Tapping to the beat of your own drum
Last week Sony released the game Beats to the PSP PSN Store. Sony’s London Studio created the game. Beats can best be described as part rhythm game part interactive visualizer. So what is included with for the $4.99 download?
Beats is best described as a rhythm game. As various face buttons cross the screen you must hit the corresponding buttons on the PSP. There are 3 hit points that are left, neutral and right and you must hold the correct d pad button in order to correctly hit the face button. The rest of the interface shows your combo, your multiplier and power meter which when activated doubles your current multiplier.
Beats includes several modes of play and customization. First let’s talk about the customization. Everything from the menu backgrounds to the visualizer background can be customized using preset animated backgrounds. Unfortunately Beats does not allow you to put your own videos as either background. That is not to say the included backgrounds are bad, most are good and the menu street background “Flash” is amazing. While the ability to change your background there is unfortunately not a random option.
The main draw of Beats is the ability to play your own mp3s. There have been various reports of issues here regarding its ability to properly handle various bitrates. In G2G’s testing we never encountered an issue with any of the mp3s we tested. Word of starting advice here, do not choose the novice option as it doesn’t gave much in the way of interaction. Instead start with the normal difficulty.
Overall the game has a lot of replay value as you essentially are only limited by your music collection. The included tracks are mostly electronic club type songs and while they fit the genre they will likely grow old quickly to most players. One other thing noticeably missing is the ability for a continuous mode that would let you play more then 1 track in a row, and make your playlist.
In summary Beats is fun way to experience the music you currently have. During my testing I used a recent 1up yours podcast and to my surprise found it rather fun through the hour plus duration. The only knocks on Beats are the lack of a playlist mode and randomizing backgrounds. General suggestion is to pick this up for the price, it makes a great entry point into the genre and the customization allows for unlimited replay.
4 out of 5 stars
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