The recent German game show, gamescom, truly was the show of music games. We braved the 30 degrees plus temperatures and hoards of sweaty Warios, Lara Crofts and Chun Lis to get our hands on everything from the band-based, plastic-instrument-playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, to the visual-novel-come-dancing-game, Persona 4: Dancing All Night, and everything in-between. Add in the Video Games Live concert we went to on the last night, where we spent a couple of hours being serenaded by orchestral renditions of everything from the Monkey Island theme to a Metal Gear Solid Medley to Final Fantasy VII's One-Winged Angel, and we certainly had a pretty music-filled time in Deutschland.
But there was one music game that caught us by surprise. A little known Vita title that goes by the name of Superbeat: Xonic, this was actually one of the most challenging games we played. Coming from the legendary Michael Yum, the guy behind the DJMax series, it was a franchise we'd never heard of until we sat down in the booth with our friends from UK publisher, Rising Star Games. Thankfully, it's also a game which requires absolutely no knowledge of its predecessor, and one that's shaping up to be another addictive addition to the Vita's library.
It's a lot more straightforward than it looks, honestly.
A touch screen-based rhythm action game (although you can button it up if you really want to), all you have to do here is touch, swipe, hold and press your way in time with the music through each of the game's fifty or so songs, hitting the button prompts as they move towards the front of the screen. It's a familiar enough concept, with coloured blocks moving out of the psychedelic backgrounds along an almost bow-shaped track, and all you need to do is touch them when they reach the edge of the screen to score points. Other note types mix things up a bit, some simply asking you to hold your finger down for a short while, while pink lines move up or down, from one segment to another, requiring you to slide your finger up/down as well. Yellow circles meanwhile, have a direction drawn on them, so you need to quickly swipe over them in the corresponding direction, and giant purple lines which cover all the lanes can be hit with the Vita's L/R shoulder buttons instead.
In all honesty, it's a lot harder to explain than it is to play - during our brief time with the game, we found it pretty easy to pick up and play, and before we knew it we were happily tapping along to various techno, Korean-style pop songs and tunes taken from previous 'Beatcraft' games. While we were quite happy pottering along on the easiest difficulty ourselves, Superbeat does come with a range of difficulties, which up the number of tracks notes can move along (from an easy four to a more hectic six), adds in extra 'effect' notes and just generally makes things a bit more hectic and finger-twisting. Even having managed to score pretty respectable A and S ranks on the easier ones we played, the songs very quickly ramp the difficulty up to an almost blazing speed. It's definitely one for those with nimble fingers.
The game comes complete with a 'World Tour' mode, a career of sorts, where you travel around the world taking on various 'clubs' by completing a set list of songs. Seemingly giving you a mix of an easy one, a normal-ish level one and one tricky track, it's a mode that we haven't really seen or heard much about yet - but one which they hope to keep regularly updated with new note tracks and such to keep fans Superbeat-ing for a while to come. For the more competitive players, there's even a global online leaderboard so you can see how you stack up to the rest of the community, and try to beat your friends' high scores.
Precisely how World Tour will work, we don't know.
The problem with music games, though, is that it's all too easy to have 'one more go' and never put it down. Unfortunately, on the day, we had other appointments to get to and had to leave Superbeat: Xonic after a fairly brief encounter. But we'd highly recommend you stay tuned for some more DJ-ing related news in the coming months, as Superbeat: Xonic is due to hit the PS Vita before the year is out! Why not check out the (admittedly all in Korean) trailer below:
