AUDICA: Rhythm Shooter

it feels a bit off-beat and is sadly abandonded by the devs, ill refund this. Otherwise i loved the idea and had some fun while playing. but i don't think the overall package is worth it.

Do you remember the mouse-click open-source rhythm game Osu!, perhaps? This is Osu!, but played with guns. In VR. In fact, it's so much like Osu! that someone went and made an automated converter that turns Osu! files into beatmaps for Audica. Yes, really. That means that you can play almost any of the absurd number of songs people went and made Osu! beatmaps for, in this game, in addition to ones people made just for this game. (Just be aware that most of them will be a lot harder here.) Generally, it's great, though for some reason playing it seems to routinely give me a headache after a bit. Not sure what that's about. I highly recommend picking up fan-made custom songs and mods for the game, to make your experience that much better. Meanwhile, if you made it this far and are still wondering what Osu! is, don't worry your pretty little head. Just shoot the beats with your VR laser guns to the rhythm and have fun. Since I generally feel obligated to call out particular audiences I feel won't appreciate games I review, I will say that if you're not a fan of rhythm games, I hope you'd know by now that this game won't be for you. Aside from that... uhh... maybe if you have really bad coordination? The game is very simplistic at its core, so there's not a lot to hate. I guess if you really despise techno/EDM you might not be thrilled with the lineup it comes with--but again, there's a ton out there you can add to it, so that shouldn't have to stop you.

I am a 45 yo father, probably one of the oldest people playing this game. I am a single father to my Son, who is 14 now. My son got this game from his uncle, so we installed it on his computer and he started playing. By the end of the week he had 24 hours on this game. This was horrible for me, as it was already hard for me to find ways to spend time with my son, as he is always out with his friends or just watching YouTube. So I decided to make a Steam account and get this game to see if I could maybe play alongside him. I loaded into the game, picked my character and world and started playing but I was stuck on what you where supposed to do. I asked my Son for help and he hosted a game for me to join. I loved it as it was the best time I had spent with my Son since my wife had died. This game has ever since brought me and my son closer again and now we actually spend time together outside the house together as well. This game reminded me that there's fun to be had in everything, and it has brought both me and my Son many happy memories.

Let's start with the positive. When you get reasonably good, this game is immensely satisfying to play. It has a very steep learning curve though, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. So when you start out, expect a slow path to expert. Unfortunately, having prior experience in other shooting (rhythm) games doesn't help at all. This one is the hardest to read of any rhythm game I've played. Especially at higher difficulties there is so much visual information coming at you that you spend most of your practice learning how to decode it. But, it's just a matter of time and everybody can get there with enough practice. The game made a few odd choice though. One of the weird ones is that it makes the screen deep red and bloom-y when you're almost dying, which is so hard on the eyes that it is more of a deathblow. It feels more mean than useful because it only affects those that are still learning. Even worse is the UI, which is filled with unnecessary extra windows and baffling layout choices. Where the above issues are more side problem, the OST is a much bigger one. For the most part it's pretty bad. And while you can write that off as personal taste, the mapping of the songs is not much better. Especially at higher difficulties, most of the maps fall somewhere between dull and awkward. All in all, I got no satisfaction from playing the OST and gave up on it pretty quickly. That leaves the biggest problem. The game is abandoned and the devs are nowhere to be found. Except for some weird update earlier this year. No changelog, no word. The only effect: the leaderboards died. After a I did some googling and found out that the devs now required you to link both an Epic and Steam account on their website to get access to the leaderboard. Yes, linking the account of a store that does not support VR. I guess Epic is not beyond filthy tactics and have no reservations about using the companies they own to expand their user base. This alone is pretty bad, but not mentioning this change anywhere is pretty disgusting and is pretty much the biggest sign of disrespect they could have shown to their customers. For this alone, it is impossible to recommend this game. But, since I still play it a lot, I'll end it on a positive. The Audica community gets a big fat thumbs up! The fixed many issues with the game through mods and community mappers do awesome work. They are the people who keep this game alive and they are the reason why it's worth playing. Whether that is enough to pay full price to these devs (it hasn't been discounted in ages), is something people will have to decide for themselves.

It's 2026 and AUDICA is still a fun rhythm game, regardless of the fact that Harmonix [still love Amplitude & RB!] abandoned it since they got bought by Epic. I remember hating the beta, because the mapping and feel of the game was just frustrating, but all that was fixed in the 2019 release. When you're done with all the stock songs, be sure to download some customs [including mods, of course]; and perhaps look into their never completed Chroma game as the design choices were from there.

If you like rhythm games like Osu and got VR you should pick this one up.

higher learning floor than basically other VR rhythm game but as such feels incredible to play once it's learned properly. caveat: leaderboards don't function, not even with epic account link, and probably no chance official ones will come back up since epic killed harmonix. hasn't gone on sale for years so just get it at the base price, it's worth it also: insanely well-optimized. one of the few games that my index runs at 144hz, and i can feel the difference.

If you like rhythm games, you'll probably like this. It's like beat saber, but shooting. It's made by Harmonix, who made Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and most importantly Frequency and Amplitude. My point? It's made by people who know rhythm games. The beats/timing feel on point, and to me it's fun to have a different music game than Beat Saber or Ragnarock (which are both also awesome but in a different way). Plus there's mod support, so you can get or make your own songs (google for maudica). Buy it, or don't. I'm not your mom, but I think if you watch a quick clip of this game, you'll instantly know if you'll like it or not.

I might not play this as much as beat saber or pistol whip, but it still holds a very special place in my heart. I grew up playing the rock band games so I was elated to hear that harmonix was making a VR game and they delivered wonderfully. The game has a decent selection of songs, some DLC songs, and you can mod in songs so there is a lot of replayability. Itll take you a while before you are playing expert level songs as the game does have a bit of a learning curve but I didnt find it too challenging. The one gripe I have with the game is right before they decided to stop development, they went the beat saber route and started adding super popular songs to buy instead of ones that would actually flow with the game well. Still they did add plenty of free songs that are really good and then you can just mod in whatever you want. 100% would buy again.

One of the best VR rythm shooter games. Sadly the developers left the game and are no longer updating and adding more music packs & content. Modding is still available and the game itself is really good!