Strategyking92

User Score
8.0

Presentation - 7.5
Gameplay - 7.0
Value - 10

Beats was a very easy purchase for me. For one, it is a PSP game that turns any songs you have on your Memory stick into playable form, such as something like Guitar Hero. Beats has a lot of features for such a cheap package (it's only $5). To reflect your own personal music taste, the start menu's music and background video can be changed to a style that suites you. These include: Funk, Pop, Rock, Urban (which is rap) and a few others such as flash and wave.  

The main game is in the ‘my music challenge' mode, which are the mp3s on your PSP. Now, I say mp3s because Beats only uses mp3s. So if you are one of the unfortunate people to have your music in Sony's ill-fated ATRAC format (like me), or any other format, you won't be able to play those songs unless you put those songs on your PSP again in the mp3 format. For the vast majority of people, this will be no problem though, and is only a minor quibble

The game does an admirable job of making your music playable. I mean, it does what it is supposed to. I have noticed some little, really minor things though. Such as that some of the songs skip right before a high intensity part of the song, during a lull in a song, some beats get generated out of nowhere, and finally, that there is a minor slowdown when the effects on the screen get a little crazy.

Describing the game play is very easy. For the novice difficulty, all you do is hit the buttons- or notes, which show on the screen, when they get to the middle of the screen. On normal, hard, and extreme modes, it is the same, except they add two more hit locations beside horizontal to the middle one. Switching between the hit locations is only just a thumb movement. This makes game play as smooth and simple as you can get. But, if you find any part of the game confusing, you can use any of the in-game tutorials.

Besides the main mode, there is also a mode where you can create your own music from pre-made tracks, called ‘jamming'. I don't think it is very intuitive, and the selection of tracks is short, but it's there, for those who are interested. There online modes for the custom tracks you make in the ‘jamming' mode, but the beats community never really took off from what I understand, and this is best enjoyed when you can get a friend online to play with.

You can't really fail a song so the challenge in the game mainly comes from yourself. There is a top twenty high score table for each of the difficulties, and soon enough you'll find out that the longer and more active/lively a song is, the better chance it will have at being in the top twenty. Of course, this is assuming you can keep hitting notes and making your combo score higher. I have actually stayed on the ‘hard' mode where I can rack up chains of 100-200 in each song with no problem. The game gives you a bonus for your longest chain of hit notes, so if your longest is 109, it will tack a 109x100 to your final score. The amount of notes you hit perfectly are also tracked.

A little bit of strategy is also added in the use of a point multiplier which becomes available after you hit an amount of glowing notes. Now, you might be wondering why it takes a little bit skill to use. Once activated, the screen starts to glow, sparkle, or light up. It all depends on what your in game visualizer is, which there are over seventy to choose from. Some can be distracting, others are less so. Other than the screen effects, the notes come in a little messy, is what I guess you would call it. So If you activate your point multiplier right before a really hard part of a song, you may lose your note chain. But, if you activate it during a lull, you won't get a lot from your multiplier, but you have a better chance of keeping your note chain.

Like I've said before, Beats does a great job at turning your music into something that you can play. It's for you to decide if you like ‘playing' your music though, as I know some people listen to escape from everything, to relax. Beats will make you concentrate, but for when you are bored, you won't regret it. All of the extras, such as online sharing and ‘jamming' mode are appreciated, even if they didn't turn out as well as they should have. The game is a steal and one of the better games available on PSN for PSP owners.

 8.0