AudioSurf Is My New Girlfriend

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March 7, 2008

Within the past few years, music-based video games have been a hit with both casual and mainstream gamers with titles like Rock Band and Guitar Hero being the obvious successes of the genre.  But music-based video games as we currently understand them have a few inherent problems; not only do they force us to pay extra for the admittedly-cool plastic guitars/drums/zithers that now come packed in with every title, we’re also at the mercy of whatever songs they decide to include inside the games, whether we like these musical selections or not.  Sure, with our current generation of console hardware, these games have seen expanded libraries in the form of downloadable (and not free) content, but no game out there can really cater to the tastes of every music fan.  After all, the music game genre made its first real smash with Guitar Hero, which primarily featured classic dad rock, perhaps the worst kind of music to have ever haunted the airwaves.

Note to sticklers: I’m fully aware that music games existed before Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but none have matched their level of popularity.  You could make an argument for Dance Dance Revolution, but I’d call that more of a collective brain disease than a fad.

AudioSurf, one of the newest games on Valve’s Steam service (a free content delivery service that you should have on your PC right now) manages to solve both of the music game genre’s major problems: not only is AudioSurf just a measly ten dollars (1.5 burritos on the burrito conversion scale), it also lets you use any .mp3 file in the game.  That’s right; if you are violently depressed that the current slate of music games doesn’t let you play along to “Disco Duck” or “The Superbowl Shuffle,” your sick, sick dreams can finally come true.  Just don’t go telling me about them.

When compared to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, AudioSurf is relatively simple—but deceptively so.  Instead of leaving elements out of the songs and forcing you to fill them in with your Playskool orchestra, AudioSurf plays a bit differently.  Essentially, the game is a racing/puzzle hybrid where the “tracks” you play on are physical representations of whatever .mp3 files you tell the game to use—and AudioSurf does a surprisingly competent job at this.  Essentially, your speed in the game is the same as the tempo of whatever song you choose; when the tempo is slow, your little spaceship will be climbing a hill, and when the tempo is fast, you’ll often find yourself going down a sharp incline and shooting around turns while Trent Reznor is screaming in your ear.  If this happens even when you aren’t playing AudioSurf, then congratulations: you are officially on drugs.

Here’s a YouTube video showing off the game’s “Mono” mode, which involves collecting blocks of one color and avoiding the rest.  There are many different modes of game play available, most of which involve matching the different colors of blocks in your path.  As with most YouTube game play videos, this one is incredibly show-offy and played on one of the game’s hardest settings:



As seen in the video above, the best songs to play in AudioSurf are those that feature tempo changes, if only because the mixing up of fast and slow speeds makes the game much more interesting.  Strong beats are also important in the making of a good AudioSurf level, since the block placement often falls on drumbeats, giving that same Guitar Hero /Rock Band illusion of music creation; and when it works, it works very well.  That being said, some of your mp3 library may not be welcome in AudioSurf.  If you’re a fan of Simon and Garfunkel or Vivaldi, then take it outside, Chumley; AudioSurf tends to favor songs with solid, strong beats and moderately fast tempos.  But the fact that you can literally use any .mp3 file in existence—whether it features music or not—means that you’ll have a lot of fun just screwing around with the game to see what works and what doesn’t.

You shouldn’t need words to sell someone on AudioSurf; in my opinion, all that’s necessary is to show someone a video of the game while grunting and pointing—a skill I picked up from working in retail many years ago.  The real value of AudioSurf comes in actually getting to experience your music with the benefit of using your additional senses.  For only ten dollars, you can literally breathe new life into your tired old music collection; and even if you don’t feel like playing the game aspect of AudioSurf, you can play a mode that just involves kicking back and surfing the audio with no repercussions—obviously, this is tailor-made for anyone who is a frequent user of LSD.  But even if I haven’t convinced you, the game is free to try on Steam—and the few songs they let you play should more than convince you of this fact: AudioSurf has taught me to love again.

Links:

AudioSurf Home Page

Steam

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