Wave - Against Every Beat: Destroy Blocks To The Rhythm Of Music In This Arcade Shooter
Wave - Against every BEAT! ($0.99) by Colorbox is a classic starship space shooter with an innovative twist; all the action is generated based on the beat/rhythm of the music playing. The levels are completely generated from the music. The user must feel the music to learn where the enemies are coming from. Try to play the game any other way and you will find yourself dying rather quickly. The controls are pretty simple; you drag your ship from left to right by holding it. The ship fires automatically as long as you’re holding it; these are the main controls. The objective is to fire at blocks that appear in patterns to the musical rhythm. The enemies come at you in different configurations of geometric patterns. There are two levels of difficulty, as well as numerous levels, and other forms of gameplay.
The user has the ability to play a freestyle game using their own music; I found this to be very interesting. This wouldn’t be a big deal; most apps let you have your own music playing in the background. However, with this game, it generates targets based on the rhythm of the music you play. In theory any song could become a custom level, which creates very interesting gameplay, depending on what you listen to. Some of the other modes included are endless gameplay and arcade.
The game lacks control options; picking up and dragging your ship around is the only option. This is also the only way to move to the rhythm of the song. The developers should introduce an alternative way of controlling the ship, maybe tilting the iDevice. It isn’t impossible to progress in this game, though it can be challenging. The game offers sudden death if you do die, to complete sudden death you must survive obstacles for 30 seconds. This would be a cool feature if it weren’t so difficult to use. It makes sense that it wouldn’t be easy, but there has to be some probability that you can complete it.
Overall "Wave-Against Every Beat!" is another original concept based on old games and concepts, bringing a new freshness to them. Music lovers will surely appreciate this one, and for arcade shooter fans it is definitely worth checking out.
