About a month ago Activision announced that they wouldn't be releasing a Guitar Hero game this year and that the franchise has been put on hold for the foreseeable future. This came right after the news that MTV decided to sell off Harmonix, the creators of Rock Band, for a mere $50. Both of these announcements pretty much declared that the music game genre was dead.
I didn't really get into either Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I played at my friend's house and enjoyed them enough, but I never bought them myself and was really confused by all the hype surrounding these games. I'd rather learn to play a real guitar than a plastic, fake one. I came to the conclusion that these games simply weren't for me, so I never really payed attention to any kind of music game, until I found Audiosurf.
If you never heard of Audiosurf here's a quick run-down: You control a ship traveling along a track hitting notes in the rhythm of the music playing. Sounds like the typical Rock Band/GH setup, except that the track changes with the song. The track fluctuates with the beat, causing the ship to jump to it, and changes based on the speed on the music. If the song is slow it'll crawl uphill to match it and when it picks up the ship will fly downhill at breakneck speed. The color of everything as well as objects in the environment also change depending on what's being played.
Much more exciting than watching notes continuously fall down a screen, but the real kicker is that this program will work for any MP3 file you insert into it.
Any MP3 file on your computer can be put into the game and it will analyze and build a course based on that song track. It doesn't rely on the developer to create and release tracks. The code works so that any song can be played on it. Rock Band might have over a thousand songs available for it in some form, but Audiosurf's track list is literally infinite.
The program itself is pretty amazing. As a soon-to-be computer programmer I'm fascinated by its ability to analyze a song, find the tempo, and build a game level based on that. I am not one bit musically inclined so a person who has any sort of musical ability can easily impress me.
There are some downsides to this game, however. While every song works with the game not every song is fun to play. There's some great techno songs that I thought would be insane to play in Audiosurf, and then turn out to be totally lame. You have to find songs that fit well. That's something games like Rock Band have over Audiosurf. The developers picked the songs and balanced them accordingly. Not every song in Rock Band or Guitar Hero is terrifically fun to play, but at least the majority of them are.
Another reason why this kind of game will never catch on is that it kills the DLC market. That was Rock Band's bread and butter. I'm sure they made more money selling DLC packs than they did the actual game. Publishers want money and allowing a music game with an infinite song list will seriously cut into their profits, so unfortunately I don't see them adopting this tactic anytime soon.
Audiosurf is really the only music game I've played regularly and the only one whose "business model" (or lack thereof) I support. If you've never played this game I would highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy music games. It's only $10 on Steam right now and doesn't really require any sort of powerful PC to run. My laptop handles it just fine. Music games aren't dead, per say. They are just now finally getting the opportunity to evolve with the changing market.
Peace. 
No comments:
Post a Comment