Thanks to some console best-sellers such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the music genre has literally exploded with new games over the last couple of years. While many of the games that require a special peripheral exist on a console, there are still a ton of great music games available for the PC. With this post, I hope to learn about some more of them.
I’ve been meaning to put together a list of my favorite music games for a while, but at this point I’m not sure if such an idea would be better as a best-of article or a news feature that spans a couple of weeks. Feedback would be welcomed!
I don’t have sales numbers, but I’m fairly certain that on the PC, Audiosurf has been one of the most popular music games released in recent years, and it happens to be one I hadn’t even played until this past weekend. I regret waiting so long, though, as it’s simple, yet very challenging. Plus, it actually reacts to your music in an obvious way, which many music games that accept your personal music collection tend to fall flat on.
Audiosurf wasn’t the only game I tried out this past weekend for the first time. BIT.TRIP.BEAT is another, and it’s one of the more creative games I’ve played recently. It’s essentially styled like an Atari game, but is still chock-full of eye candy. It’s an appropriate throwback to the golden age of gaming, and like pretty well every music game I’ve tried so far, it’s extremely challenging at times.
Audiosurf
Other’s I’ve tried to date include 1… 2… 3… KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby), Beat Hazard, Chime, Everyday Shooter, Lumines, Raycatcher and The Polynomial. My question to you is, am I missing any that I should be trying? Have you played any of the games I’ve mentioned here, and if so, what are your thoughts on them?
I’d love some input on this, especially with regards of how we could turn this into some content! There are so many quality music games out there, so I think it’d be great to get the word out about them in some way or another. And perhaps we could extend this idea into indie games in general in the future, since again, there are a ton of classics out there.