Phase is the newest 5 dollar downloadable game from Apple, Inc., playable on their newest iPod models. Here's my review-type-thing of the game as played on an iPod Nano.
The logo for the game is pretty cool. Note the tagline, "The Music is the Game."
A more accurate tagline would be "The Music is Kinda the Game, in a Way," but we'll get to that in a minute.
Phase is very similar to music-based games like Guitar Hero and Donkey Conga. Lit circles advance towards you, and you must press the correct button (left or right on the click wheel, or the center button) when they line up with the fixed locations at the bottom of the screen. The more circles you click, the higher your score; miss too many and you lose hearts and die. The game is pretty forgiving, you don't need pinpoint accuracy. If the circles are touching when you click, it's a 'hit.' Also there are occasional trails of blue little dots to vacuum up by rotating the click wheel for more points, or extra lives, or somesuch.
There are three levels of difficulty but none of them are really very hard. Apparently you can unlock harder modes but I haven't done that yet.
Here's Apple's graphic for the basic controls of the game:
Most of the time there's not really that much going on. Here's what the average screen really looks like:
Yes, it's a billboard of a gorilla holding a bottle. The game is loaded with surreal graphics. In fact one of the hardest parts of the game is to not get distracted by the strange creatures and scenes you're passing.
So those are the basics. One of the selling points of the game is that the levels are based on your music. There are some tracks included with the game, but, you'll want to use your own. This is a little awkward but not too painful: when you install the game, a new playlist is created called 'Phase playlist' and any song you drop in there gets processed (this takes a few minutes) and uploaded when you sync your iPod.
The gameplay doesn't actually correspond to the beats or wailing guitar solos in your music, which is a disappointment. (Some reviews have said that the game syncs to the beats of your music. I'm almost positive that they are incorrect.) It creates a level that is as long as your song lasts, and the elements are in the same place each time you play that song, although the background and little dudes change each time you play.
You can get better at a particular song by memorizing the pattern, and practice to get a higher score.... but, that's another weakness in the game. Longer songs get higher scores (more notes to hit), and you can't see your highest score for any particular game, there's just a general list of High Scores.
Hey, it's
Mr. Crabs! No wait... he had a bigger claw.
Despite those weak points Phase really is a good quality little game. It's an fun world to get lost in for a few minutes, and it has a lot of the appeal of Guitar Heroes in a tiny pocket sized game. The seemingly endless variety of weird graphics and general slickness of movement make this game well worth your 5 bucks, as long as you aren't expecting that you will really be 'playing your music.' It's way better than Vortex™, anyway.
My Rating for Phase: B+More info at Apple's
Phase page.
Labels: reviews
