Beat Hazard Ultra

There was another small update that fixed some stuff, most notably the volume bug, but then I saw that Ultra was going to be released today rather than on the 27th.

So, I grabbed that shit.

And holy shit, is it ever worth the $5.

New enemies.   Enemies made of visual effects that don't damage you, but rather disable your ability to fire.  Other guys that fire little homing blobs that do the same thing.  These weird plus-shaped things that constrict your available screen space until you shoot them to move them back.  Homing asteroids.  A ship that mostly just sits there, but when you kill it, it unleashes a bunch of homing missiles.  Attractors and Repulsars, which either push you away from them or pull you closer to them with their beams.  And a tiny serpent, with a turret on each segment.

New bosses.  The serpent, which is a much larger version of the regular enemy (or perhaps I should say that the regular enemy is a much smaller version of the boss).  The spider, which for some reason only has six legs, and an annoying invulnerability state that it likes to stay in for upwards of 20 seconds at a time.

New boss turrets, including one particularly cruel one that fires regular enemies.

With all this stuff, naturally, you're going to need more weaponry, and boy, does Ultra deliver.

Micro Missiles: One touch of a button launches a bunch of small red missiles that hunt down the higher-priority targets, letting you focus on the small guys.

Ultra Beam: Your regular beam obeys the energy of the song.  This doesn't.  It only fires straight forwards, however.

Reflect Shield: Invulnerability at the touch of a button, plus the ability to use your ship as a battering ram and reflect projectiles.  Reflected projectiles turn on the enemies that fired them.

And of course you still have your trusty Superbombs.

There are also plenty of perks available in Ultra.  Each additional new weapon has a set of three perks associated with it, one of which is required to use the weapon.  Plenty of good perks for high score runs, including Multiplier Rain, which causes extra multiplier powerups to drop from the top of the screen to the bottom periodically.  Pick them up before they leave the screen, or forfeit them.

New Gameplay Modes.  Boss Rush, which just spawns bosses, and last but certainly not least, online multiplayer, in both co-op and head to head formats.  The only catch: to avoid a massive copyright issue, both players need to have the track you want to play.  Which, unless you're lucky, means that if you play random matches you're going to be stuck with the default songs.

I think that about covers everything.  To sum it up, I'll repeat something I said previously: Beat Hazard Ultra is so incredibly worth the $5 DLC cost.  Go grab it (and the game, if necessary) today.