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Review: Vibes
Posted by Brad T on July 18th, 2010 | 4 Comments | Tags: Laughing Jackal , Minis , review , Vibes
Developer: Laughing Jackal
Publisher: Laughing Jackal
US Release Date: June 07th 2010
Availability:
Price: $5.49 | £3.99 | €4.99 | HK$ 37.00
ESRB Rating: E10+
What I Liked:
- Catchy tunes
- Easy to pick up gameplay
- Crazy visuals
What I Disliked:
- Beat didn’t always seem dead on
- A little on the pricey side
In a world of rhythm games, how does Vibes fare? To compare it to other rhythm games, Vibes really reminds me of Elite Beat Agents, just minus the touchscreen. You control the central arrow, as seen in the screens. As each song plays, colored icons corresponding to face buttons on the controller fly towards you. Point toward the icon with the arrow and hit that button. Hit it in time with the tune to score combos, keep your health alive, and shoot for high scores. A pretty simple concept, but it makes for quite an engaging experience. I played it on a PS3 controller and enjoyed it, but Chris K wanted me to note that his hand cramped-up after awhile when played with the PSP’s nub analog stick.
The game looks great for a mini. It has numerous 3D backgrounds that are all trippy and are usually pretty funny too. The sumo wrestler and rubber duck backgrounds were my favorite. One problem I found with them was that sometimes the background color would match the very color of the icon on screen flying towards you. I also found that sometimes the animations just didn’t stick with the tunes playing, and the vibrations of the background caused me to get off beat from the song.
Vibes has a play-list of 13 tunes. They’re most likely not from artists you will recognize, but for only 13 songs, they are a real variety and I enjoyed the majority of them. “Hello” by Fake Elegance was probably my favorite track. Yeah, euro-pop, don’t judge. Each song has 3 difficulty levels a la DDR. You start out with a couple songs unlocked on easy and you’re free to go from there. As you get more high scores and clear more difficulties you unlock new songs and difficulties. I found some of the higher difficulties harder, (duh) but also found that sometimes the beats didn’t always match up with the notes I had to play. This would take out my combo and I would get a bit flustered. This is the only problem I had with this game. If you’ve got the music in your bones, pick this one up for sure… and here’s hoping for a couple installments of this game, with some tweaking this could be a must have.
Click Here to purchase Vibes from Amazon.com