BNG Reviews Audiosurf

Presentation: 9/10

Gameplay: 10/10

Fun Factor: 10/10

Total Score 29/30

Note: This review was conducted on the Steam copy of the game.

Audiosurf is a music game with a difference: it uses YOUR music.

Not MY music, my music sucks. YOUR music. The good stuff.

The game allows you to choose songs and creates tracks that match the song, gaining and losing intensity as the song does.

In terms of gameplay, it seems somewhere between a puzzle game like Bejeweled and a racing game.

Some of the modes trend more toward a racing feel while others are more puzzle-y.

Besides the fact that it turns your music into a frenetic gameboard, that's another thing I liked about audiosurf: it has lots of modes that make a real difference in game. 14 modes to be precise, spread between three difficulties.

Taking a mode you played before, using Mono as an example, which appears in all three difficulty levels, has a completely different feel when bumped up to the next higher difficulty.

Audiosurf also has a great community aspect, allowing you to see how your score racks up against players locally and worldwide.

I picked some obscure songs at random from my collection and found that almost every song in my collection offered SOME competition. But if you want really heavy competition you'll need to pick more popular tunes.

Audiosurf helps this along with a feature called "audiosurf radio" which is a selection of free songs included in the game that are rotated out on a weekly basis. These songs form a collective backbone and are always some of the most popular and difficult songs, allowing you to really compete against the world.

Of course, if you're not ready for the pressure of representing your country, you can play offline or just stick to the lower difficulty levels.

In short, there's something here for just about every type of gamer. Whether you want a mellow, stree-free game you can pick up and play for 5-10 minutes or a frenetic game where you're trying for perfection to be in the global top ten audiosurf is a game you owe it to yourself to try.

Check Audiosurf's official site for more info.

Gamespot

There was a time when I was an enormous Gamespot fanboy. I was a paid subscriber to the site, participated in weird corporate "offers" that they sent my way, attended online events live via video, the whole nine yards.

Yesterday, I cancelled my subscription to the Hotspot podcast, my last actual recurring tie to the site.

It sounds silly, but it felt weird to me. I had really invested in the site. I'm not speaking of monetarily so much as my time and affection. I was a fan.

Since that time, Carrie Gouskos, Greg Kasavin, Rich Gallup, Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Vinnie Caravella, Brad Shoemaker, Alex Navarro and Jason Ocampo have all left the site.

Some of them left because they great opportunites, many left because of the clusterf$%k that was the Gertsmann firing but overtime the site became less of the great personalities and reviewers that I read, listened and tuned in live to see.

I can read console reviews of Jeff, Ryan, Vinnie and Brad at Giant Bomb and I can read Jason Ocampo's PC reviews at IGN. And for reviews those folks don't cover, I find myself scanning metacritic and picking reviews at random that catch my eye.

There was a time when I went straight to Gamespot and nowhere else.

And then the podcast. Somewhere along the way the Hotpost just became completely un-listenable to me. Unlike the reviewer exodus, that was a gradual thing but it just seemed like the podcast became less and less interesting to me.

Of course, I'm a little more on the fringe of gaming these days- which might not help. But mostly, I find the Giant Bombcast much more entertaining. It's *funny*.