever played and it has so much soul and yet despite finishing the thing crying it isn't sure if the game actually achieved what it set out to do.

It's hard to write about unbeatable, because unbeatable is trying to be so many things and struggles to be any of them convincingly. It's a rhythm game that isn't quite compelling enough to be worth playing as a rhythm game. A story that is heartfelt and emotional but fragmented and full of tonal whiplash. The whole thing feels like the creators bit off more than they could chew on every level. But somehow the sum of it is emotionally resonant, a game that made it cry and is probably going to stay with it for a while. This messy fucking game with a messy fucking story confronted it with shit it never thought a game would do effectively, although it can't tell if it being that effective was somewhat accidental. The feeling unbeatable has left it with, more than anything else, is tears, confusion and conflict. It almost decided to shelve writing a review of it for that very reason.

This post is probably also janky. It can't tell. It feels like it can't give a sense of unbeatable as a game in any way other than baring its soul to the internet and making an unfocused post that you can hopefully feel the emotions behind because that's what unbeatable is. The game is a pile of extremely deeply felt emotions, a pile of ideas that felt real and resonant to the creators, a bunch of feelings and a whole fuckton of work that lead to this object that is roughly in the shape of a rhythm game. A few more editing passes at the story and some more time in the oven would probably have lead to a better game, but that game in some way wouldn't be unbeatable.

It can't really say if you should play it. It still isn't sure if it should be writing this review. But it needed to share this. It needs to post this because it needs to express the emotions that unbeatable left it with. And a game review is the format it had to work with.