I love Audiosurf, want to get fit, and have a passionate hatred towards orbs - this is excellent! :D
This feels like swimming through your music, punching evil jellyfishes in bass-fueled FURY, it is wonderful! :D
Like with Audiosurf, to have the most fun, you have to take the time to git gud (that's a good thing), and all the way from starting out at Normal (easy) to becoming 'one with the game', and shredding the craziest patterns on Elite, this is a proper sport! You WILL get soaked in sweat, and you WILL feel ALIVE!
Who knew the best motivator to exercise was video games!? :D
(video on Steam shows 'medium' difficulty by the way, it gets way more intense!)
[h2]Important technical tips[/h2]
[b]Sync[/b]
Oddly, "Audioshield (literally) puts YOU (fail) at the point of impact", NOT your shields (win) - this is why some people complain about music sync being 'off' - the game doesn't account for you extending your arms (wtf).
The solution here is very simple: You can effectively adjust the sync by standing ahead or behind the foot markings on the floor.
Standing just behind the marking, with my toes almost touching the marked heels is what works best for me - the orbs become perfectly synced with the moves, awesome! :D
[b]Orb height[/b]
Audioshield calibrates to your height just after the level loading screen, or when you pause-unpause! If you get orbs uncomfortably low, it's probably because you leaned down to scratch your leg at the wrong moment - pause-unpause while standing tall to fix it!
[b]Level generation[/b]
The orbs may be synced to a different instrument than you expect - adequate(-ly tuned) audio equipment and higher volume will quickly make it obvious. It'll sync to vocals too, which actually works surprisingly well!
[h2]Concept & main gameplay: 10/10![/h2]
I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love this game! It is wonderful fun, AND keeps you feeling alive, blood pumping! Never regretted getting out of the chair and putting on the old Vive for this!
[h2]The 'supporting elements': 6/10[/h2]
There is nothing game-breakingly wrong here, however, here's a little wishlist of improvements:
[list]
[*][b]Song browser menu SUCKS![/b] (it's the same as Audiosurf 2)
I have a folder of ~250 songs, and I refuse to add navigational steps by organizing them into folders - a huge alphabetical list works great for me everywhere but here! The song entries are huge, all unnecessarily showing the song's cover art (which lags the game to load), AND there's no scroll handle, so you're stuck scrolling up/down at a pace much slower than what you could do otherwise.
This is a lot of text for something relatively minor, but man, I HATE UI which cannot keep up with my intentions!
[*][b]Dead time between the action[/b]
Sure, you need a little moment to get into position after clicking 'Start', and the first orbs arriving, but nowhere near as much as the game gives you. After the song ends, too - sure, it's nice to get a little extra moment in-world, rather than jumping to the leaderboard immediately after the last note, but it hangs on just a little too long.
I understand why some may prefer these timings the way they are, but this should be adjustable in the settings.
Really it's not too-too bad, and the game does at least load quickly!
Another way to reduce overall 'dead time' would of course be to improve the song browser, but besides that, I'd love to see these simple additions immediately to the leaderboard section, the following options: 'Play next song in folder', 'Play (randomly selected song)', and 'Re-roll random song'.
The random selection stuff would help with moments of indecision, too :)
[*][b]Leaderboards[/b]
I'd like to see results from other modes on the leaderboards - I wouldn't mind downgrading difficulty level, or switching to/from fitness mode, if it meant I had someone to play against for an obscure (or new) song, if only there was a way to know!
Playing obscure music in a relatively obscure game, on kinda obscure hardware, finding people on boards needs all the help it can get! (Still, more-popular music is surprisingly well populated with results!).
A possible solution would be to show results from all 3 main difficulty levels on one board, but base the order on an extra number - a 'difficulty-adjusted combined score', where you'd get 100k knocked off the score for every level below Elite. This could be an option for all boards, or could be automatically applied to all songs with only a few results total.
To avoid making things too messy, mode icons could be displayed (optionally instead of avatars), or entry backgrounds/text could be color-coded.
It would also be nice to see timestamps of peoples' results! In Audiosurf (1), it is very satisfying to beat long-standing records, and it's great to see recent competition popping up! Would be nice to have that here, too!
[*][b]Height calibration[/b]
This is kinda minor, but I'm not a fan of making sure to stand tall at the right time every time the game loads. An option to permanently set your height would be nice - just add a dedicated 'set height' button to the intro screen/pause menu, and it'll all be great!
Sure, it's more 'seamless' to have it adjusted without the user knowing at all, but I see this automation causing more trouble than it's worth.
[*][b]Steam features[/b]
Steam achievements are a lot of fun, but the game has none! I'd love some overarching goals besides dominating all the leaderboards!
Steam Workshop! Audioshield is just as moddable as Audiosurf 2 (very!), and I really don't understand why there's no Steam Workshop support! Personally, I'm not super keen on segmenting the leaderboards with modes even more, but still, I'm sure there are people with very creative gameplay ideas, just no good place to share them!
I'd also love to see some custom skins for this! The base game has a good selection of them, but I'd love to see more, especially with interesting dynamic elements!
Coming from Audiosurf, one thing I'm missing here is the sense of environmental exploration - it was very interesting to see what track shapes the game came up with. Dancing in place instead of riding a vehicle, you understandably lose this element, but I'm sure custom skins could bring some of that magic back in one way or another! :)
[*][b]Better fitness mode[/b]
Fitness mode can work great, but only one extra move (ducking) gets repetitive. More interesting stuff could be done!
Jumping, leaning side-to-side, perhaps something to avoid with your hands (but ok to touch with head). Hell, perhaps move/rotate the fighting position itself and make the user change position entirely - make some use of bigger playspaces!
Regarding how things currently are, my biggest gripe with fitness mode is how calmer songs can force you to basically sit on the floor for a while. It's just awkward.
[/list]
[h2]In the end[/h2]
Sure, I talked mostly about what could be improved, and how to make the most of the game, but rest assured, Audioshield is totally AWESOME!
I just cannot come up with more combinations of words to describe the sheer fun of playing this thing! :D
Don't buy it on sale, buy it for full price, the raw entertainment here is absolutely worth it, and the dev deserves it, alongside the encouragement to polish this solid 9/10 game over the edge to 10/10!
By the way, if you're reading this and don't own VR kit, I'd say that this game alone makes it worth getting your hands on! You can get an original Vive (full kit) used for $100-$200 now, and Audioshield runs great even on hardware below minimum VR spec (FX-6300@4.7, Fury X, Windows 7 here).
