The rythym game blues

Continuing the theme of "shit I missed while I was in Azeroth", does anyone remember Audiosurf? I wrote it off as a glorified iTunes visualizer or screensaver when it first came out, but no! There's a proper game in there and it's pretty fun. It's one of those really simple but addictive games that has a kind of hidden depth to it. While I was playing it though, I couldn't help but feel that I'd played it before. The block collecting felt really familiar and I spent ages trying to remember out what it reminded me of. Turns out it was a game called Klax on the C64 which I played to death waaaaay back. Loaded it up on an emulator after I remembered what it was... that game did not age well. Audiosurf looks like it'll age better, it'll always be different because the music you have to play it with is always going to change. I tried some dance, some pop, some heavy rock and even a bit of classical. In the end I was having the most fun rocking out to songs with slow build ups leading to epic guitar solos - Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell were awesome. Right Here, Right Now by Fatboy Slim was pretty sweet for the same reason, a slow build which breaks into a more intense beat.

Playing Audiosurf got me thinking about other rhythm and music games. The genre as a whole has always been pretty interesting to me, but I never really got into Dance Dance Revolution or it's various competitors. Probably something to do with me not having a PlayStation, being cursed with two left feet and really not wanting to be shown up by some hyperactive thirteen year old in the arcades. None of that managed to stop me from messing around in my own home with Stepmania though, and I did manage to steal and hook up a PSX dance mat to my PC once. The resulting performance left a lot to be desired. Now that I think about it, I have Dancing Stage: Mario Mix for the Gamecube somewhere with a dance mat... that might be fun to play with if my enforced exile from the world of the internet continues. Wonder if I still have that CD full of DDR MP3s and step files?

The other big names - Rock Band and Guitar Hero - have a cost of entry that's far too high. Donkey Konga is an alternative, but far too simplistic (though DK Jungle Beat is a laugh). Singstar-style games are completely out, my singing voice is terrible. Thing is, all of these games have the same problem - they're not generated by music you plug in, they're games based around the music the developers include. Audiosurf can be a completely different game depending on the music you choose, which is completely awesome. The only other game I can think of that's actually generated by the music you plug in to it is Vib-Ribbon on the PlayStation.

Also, just for the record, most songs by Steps are bastard hard.

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