Audica

Harmonix is a studio you probably heard of already, which can't be said about most VR games studios. Harmonix is known for games like Amplitude, Rock Band, and Dance Central. All these games are rhythm games that became popular, and we even got a VR version of Rock Band and Dance Central. When Beat Saber, the first VR rhythm game, was still the hype, Harmonix released their new VR game named Audica (2019), but it may have been shadowed by the lightning saber slashing game.

Audica is a rhythm game that will make you shoot color-coded notes in time with the music. This may sound simple, but in practice, it is more complex. You will be standing in the middle of a beautiful environment in outer space. In front of you (or around), a colored vortex will appear quickly, turning into one of several types of notes represented by a white symbol. Also, depending on the type of note, a shape will appear around that note. It will quickly shrink, eventually becoming one with the note itself - that is the time you have to shoot the note to get a perfect score. Apart from normal notes, there are sustain notes that you have to hold the trigger, chain notes that you have to keep and follow the chain and slot notes that require you to hold your weapon horizontally or vertically. There are also melee notes that you have to hit with the blades attached to your in-game weapons.

The game's learning curve is steeper than any other VR rhythm game I played. Even though in VR, many things are simplified to make it easier and more fun for the player, Audica requires different skills to even play this game, which is why it may be challenging to get into Audica at first. If you haven't acquired these skills in other games, you might struggle at first since you will have to learn one, two, or all skills required. Shooting games often have some kind of aim assist that makes it easier to hit (they provide more giant hitboxes, even if you miss what you actually see, the hitbox may still be hit and counted, thus confirming the note). As for the other aspect, timing, the games usually provide a wider window for you to confirm the note or use a different way of judging. The most challenging skill you will need to learn is reading, which can take some time.

Audica offers 4 different difficulties and campaigns that will take you through the songs, from the easiest to the most difficult ones. The campaign will require you to get a certain amount of stars in each section before you can advance. Some of the songs have modifiers, making them harder to pass or more fun, but you may skip a song if you do very well on the other songs.

Audica judges your precision in two aspects - aim and timing - and you will be able to see more information about that on the result screen. A scoring system awards you a base score + another score depending on how accurate you were up to 2000 for a single note. Each song has thus a different maximum score. If you keep a streak after every ten notes, your score for a note gets multiplied by 2x, later by 3x, and if you still keep the combo going by 4x. Whenever you miss a note, the multiplier goes down by 1, which is unique to rhythm games as they usually reset.

The game features leaderboards, a single one per song (and also total one). The highest score gets shown there no matter the difficulty. You may not do that well on Expert, which can give you a maximum score, but if you get a nice full combo on Advanced, this score can be higher than the Expert one and will be shown on the leaderboard. This is another feature that makes the game more friendly to the players.

The music in Audica is relatively varied, offering 33 songs plus an additional 4 songs - album versions. You can buy several DLCs, but even if you don't, you can play way more songs in the form of custom songs. You can play this game for hundreds of hours! The game has a lovely community of people that create assets for the game and maps. The maps are enjoyable to play but will require a higher level of play than what is necessary for the vanilla game (not counting Highway to Oblivion on Expert, which happens to be a fierce song and closest to Expert custom song levels). After beating the campaign on Expert, you may find out that your skill still needs to improve to play customs.

The mapping in the vanilla game is good from my point of view as a beginner, but after playing some custom songs, I can see the potential of custom maps - there are great ideas people incorporate into their maps, and they will make you stare at the notes in awe.

An Osu! to Audica converter also exists, which is not actually bad, but you have to pick certain specific maps to convert to get the best experience. Players can find the best maps from around five star songs, but those will become more significant difficult than what can be seen in the vanilla game. Some of these maps provide a good shooting exercise as the songs have higher note density than Audica maps.

This is the only game that made me go 'wow.' The open space, particles, animation, and effects are great. The UI feels bland compared to it, but it works.

Verdict: Audica is a unique rhythm shooter game in VR. It is a fully finished and polished game designed to be fun for casual and competitive players. It can remind you of Osu! in VR, and the ability to play Osu! will actually help you get better way faster. While the game's learning curve is steep for those not invested in rhythm games, the developers made sure to make the game as friendly as possible. Aspects such as user-friendly timing windows, aim assist, maps getting progressively more complex, well-done campaign, leaderboards, settings to help you read well, etc. It has a friendly and active modding community that keeps the game alive, so there is a lot of content worth the money Audica costs. I can highly recommend this game to anyone who is not afraid of learning or hitting a wall in a game.

Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)