Aramation Games

Beats is a $5 download for your PSP that will turn your existing music collection into a rhythm game with varying success depending on what kind of music you have. The basic premise is simple: face buttons will fly in towards the center, and you must hit them when they’re in the middle. Since the game uses music that’s already on your PSP, it will automatically generate the sequences: however I had some tracks with great beat detection that seemed very, well, on the beat whereas others just seemed a bit too fast or too slow compared to the beat. It does create a very disconcerting effect when you come from the ultra-precise Guitar Hero or Rock Band series.

It is much better to play with the built-in songs that come from Sony’s other games such as Eyetoy Kinetic. They are all of electronic genre, and they don’t rely on automatic beat detection to generate the stages. You will get bored of them pretty quickly though. Another component of Beats is remixing capability of those built-in songs where you can turn on and turn off different components of each song and create your own. You can even share your creations online, and download what others have done for your enjoyment.

On the technical front, the game suffers from occasional and unfortunate slowdown: it gets especially annoying where you’re in the middle of a song and realizes there’s a brief pause that shouldn’t be. In the end, it is only $5 so if you would like a fix of music-based games on your PSP, this shouldn’t be too bad. For everyone else, just stick to listening to your music.

Rating: 25%

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