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Rhythm Zone Review for PC

Rhythm Zone Review for PC

A Guitar Hero Killer?

Though the game is being marketed as an alternative to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, there really isn’t much to Rhythm Zone. There’s no career mode, and to play the songs in anything but a random order, you have to select them one at a time. Plenty of songs are included (fifty and counting), but they’re all from unknown indie artists who presumably charged little or nothing for the use of their music. The gameplay screen is ripped straight from Guitar Hero: colored notes come down a path that looks like a guitar fretboard, and you hit the corresponding buttons with the correct timing to score points and increase your multiplier.

Rhythm Zone Screenshot

However, Rhythm Zone promises a killer feature. You’re not limited to the songs that come with it, and you don’t have to buy extra songs as DLC. All you have to do is locate a music file from the program (all the major types are compatible, including MP3 and AAC), and in a few seconds, it will create a track for you to play in any of four difficulty levels. In other words, this game’s selling point is that it can turn your entire music library into Guitar Hero DLC for the low, low price of $10.

But it’s only a killer feature if it actually works, and as soon as we heard about it, we were highly skeptical. Modern music is recorded one instrument at a time, but the final version of a song has only two tracks, the left and the right. All of the instruments are clumped together in a single mix, and because guitars, basses, vocals, and drums all occupy some of the same frequencies, it’s difficult for a computer to sort them out into a single rhythm that makes any sense. Nonetheless, we entered our review code to download the game, plugged in a USB hard drive containing all the music we’ve bought in the last decade and a half (114 GB!), and started experimenting.

Rhythm Zone Screenshot

We hate to be hard on a $10 game from an indie developer, but this game’s Steam page promises “a revolution in music gaming,” and the bottom line is that nothing could be further from the truth. Rhythm Zone simply has no ability to track the various riffs and melody lines that make up music, and thus the lines it gives you represent a bizarre hodgepodge of guitar chords, drum hits, and vocal notes. Often, the track you’re supposed to play feels completely disconnected from the song itself.

This was true even when we tried picking songs that would downplay these limitations. For example, Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” is the bonehead-iest of bonehead metal songs: During the verse, the guitar, bass, and vocals all follow the same simple rhythm and melody. Nonetheless, the drum hits kept interfering with the track, robbing us of the opportunity to pretend to play the iconic riff in a realistic fashion. We had the same experience with AC/DC’s “T.N.T.,” a runner-up in the bonehead sweepstakes; the drums and vocals kept creeping into our guitar lines, making everything feel disjointed. And don’t even try a song with riffs and melodies that are less obvious. We’re not even sure how to describe what it did with The Gaslight Anthem’s “Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?” (which is a great song if you’ve never heard it, by the way).

Rhythm Zone Screenshot

Sound-wise, we had no problem with the actual recordings (Rhythm Zone plays files as well as any media player does), but the effects leave something to be desired. Mistakes are met with static and/or the song lowering in volume (you can turn both effects off in the options), and bland chimes tell you when you’re doing a good job. Also, relative to its big-name competitors, Rhythm Zone has rudimentary graphics. While the fretboard looks nice enough, there are no screaming crowds, no Slash or Joe Perry character models, and not even so much as a stage.

Rhythm Zone Screenshot

The controls are fine for the most part. You can use your keyboard to play (by default, ASDF and JKL; play notes, and the space bar gives you “focus power”), and the game is compatible with all of the USB-based guitar peripherals. Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t support strumming; all you have to do is hit the correct button at the correct time to get points for a note. While Rhythm Zone’s failure to create believable tracks kills the immersion factor on its own, the lack of strumming doesn’t help matters.

To be fair, Rhythm Zone does most of the little things right. For example, when it analyzes your track, it locates in the last.fm database and names it, and we had 100 percent success with this feature. It also enables you to send and receive high-score challenges on songs you share in common with other users. Further, the included visualizer works well. Additional visualizers are available as DLC. For the most part, you won’t pay much attention to the various images and patterns that move about in the background, but sometimes they’ll do just the right thing at just the right time. For example, “T.N.T.” speeds up dramatically at the end, and the visualizer emphasized this change by shaking and pumping much more noticeably in time with the music. A little touch like that can help induce an adrenaline rush in the player, and the rock-star fantasy is what these games are all about.

But you need more than a good light show to be a rock star. Games like Guitar Hero are fun because they allow gamers to feel like they’re playing the guitar without actually, you know, learning to play the guitar. To give someone that feeling, developers need to spend the time sorting out each song’s guitar track and assembling a note track that matches. As of now, there’s no way for a computer to take a random song, find the guitars, and create a plausible note track from scratch. Seen purely as a matter of technology, Rhythm Zone might be a useful first step in changing that. But this idea has a long way to go before it poses any threat to the rhythm-game genre’s heavy hitters.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.5 Graphics
They’re rudimentary, but they work, and the visualizer is a nice touch. 3.2 Control
The lack of strum support is a bummer, but the compatibility with USB-based peripherals is nice. 4.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
You pick your own soundtrack, so there are no issues in that department. However, the sound effects are weak. 2.5 Play Value
At $10 it won’t break the bank, and the basic premise is solid, but the bottom line is that the core feature doesn’t work. 2.7 Overall Rating – Average
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.

Review Rating Legend
0.1 – 1.9 = Avoid 2.5 – 2.9 = Average 3.5 – 3.9 = Good 4.5 – 4.9 = Must Buy
2.0 – 2.4 = Poor 3.0 – 3.4 = Fair 4.0 – 4.4 = Great 5.0 = The Best

Game Features:

  • Multiplayer support: Send and receive high-score challenges on songs that you have in common with friends and global players!
  • 50 free songs: The full version comes with fifty free songs from up-and-coming indie artists, and more are added all the time!
  • Play your own music: You can play any of your favorite songs from your library! Rhythm Zone supports a wide variety of file types and will identify most common songs against our database. We dynamically create game data from any song and constantly improve our analysis to help unleash your inner rock star!
  • Online Leaderboards: Compare your scores to those of others in the Rhythm Zone community, and find out who is the best in the world for any song and difficulty level!
  • Achievements: Earn over eighty Steam achievements by playing your music.
  • Visualizers: Dynamic background visualizers that are generated by your music and performance create a unique game experience each time you play. More amazing and exceptional visualizers become available every month!

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