This just popped up on iTunes - I am intrigued. Anyone check this out? I’m travelling today, so I might just pick it up for the plane.
Article here:
I’m going to try it tonight for sure.
If only my battery lasted longer than ten minutes with back lighting on.
this needs to be on the iPhone.
I just tried to buy it - iTunes says it’s not available yet! Damn.
I bought and played it. Quite fun, although the relationship between the stages it creates and the actual song rhythm varies from very close to rather tenuous. When it works though, it’s really cool. Songs with a strong beat seem to turn out better than guitar marathons.
The only downside is that you have to drag the songs you want to use to a special playlist, which iTunes then processes - you can’t just instantly play anything in your iPod library. The process seems to be quite CPU intensive.
I have had this for a few days now. This game is fucking awesome. If you have a compatible iPod, you NEED to check this out. It is the best $5 I’ve ever spent on a game.
I had been wondering what they would’ve called the next game in the series. “Timbre” was the only name that came to mind, and it would’ve been pretty weak.
I’ve also had it for a few days and am enjoying it. The caveats should probably be: (1) I suck at most rhythm games; (2) I never owned an Xbox so never had the joy of having my own soundtrack playing to a game; and (3) I’ve been retired from playing console games for about five months now and have only (lightly) played stuff on Gametap since.
As daedalus3 points out, the price is certainly right on this game. The scrolling graphics have a joyous, clean cartoonish look to them that add immeasurably to the game’s atmosphere w/o being distracting. And when the right tune and the right screen come together and the rhythm seems to synch up, it’s great fun.
My complaints, such as they are? The medium setting is a breeze for me but the hard setting is still a bit too hard (but see caveat 1 above). I worry how so much repetitive impact on the clickwheel positions may affect future use. And unless the game unlocks new tracks as you do better, you can pretty much see everything in the game in an afternoon.
But until the Ipod gets an RPG lite game where you play a Bard wooing various princesses with songs from your playlist and engaging in some red-hot clickwheel action, Phase’ll be the Ipod game to beat for some time to come.
Umm, you know you can add your own music to the soundtrack, right? I don’t know how big your iTunes library is, but it’s going to take me a lot longer than an afternoon to get through a fraction of the content I could add.
I actually like the game much better on Expert, which unlocks after you finish a Marathon run on Hard. The game sticks much closer to the beats on that level. I’m now trying to unlock Insane.
Sorry, I was inexact in my language. I meant “tracks” in the sense of “race tracks” or locations, not in the sense of “muscial tracks.” I’ve got enough music to add to the game to keep playing it for years (I keep adding tracks to the Phase playlist every time I have Itunes open), but the thrill of playing a rudimentary rhythm game to my favorite artists isn’t really that far from playing a video game while listening to my favorite artists on my soundsystem.
Generally, I prefer the reward of seeing new graphics and new features to that of making the same levels harder. But I admit that’s because I’m a lazy wuss.