AGAINST VR

AGAINST is a VR combat rhythm game from a Russian studio Joy Way that you might have already heard about because of their earlier VR parkour game Stride. If Stride is a VR version of Mirror Edge then AGAINST would be a combination of Pistol Whip and Beat Saber (even though there seems to be another game with similar concept named Cybrid).

The game currently offers a tutorial and a campaign consisting of 7 levels and credits. It tells a story of Detective John Black trying to track down and defeat an evil scientist Doctor Vice. The story is told in several comic strips between levels which are nice but don't tell a coherent story.

You as Detective Black will will be encountering enemies that will attack you with different weapons - a crowbar, revolver, tommy gun, brass knuckles. Four weapons will also be available to you too - a sword, a revolver, tommy guns and brass knuckles. You will have to touch the weapon in order to equip it and then you can use it to slash, shoot, punch you enemies or deflect bullets.

Sometimes you will also have to avoid attacks. Throughout the levels there will be obstacles you'll have to avoid, either stationary or moving (airplane shooting at you). You might encounter arrows that if you swipe you will move to the side or jump high etc. If you miss these you might be overrun by a car, hit a wall or simply take an alternative route.

Visually the game is beautiful but very different from what I expected. The beta version had a film-noir look which I really enjoyed. The developers decided that this may have not be the best idea so they changed the look considerably. The game is not as dark, is more graphically detailed, smoother, and red. This makes the game not look as violent as it is.

Each level is designed differently, following the story which is nice, and features a final battle or a boss. The levels are 3-5 minutes long and have 3 difficulties - Easy, Normal and Hard.

The game is described as a rhythm game and there is a rhythm game aspect in it. The enemies have to be hit or bullets deflected on time with the music's beat. Unfortunately the levels are not perfectly on sync. In fact it seems that the individual 'notes' are off in each level even which may be due to the fact that each enemy has an animation during which there is the perfect hit window that does not last long. This may be the biggest problem of the game currently and maybe even in the future. This makes creating custom maps way more difficult for mappers that can keep the game alive. There is no possibility to change audio settings currently which is pretty bad for a game of this kind.

Replayability of the game is something to be seen. So far you can finish the game in 35 minutes if you are a player used to playing rhythm games or active VR games. After that you might want to replay to see if you can get better scores and place higher on the leaderboards. Unfortunately the sync is off so this may rather make you want to stop playing the game immediately.

There are custom maps that you can download from https://againstmaps.com/ and beat map editor which you can use to create your maps. The mapping currently is bad since people are trying to figure out what can work. Playing some of the faster songs I realized that this game has some limits. While games like Beat Saber can just throw notes at high density, this game can't due to the rather long animations and size of the enemies. Players will have to find how to be creative to create distinct fun levels and also will have to figure out how to time each 'note' because the animations make it impossible to time them well without finding a correct offset for each of the enemies.

Will this be another forgotten and abandoned game with great concept by this studio or will they keep it alive? Will the community keep the game alive?

Verdict: AGAINST is a game that combines several concepts together and for me that worked pretty well but for many this can also be a reason why not to play the game. Visually it is pleasing, the story is short and nothing awesome but not bad either. The game will make you move with one arm and squat quite a lot which is always nice. The combat part of the game is solid if you welcome variety. Unfortunately as a rhythm game this fails due to the songs not being on sync. Games like this aren't often played by players as they cannot stand that. So far the same is true for custom songs but this may change in the future. If you are someone who can't stand offsync games with no possibility to change offset I don't recommend this game.

Otherwise it is a great experience, even though a playthrough takes 35 minutes.

More work needs to be done on the game. Visibility, sound effects and indicators should be improved apart from what I mentioned. Also a mirror modifier would come handy for those left-handed players like me. Also I played the game with knuckles controllers and the settings for the controller are wrong so it's quite a pain to play the game with these controllers.

Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)

Blind

Blind is an adventure puzzle game with a dark story and unique concept.

You are Jean, driving your little brother somewhere. A man appears in front of you and you crash into a tree. You wake up in a unknown but familiar mansion. You open your eyes but find out that you can't see. After a while a voice guides you to a main room where you learn that in order to escape the mansion you have to solve all the puzzles it contains. As you progress you will realize that things are not as real as they seem to be at first and you will slowly realize what is going on.

Walking around the mansion can be a bit frustrating to those used to see all the time. If you stop and stand still, everything around you will turn dark (unless it makes sound). In order to 'see' you need to produce sound be it with objects you find or with a cane you get later on. Each sound produced will temporarily show you a certain part of an area around you depending on how strong the sound was. You will be allowed to explore the mansion and solve all kinds of different puzzles. Even though you are supposedly blind, the puzzles are often visual and do not use sound much even though one of the earlier puzzles is to put together a song. The puzzles are not difficult nor too easy. The thing is, you have to follow the instructions given to you. If you miss the hints you will have to figure it out on your own and the puzzles don't have the most logical solution. All you need to do is pay attention to your surroundings and to what you hear. If you do that you won't have problems finishing the game.

The whole game is played in the dark - the graphics being done in black and white. The louder sound you produce the whiter will be what you see. Too loud of a sound can make you go blind for a second. Light touches will illuminate just a very small area so you will need to figure out how much sound is needed to illuminate what you need to see. It's nothing beautiful to look at but works well to immerse you in 'darkness'. Since you can hear sounds from the inside of objects you are also capable to see cogs and wheel and tubes in the walls which is really nice.

The sound effects are great. The cane produces different sounds depending on what you tap with it. The sound can be sharp if you hit something metallic or stone and will be a muffled thud if you hit a carpet or something else that is soft. Other sound effects are good and can be used to orient yourself in the dark (on the other hand you will also see what produces the sound). Soundtrack is created from one beautiful song you will here in the credits. Voice acting is something I did not like at all and I think it could have been done better.

Verdict:
I would recommend the game to anyone looking for a narrative driven adventure game with exploration and puzzles. The game requires thus a bit of patience. The experience of using echolocation to walk around may be stressful to some. It is a unique experience though and I think it is worth exploring it. I orient myself by sound in real life and I had a totally different experience when playing the game. Honestly the idea of throwing objects on the ground to 'see' did not even come to my mind at all and I had no problem walking around without the cane. Everything you need to see can be heard or actually seen. So if you get stuck just stand still and listen/look around.

I would not recommend the game to people who are impatient and are used to quality of life features and games with good controls and stuff actually working as they should.

パラパラ Spiderman

Not so long time ago I started recording Para Para videos again. This time around though I dance in VR. Today I was having some fun recording Spiderman. Enjoy!

There are more videos on my new Youtube Channel and there is even a Para Para playlist.

Beat Saber

If I say 'light saber' many people will imagine a sword with energy beam blade from Star Wars. Many of us at least once wished to wield this weapon and just slash around with it in the dark. Well, now thanks to Beat Games you can.

Beat Saber is a VR rhythm game. You'll be standing in a rather dark place, color blocks will fly towards you and you will be cutting them in half with your virtual light sabers in time with music and spectacular lighting effects. Notes, the flying blocks, are blue or red and come from one position of a 12 square grid. Depending on the color you have to either use your left (red) or right saber (blue) to cut them. The notes also have directional arrows (8 possible directions) on them and that's how you have to slash through them.

While you are supposed to hit the notes on beat it's not actually what the game is about if you want to get a good score. The thing that makes Beat Saber more fun and more challenging is the fact that your slashes are not evaluated on the timing but rather how well you cut the block. Your swing has to be quite big before reaching the block and after you cut it in half. How close to the center you hit is also evaluated. You get a certain score for that and if you don't miss any notes you will start getting a score multiplier that goes up to 8. When you miss it resets. Each miss or a bad cut (when blue saber hits a red note or cuts the correct note in a wrong direction) will cost you life or some kind of energy that you can see in front of you under the flying notes area. When this bar reaches 0 you fail the song.

There are also modifiers in game that you can use to tweak the game play. The ones that will make the game harder will get you a higher score multiplier. For example playing with Faster Song and Disappearing arrows would give you a 0.15 additional multiplier (1.15x thus). Modifiers that make the game easier will give you less points per cut but can make it more enjoyable to play - for example you can turn off obstacles, or turn fail off.

Apart from notes there are obstacles in the game. Those are walls that sometimes you need to avoid as they will come right at you. You just step aside (move your head) or crouch. There are also bombs, spiky mines that you need to avoid with your sabers. Hitting either of these obstacles will break the combo so it is better to avoid them (actually it probably takes some of your life as well). These are mostly decorative thought and not many maps use these in a way that would make you move well with the exception of FitBeat in the original game. As for custom songs there is a mapper named Alice who makes good wall maps (see Oyasumi video below).

Hitting flying blocks in general is very easy. We all can do it. Concentrating on hitting them correctly and in the correct direction is not that easy and needs to be learned. Beat Saber has a nice learning curve. The learning curve in this game even on the official songs is good though so in the long run this game is more beginner friendly than other rhythm games (that are though often way better for initial experience).

The music is often important for those that play rhythm games and here we have a variety of music if we count all the DLCs. The base game contains mostly songs by Jaroslav Beck. There are some extras which may be songs you know already like Crab Rave, Pop/Stars or Angel Voices. For free you also get a whole Camellia song pack which I personally find great but it's also clearly the odd pack out of all the base songs. He's mostly known for hardcore and speedcore songs which may not be to everyone's taste.

Currently there are these DLCs released in this order Monstercat, Imagine Dragons, Panic! At the Disco, Monstercat X Rocket League, Green Day, Timbaland, Linkin Park, BTS, Interscope Mixtape, Skrillex, Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga. It looks like Beat Games and Facebook is providing the mass player base their favorite artists. I'm not into this kind of music even though Panic! At the Disco was a new discovery for me which I enjoy and Interscope Mixtape contains good oldies.

As for mapping, it was mainly done by one mapper who breathed life into Beat Saber and we can thank him for that. It is not an easy task to come up with a way how to make good, different and fun maps using 12 possible positions of blocks. Rhythm games were around for years though and many of those playing them figured out what they like in their maps. Nothing of that could be found in Beat Saber in the early days but that slowly changed as the community took over and figured out what works in Beat Saber. Anyway back to the official content. The oldest content is very bad. The first two DLCs while still really bad have shown some kind of a good progress. The following three DLCs got slightly better and I found some maps there that I enjoyed. Timbaland is a DLC I would not recommend to anyone. Linkin Park is where it got better. BTS has some really good maps. Interscope Mixtape is a wild, wild west but has a lot of good stuff going on. It looks like mappers tried to see what people can withstand in terms of patterns. Skrillex is more coherent and compact. The last two DLCs look good. I believe the DLCs will only get better in terms of mapping since more good mappers joined the team.

Compared to other rhythm games this game doesn't offer much of a good free content. There are several very good songs (OST4 and Spooky Beat) but otherwise the content is pretty bad. DLCs are currently mostly bad but with each new DLC there will be good content.

Beat Saber offers different modes of play. The most common one is Solo - a single player standard mode where you use two sabers. Some maps have one saber maps or 90 or 360 degrees maps. 360 degree maps are great but unfortunately no one focused on them long enough and we lack good maps. There is also a campaign mode which is more of a tutorial and information on how to play the game rather than something meant to be challenging. From 1.12 there is a multiplayer which you can either play in a private lobby with friends or join a public lobby. For some this may be the best way to enjoy the game.

The game has a big modding community and mappers who create lot of mods and custom songs which makes Beat Saber a really great game since the base game is rather lacking in some aspects. There exists Scoresaber, the biggest leaderboard for custom songs. There are ranked custom songs that will earn you certain amount of performance points based on some criteria and this way you can also try to reach the top of your country's leaderboard or the world one. The mods can do many things from searching and downloading songs, getting it ready for streaming, being able to play modded maps, showing all kinds of stats, using custom avatars or sabers, new game modes etc. People are very creative and I'm sure you will discover a good combination of mods to make the game very enjoyable for you.

Verdict: There is something Beat Saber excels at - it has very good mechanics and score system. The base game content (even with DLCs) though is rather subpar. If you are looking for a game to be played as is without you modding it, where you will pay once and get good content than this is not the game to buy. If you plan on modding the game and playing custom songs, a whole new world will open up for you, a world where you will surely find something you will like. There's many bad maps but also ones that are very good and also look spectacular. Scoresaber makes it a good game even for competitive players because the ranked songs will certainly challenge you at some point. Ranked songs also get better and better in terms of mapping. After all Beat Saber has the biggest community that makes the game great. I would recommend Beat Saber to players who want to get more invested in the game and are willing to mod it. Those that are looking for a good casual experience from time to time or a game they can show to new players I'd advise to buy a different game.

Thanks for reading

Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)

Muse Dash

Since rhythm games first emerged in late 90s many games were produced for different platforms. With the rise of mobile devices using a touch screen this game genre got even more popular. Finding a good rhythm game became harder and in order for a rhythm game to be good it has to stand out even more than in the earlier days. Muse Dash is one of those games that stands out with its art style, catchy tunes and simple but great game play.

Muse Dash developed and published by PeroPeroGames is a side scrolling rhythm game which makes you press two buttons or tap the screen at two different places in time with the music's beat. On your screen you'll see one of your chosen characters running, attacking enemies and avoiding obstacles. The enemies and obstacles, the notes following rhythm of the song, come at her in two lanes. In order to attack or avoid these you have to press one or the other button in time. You can map those yourself, but the default for keyboard is D, F for ground level and J, K for the upper level. Apart from notes that you simply hit, there are also sheet notes that you have to hold and (mini)bosses that require you to punch them many times in a very short time. The character has hit points. Whenever you run into an enemy or an obstacle the character will lose some life and points. Sometimes, in a chart, you'll see a heart. If you run through it you will regain some life and gain extra points.

The game is very simple but the very lively graphics and animations make it a great playing experience. On the other hand, sometimes this can be difficult to read. Some notes will come from unlikely places and won't correspond to the blue/pink color the regular notes have. While this may be a bit of a challenge to sight-read it is very satisfying to hit all the enemies.

There is over 50 default songs that you can unlock. After each stage you will gain some experience. With each level at first you will unlock one song. At higher levels it will take longer. Leveling up will also give you more items that you can use to get more sexy girls and cute support animals. Each of the characters and elfins have certain abilities that can either help you survive songs or get higher scores etc. So you can find a combination that suits your playstyle, skill or current motivation you have for playing (getting full combos or getting the highest score etc.).

Getting the highest score possible will depend on your ability to use a special feature in the game named Fever. While under Fever score received will be higher. Finding the best moment to use Fever in a song will lead you to getting higher score, considering that you can full combo the song already.

For Asian rhythm game players the music won't be anything new. I can name a few, from my favorites creating nice chill instrumental tracks like M2U, a_hisa, Ayatsugu_otowa to pop songs with vocals to very well known artists like Camellia, REDALiCE, t+pazolite, USAO which are known for their hardcore music. While it may not seem from my examples, the music in the game is very diverse and I honestly think that anyone can find something they will like.

As in many rhythm games, the songs have different difficulties - Easy, Hard and Master. Master difficulty needs to be unlocked and as in other Asian games you need to get an S on the easier difficulty (in this case Hard). That means getting 90% accuracy or higher. See each enemy hit is judged either by Perfect, Great if you are a bit too early or late and Miss if you miss the note. Obstacles can be missed (usually meaning you run into them and take damage) or passed (jumped over).

The game has leaderboards, that are filled with people who got 100% accuracy and even the highest score. There are also many achievements that are either song based or just game based. There is so many of them that you will most likely get some each time you play. It adds to the replayability of the game or the songs themselves.

The scores are transferable from mobile to PC and vice versa, but the DLCs you have to buy for each platform. The 'you get everything' DLC for Muse Dash costs 30 EUR. It is definitely worth all the money. The base game itself is very cheap - 3.49 EUR - and for that price offers hours and hours of fun.

If by a chance side scrolling feels odd to you, you can always turn the monitor sideways!

Verdict:
Muse Dash is a very cute looking, lewd and nicely done casual rhythm game. Game play is very simple but that also makes it great for beginners and casual players that just want to enjoy an easy game. The aesthetics of the game and animations make playing the game a great experience and make you want to come back and simply play more. The replayability is also helped by many achievements and special abilities by your character and its elfin. The music is diverse and the charts feel fun and not too straining for your fingers. In overall this a very solid and cheap game no matter if you play it on mobile, Switch or PC.

Ren