I've never really been all that into music, as strange as that is, so when it came to playing Audiosurf, i was turned off to the idea of music being incorporated into a game. I'm don't like Rockband, Guitar Hero and similar games and never will. But lo and behold, a Steam sale caught my eye and i couldn't resist, since i have been hearing good things about it since it's release back in 2008, and at the $2 - $3 range, i might as well download it and give it a shot. Let's just say i was presently surprised.
In Audiosurf, you control a levitating vehicle similar to Wipeout or F-Zero. You have to manoeuvres down a colourful multi- lane highway, collecting blocks in a manner similar to Klax. But the selling point of Audiosurf is that you can import any and all of your own music into the game to generate a pattern and track designed around that song, all figured out by synchronizing the environment, traffic patterns and scenery with the events in the current song.
The goal of the game is to score points by collecting coloured blocks and forming clusters of 3 or more of the same colour. The more blocks accumulated in a cluster, the more points are scored, with different colours having different scores. Players are also awarded bonus points at the end of each track based on how well they did throughout the track. These include finishing the song with no blocks left in the grid or collecting all the blocks of a certain colour. Each track for each difficulty level has three medals - bronze, silver, and gold.
The player can also choose between 14 different characters to play in the game which are divided between three difficulty levels and each has its own unique ability, such as having to drive two levitating vehicles than can collect twice as many colourful blocks, but may be twice as hard. Each character has a unique icon, which is visible in the score browser. Graphically, as well as gameplay wise, the game is a lot like Amplitude (with a health dose of Rez on the graphical side). It's colourful to say the least, with the colour scheme popping out, being full of neon line and chromatic novas in a minimalist kind of style.
After booting it up and playing a few of my favourite songs (Nat King Cole, In the Hall of the Mountain King and Wolfmother's Woman) and that were against what you would normally use for this, the dreaded Pop music, i was pleasantly surprised that i could be used with pretty much anything, making it for all lovers of music and games. I whole heartedly recommend this to those people and anyone in general
The Good:
+It's colourful and pleasant to look at.
+It's ability to use any music allows it to have a gigantic soundtrack.
+Easy to play, difficult to master.
The Bad:
-It may get repetitive for a few people.
-Has little content for those looking for a lot.
