Audiosurf Review

I love to listen to music more than anything while I'm writing, which makes this review insanely difficult to forge through. Writing a review about a game that forces me to redefine how I listen to music - while listening to music - seem archaic. I could finish writing this review while listening to my favorite tunes, or I could experience my tunes. Problem is, the review will never get done.

More and more in today's gaming industry, games are created that blend the paradigms of what it means to experience music. Twenty years ago, music was listened to. With the advent of Dance Dance Revolution some fifteen years ago, the gaming industry began to tap into a different way to experience music: interactively. This notion of interacting with music has grown exponentially, with an endless supply of rhythm-action games from the likes of Konami, and more recently Red Octane. Developers everywhere are beginning to get in on the music gaming business - Disney, EA, and Nintendo are the three big names now dipping their toes into that water.

Funny thing is, it seems that one man has already jumped the gun on everyone else, and with the help of Valve and Steam, has created the music-based video game to beat. Everyone else can sit down and just learn at this point. Audiosurf is perfect in almost every way, and here's why.

The concept of Audiosurf is mind-numbingly simple to grasp, yet confusing to look at in person, yet always cool in presentation. Luckily, it doesn't take long to get into the groove of the game. The concept: surf down a virtual "road" and collect colored "cars" (or blocks, if you will) into a three-column playing field. Match three or more colors in any adjacent pattern on the playing field to clear them and score points. Combos can be built be adding together more than three colors at at time, or by scoring particular combinations of certain colors (red are worth more than blue, for example). Like the granddaddy of puzzle games, Tetris, Audiosurf is all about score. The game can be confusing to new players: a lot of colors, lines, and fancy graphics exploding all over the screen, all the while your vehicle is always racing down the track without delay.

What makes all of this experience unique, however, is that it is built around your music. In a society where everyone has a musical taste that can be defined by their playlists, Audiosurf allows you to choose any audio file for use as the backbone of the game. The tracks are built unique for every song that you import into the game, and no two experiences will be alike (unless you play the same song over and over, of course).

As where games like DDR and Guitar Hero create a sense of euphoria for the player, binding his or her actions to the accuracy of the music on screen, Audiosurf does not punish you acoustically for failing. This is a puzzle game first - the music you choose to play with matches every expectation of beat, rhythm, and speed that your music may portray, and creates an incredible puzzle game for it.

Love the Foo Fighters? Get ready to race extremely fast downhill most of the time, weaving in and out of blocks just barely fast enough to get by to the end. More a Norah Jones person? You'll get to play plenty of relaxing, slow-paced, uphill tracks that let you take in the scenery and build your combos slowly. The game analyzes your music upon each load, and saves the track for subsequent play, making self-competitions for high scores very entertaining. Any song, voice, or random noise can make the game, and I've found an awesome blend of Live, Train, Alanis Morissette, Tantric, and others constantly making the rounds in Audiosurf.

Taking a lesson from Nintendo, Audiosurf is built for any type of player. If you want to take it slow and free-ride any track without worrying about the puzzle game itself, you can do so, and the experience of shooting up and down over your music's beats is all the same incredible. Want an endless barrage of five colors of blocks, dozens of power-ups, tight twists and turns, and blistered fingers? It can be done. With a diverse array of more than a dozen play styles, combined with the personalization of using your own music, Audiosurf is a game that almost defies categorization at the difficulty level. Anyone can play it, and anyone can enjoy it.

Therein lies a key to Audiosurf - it allows for music to be experienced in a way that has never been done before. It's a highly visual game, and whether music is high-energy or low-key, the game always generates tracks that "feel" right for your favorite music: bass-thumping beats get lots of up-and-down bumps in the road, mellow violin solos get smooth uphill inclines, and power-junkie chorus hooks get a sudden drop off in the road, thrusting right into the action without hesitation. This kind of raw, visceral feeling is something Audiosurf executes well to create a new, intimate place to experience your music.

Theoretically, Audiosurf can be played forever - as long as new music is released, new play experiences can be built. More so than any music game that I have ever played (including the Guitar Hero series), Audiosurf elevates my enjoyment of music from listening to experiencing. With a solid puzzle game built around deep customization and a solid, edge-of-your-seat thrill in every play-through, it's hard to find any fault in Audiosurf. I supposed the menu system is a but clunky, but this is an impossibly minor grip for what I consider to be the single best music game ever designed, and I look forward to many years enjoying it. The asking price of US$9.99 is laughable - I would have paid three times as much for this experience, and thus it makes little sense why everyone should not own Audiosurf.