![thumper ps4 thumper ps4](https://apollo2.dl.playstation.net/cdn/UP1613/CUSA03559_00/FREE_CONTENTNZo55Qcg0zjrUo6Zudfq/PREVIEW_SCREENSHOT4_118310.jpg)
The head is maniacal, after all, which immediately suggests some kind of personality or background to me. The difficulty for me here is that while I’m more than happy to leave things without any kind of narrative when there clearly doesn’t need to be, but with Thumper I am also being presented with a giant head that fits in some kind of narrative with a space beetle.
![thumper ps4 thumper ps4](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BvMu6GYLjxM/maxresdefault.jpg)
Yet there, in the middle of the screen, was a gargantuan head. It was a shock the first time it arrived because until then I’d assumed the whole thing was going to be skidding into things by being a fraction of a second out with my timing, and otherwise watching the abstract, colourful visuals zipping past. The track the beetle is on is running into its gaping mouth. The end boss for each stage in the game is a giant head - or ‘maniacal giant head from the future’ - which gets progressively bedazzled with spiky mirrored armour each time it turns up. Jump, grind, smash, fly a bit, defeat weird geometric tentacled amoeba thing waving around menacingly in front of the track. In games like this you don’t really need a premise, you just need nice visuals and a successful set of controls and gameplay, which is fine. It’s incredibly shiny, and vibrates a bit when it’s going really fast: an angry piece of costume jewelry speeding through what the Thumper website describes as ‘the hellish void’.
![thumper ps4 thumper ps4](https://cdn02.nintendo-europe.com/media/images/11_square_images/games_18/nintendo_switch_download_software/SQ_NSwitchDS_Thumper.jpg)
It has to turn and grind away from walls, because apparently its bottom, or beetley equivalent thereof, is sharper or more heavily armoured than the rest of it. It’s very small and evidently on a huge journey. I don’t mean this to sound demeaning because I like the little beetle. It’s a bit like a weaponised breeding experiment between a scarab beetle (the ones the Ancient Egyptians worshipped because a God rolling the sun across the sky was seen as analogous to a beetle rolling balls of dung, which is a comparison that I for one am fully on board with) and an aerodynamic bicycle helmet. Thumper makes me think of the extremely proactive bunny from Bambi, but in this game you appear to be a beetle…? In a more theoretical sense I have no idea. Thumper launches today on PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR and Steam.I have no idea what Thumper is, which is to say that on a basic level I know it’s self described as a rhythm violence game that’s a bit like things like Rez and so on, on rails which fly through a vaguely geometric, sort-of-a-bit-like-space-maybe backdrop, and my job as the player is to respond to the obstacles placed on the rails in the way the game has trained me to (smash through, jump over, grind past, etc.), and that I really enjoy it. This isn’t a standard rhythm game, and I feel beaten down by its sense of style and pacing. The scope of the game’s levels feels too small on a standard screen. Thumper works fine on a flat screen - if you aren’t buying a PlayStation VR, I’m still going to suggest you pick up the game on PlayStation 4 or Steam - but it comes to life in virtual reality in a way that isn’t possible when you’re looking at the world through a window.īeing able to have this experience wrap completely around you, to see the infernal expanse of this world as an endless lane of fear, well. It feels like being beaten in the face by a digital version of the Necronomicon. There are seven worlds, each one filled with a large number of smaller sections, and you’re graded on your ability to react to the pulses of light and sharp turns that the game throws at you. You feel as if you’re being forged by some technological hellscape, and you come out the other end feeling hardcore as hell. Thumper is relentless in that it teaches you a basic mechanic, slams you onto an anvil and hits you with a hammer until you understand it, and then moves onto the next one.