The Stute Review: Audiosurf (PC)
Andrew Scagnelli
Issue date: 2/22/08 Section: Opinion
Before Harmonix found success with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the then-unkown developer merged music games with old-style, third-person driving games, creating Frequency and Amplitude. Although these two games did not sell very well, and have been forgotten in lieu of their more popular franchises, the play style has been continued with Audiosurf.
The core gameplay of Audiosurf is to "drive" a ship along a three or five-lane road, hitting, pushing or avoiding "cars" that are placed dynamically, depending on the song and game mode. To vary the rounds there are 13 game modes, the main mode being Mono where the task is to avoid gray cars and hit colored cars.
Despite this seemingly shallow gameplay, Audiosurf is more impressive than a typical color-matching music game because of its soundtrack. The game ships via Steam with the soundtrack to "The Orange Box," and several songs are provided via the "Audiosurf Radio" feature. Its killer feature is to also import music that you may have on your hard drive. If the music is copy-protected, like many music via iTunes and other online services, it uses the native software to play such music. Audiosurf also supports every type of music thrown at it, an astounding feat that most media players fail to complete. The addition of user's music, as well as a soundtrack, makes the game completely addicting and extends its lifetime far beyond larger commercial games.
Although Audiosurf is a great game, it has a few caveats as well. Since the courses for user songs are created procedurally, they are not as perfect as a human-created course. During busier scenes, the frame-rate lags significantly, even on a high-end video card. Finally, there is no central database of music. While Audiosurf can play music via iTunes, it cannot pull from an existing music library, and instead, requires the user to navigate the file-system in order to find their music.
Despite these minor issues, Audiosurf is an amazing game. Plug in some good speakers, turn the lights off and kick back for a surprisingly relaxing experience. Even better, the game is available for only $9.99 via the Steam platform, the same price as "The Orange Box"'s soundtrack on iTunes.
The core gameplay of Audiosurf is to "drive" a ship along a three or five-lane road, hitting, pushing or avoiding "cars" that are placed dynamically, depending on the song and game mode. To vary the rounds there are 13 game modes, the main mode being Mono where the task is to avoid gray cars and hit colored cars.
Despite this seemingly shallow gameplay, Audiosurf is more impressive than a typical color-matching music game because of its soundtrack. The game ships via Steam with the soundtrack to "The Orange Box," and several songs are provided via the "Audiosurf Radio" feature. Its killer feature is to also import music that you may have on your hard drive. If the music is copy-protected, like many music via iTunes and other online services, it uses the native software to play such music. Audiosurf also supports every type of music thrown at it, an astounding feat that most media players fail to complete. The addition of user's music, as well as a soundtrack, makes the game completely addicting and extends its lifetime far beyond larger commercial games.
Although Audiosurf is a great game, it has a few caveats as well. Since the courses for user songs are created procedurally, they are not as perfect as a human-created course. During busier scenes, the frame-rate lags significantly, even on a high-end video card. Finally, there is no central database of music. While Audiosurf can play music via iTunes, it cannot pull from an existing music library, and instead, requires the user to navigate the file-system in order to find their music.
Despite these minor issues, Audiosurf is an amazing game. Plug in some good speakers, turn the lights off and kick back for a surprisingly relaxing experience. Even better, the game is available for only $9.99 via the Steam platform, the same price as "The Orange Box"'s soundtrack on iTunes.