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Friday 8 February, 2008
SUMMARY
Beats is a music rhythm game for the PSP. It is one of the first titles to be released as a download only on the Playstation Store. It's just like every other music rhythm game; you push buttons in time with the music when an icon passes over a certain point on the screen. If you get a certain number in a row, you get a mulitplier. It grades you on how well you stay in time with the music.
GAMEPLAY
If you look at Beats on the surface, its really hard to see what sets it apart from other music games. It doesn't have any crazy peripherals like guitar hero and dance dance revolution, a rarity in music games today. The gameplay is overly simplistic also. You push the X, square, circle, and triangle buttons along with a button on the directional pad depending on where the beat is coming from.
The music that Beats provides for you are a few sub-par non-licensed songs, another rarity in music games today. The songs really aren't that good, and aren't even that fun to play. One really cool feature, however, is jamming. You can pick apart the songs provided in the game and choose which instruments you want to play, change them up on the fly, and even record your remixes of the songs to share with friends. This was a cool feature, but it didn't keep my attention for too long.
The main thing that sets this game apart from other music games and makes it one of the best handheld games I've played is the ability to add your own mp3s into the game. Yes, thats right, any mp3 file can work with the game. All you have to do is add as many mp3 files as you want onto your memory stick and the game will make a note map for them, enabling you to play them. The most fun I got out of this game was putting ten songs on my memory stick at a time and seeing how well they translated into the game.
During my first hour, most of the songs I threw at the game worked pretty well. There were a few songs that it didn't map the song as I would have wanted, but there were just as many times where it did it perfectly. When songs would work perfectly, it really made me love this game. It was like experiencing some of my favorite songs on a completely new level. I was taking an active role in the songs I was listening to, not a passive one like usual.
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