Audiosurf

Back at the start of the year I bought a big bundle of 'indie' vidoe games on sale on Steam. It turns out two of those games were games that made use of music files on your computer in order to build levels based on the music. I wrote about the first one, Symphony back in January and was not a fan thanks to difficulty level issues. Would Audiosurf fare any better?

Audiosurf is essentially a racing/puzzle game set to your music. You're on a three lane highway and different coloured blocks appear in the lanes. If you drive over a block you collect it and store it in a 3x7 grid of collected blocks. Get 3 or more connected blocks of the same colour in your grid and they disappear and score you points. Play a slower song and you drive uphill and get fewer blocks. Play a faster song and you drive downhill and get tons of blocks.

The game has many different modes/difficulty levels, and they're all unlocked right from the start. Considering that I gave up on Symphony because it wouldn't let me jump ahead in difficulty levels this is a very good thing. On the other hand I have a hard time processing which blocks I want to get and which I want to skip at the speed of the game, so I actually don't need the harder difficulty levels! I'm likely to just play the easier ones anyway. (One of the modes gives you extra random power-ups which help me clear out my grid without making a plan, so I'm liking that one so far.)

If there's one complaint I have with the game (and it's one that Symphony shares) it's that I have to keep picking a song each time I want to play. I don't want to have to choose my song; I want the ability to get a random song from my collection. MP3 players have had a random shuffle option for as long as I can remember! Why can't these games work that technology in? Also, I have to choose a game mode each time too. It would be really nice to have it keep the same game mode going unless I say I want to change in a menu instead of making me choose every time.

I currently have the high score for the medium difficulty across all people who have ever played "Dancing On My Own Ground - Gowan"! Woo! Don't you mind the fact that only 4 people have ever played it at all!