Thumper's moniker of "rhythm violence game" fits really well; I can't remember the last time I played a game that is quite so violent towards its players. A barrage of lights and sound, hurtling obstacles towards you only to then hurl you around even as you successfully navigate them. The game really makes you feel what's happening every moment of the way; it is exhilarating, exhausting and intensely visceral.

Thumper gets very difficult as it proceeds, which I can imagine putting off a number of people who are otherwise very into the aesthetic. Personally I found the increasingly harsh difficulty perfectly suited the game's feeling of being a descent into some hellish void, and the way the game pushed me to tackle increasingly harder and harder patterns leads to beating those final levels feeling very rewarding. The things the game trains you to eventually be capable of are kind of absurd.

I would like to try this out in VR some day.