Audiosurf - Review

Title: Audiosurf
Format: PC
Price: $9.95 + Tax (via Steam)
Release Date: Out Now
Published: Leeds Student, 7/3/08

Rhythm games are nothing new; be it jamming to Guitar Hero’s hair metal, warbling along with the pop based antics of Singstar or being hypnotised by Rez’s pulsing images and trance music. Audiosurf, however, is different: ‘Ride Your Music’, says the tag-line. No longer are you constrained by the musical tastes of the developers.

The tracks in Audiosurf are created based on your own music collection. For example, a fast song will generate a frantic downhill run, whereas a more relaxed piece will produce a gentle uphill climb. The goal is to race through it, picking up and matching coloured blocks along the way. Colours appear in time to the music, with warmer colours (which are worth more points) appearing at more intense moments in the song. Extra complexity is added by the different characters, each of which have different powers to aid in the pursuit of a high score.

The score, of course, is what this is all about. Online score boards and friend lists ensure that competitiveness is in no short supply, and the constant desire to squeeze out a few more points and beat a friend at a favourite track is hard to suppress. This, coupled with the compulsion to see how it copes with different pieces of music, induces a real ‘just one more song’ mentality.

Limited only by your music collection, the game is effectively impossible to complete. In this context, it is the perfect casual game, offering innumerable short, unique gaming experiences, suited to whatever mood you may be in that even relatively unskilled players can enjoy. It’s even possible to just let it run through on autopilot, providing a novel visualiser to leave running in the background whilst doing something else.

Though through all this, its nature as an independent game is still visible. While the graphics are well done (and wouldn’t look out of place in the next Tron – think solid lines and neon colours), the interface is clunky and the game shipped with several bugs (though these were quickly patched through Steam). But for the price of two pints, you really can’t go wrong.

~ by Seniath on March 5, 2008.