Beats, a rhythm game for the PSP, gets the Head-to-Head treatment! Take a look at what we both think of this cheap downloadable game, with our opinions collected here for your viewing ease!
DAVID
Beats is a rhythm game for the PSP, available for a scant 5 dollars via the PlayStation Network Store.
Beats game-play revolves around hitting the face buttons in time with the rhythm of whatever song is playing. The big twist that sets it apart from other games in the genre, is that along with a few included tracks you can use any mp3s that are on your PSP’s memory stick. Without any extra work from, you the game will search your PSP for compatible files and add them right to the game.
Obviously some songs are a lot better suited for the game then others. Funk, techno, and any other rhythm heavy songs work well. Faster rock songs and such also tend to get a little cluttered but are still totally playable. I have used it to play everything from rock, to pop, to a few of my favorite theme songs, and all were very fun. The game uses beat detection and lays out a custom pattern for whatever song you choose. For the most part, the detection is very good.
Beats is less a game, more an interactive visualizer. You can’t lose or fail a song. However good or bad you are doing has no effect on the song, just on your score, and as visualizer it works perfectly. It is the perfect thing to use to tap along to your music on the bus, or in line at the bank. The package you get includes over 70 different visualizers.
In case the base game wasn’t enough, you also get access to a small music studio. You can take track sample of guitars, bass, drums and synth tracks and arrange them and add or remove samples to make your own rhythm. These mixes can then be saved and shared with friends.
I love having Beats tucked away quietly on my memory stick; always there, should boredom strike. It has definitely been one of my favorite things to show up on the PSP. It is something I always find myself coming back to, time and time again.
If you have any interest in rhythm games, or just want some great new ways to interact with your music on PSP, Beats is perfect. For just five bucks, Beats can’t be beat.
Rating = A-
+ Great Value
+ One of a kind for the PSP
+ Huge number of visualizer skins
+ Using your own songs mean almost unlimited replayability
- Gameplay can be a bit repetitive
- Beat detection not always spot on
BEN
We have a tendency, as consumers, to view the companies that produce our entertainment with some mixture of loathing and adulation. The larger the company, the greater the vitriol, in most cases—Sony, Microsoft, and EA are common targets. However, from time to time, our corporate overlords do something that makes us consider that, perhaps, they are not the money-grubbing bastards we know they are. It might be a really good game, or unexpectedly standing up for some kind of principle we thought had been devoured and reprocessed long ago. Beats is one of those things.
Produced by Sony itself (although, admittedly, apparently Sony London, or something like that) Beat is offered for what can only be called a pittance of five bucks, which I believe makes it the cheapest game available from the PlayStation Store. Although as a rhythm game, it can never, of course, live up to the likes of Guitar Hero or the burgeoning franchise of Rock Band, it does an admirable job of making the impossible possible—that is, essentially creating a game at my whim, and based on my parameters.
The mechanic is relatively simple, and has already been detailed in this article, so I will not waste your time by discussing it again. What I will say is that, like most games of this sort, although the controls may feel a little awkward at first, before long you will feel ascomfortable with the iconic PlayStation buttons and d-pad as you do gripping the neck of your plastic toy guitar. Beats was one of the first games I purchased for my PSP, and as such I was not terribly familiar with which buttons were where, etc, which made some of my early forays into Beats game-play a little bit less than satisfying. I am by no means an expert by this point, but I can say that I can easily beat songs on Normal without missing a button.
The beat detection, which the games relies on pretty much entirely, is generally serviceable, although it occasionally produces inexplicable results; the sort that you only see when you attempt to make an algorithm replicate something that the human brain—well, most human brains—does automatically. In my experience, the beat detection, and how “buttons”—for lack of a better term—correspond to the song you might be listening to, tends to improve as you reach higher difficultly levels. “Novice” is,unsurprisingly , a joke. “Normal”, or whatever the next level is called, introduces a new mechanic (the use of the d-pad), but is also relatively simple as long as you have some degree of eye-hand coordination and the ability to discern and understand rhythm. If you don’t have those things, you probably shouldn’t be playing rhythm games. “Hard” is significantly more difficult, and while I would have undoubtedly failed every song I have tried at this level if the game allowed you to fail, the experience becomes much more enjoyable. You begin to get a real sense of interaction with the music you are “playing”, which is, ostensibly, the purpose of games such as this one. Perhaps the sheer volume of buttons which you are required to hit makes the game appear to have a closer relationship to the rhythm of your song than it actually does, but I cannot argue with the fact that once you begin playing on “Hard”, the game simply becomes more fun.
The ability to “mix” and “record” songs is fun, and I’ve spent more than a couple minutes on it, but it was clearly included more as an afterthought. The songs you can “mix” are limited—for obvious reasons—to a set that comes with the game. Although it is a reasonably extensive set, the fact remains that it is limited, and as far as I know, there are no plans to expand it. Which is ridiculous,because I totally deserve regular updates and improvements to my $5 game.
The game also includes a sort of “multi-player” mode, which had me terribly excited, until I actually played it. It amounts to essentially a “multi-player” version of the mixing toy, which makes it…somewhat less fun. An actual multi-player Beats would have been awesome—I would have even payed the unprecedented sum of six dollars for such a feature. I can think of reasons why it was not included, all of them reasonable, but I hope that this is something Sony London will consider for the inevitable “Beats II: The Beatening“.
Ultimately, there is no reason that you should not buy this game, unless you are, perhaps, Hitler, or someone with an equal or greater disdain for human life and happiness in general. It is only $5, and it is easily worth twice that, although I would prefer it if you didn’t let Sony know.
Rating = A
- Beat detection can be shaky, especially at lower difficulty levels
- Only plays MP3s
- “Mixing” feature a little dull
- Should have multi-player, kind of does but not really
+ Fun, especially at higher difficultly levels
+ Insanely cheap, which makes up for many failings
+ Very pretty, slick
+ Did I mention it’s only $5