got to love opinions by people that didn't play the game.
Fair enough. I made a overly-judgey assessment of a game I haven't yet given a chance outside of watching the trailer.
That said, two of the three "opinions" are pretty much fact from the video itself. 1) Production values are quite low. The character models are barely animated and is just barely reactionary to matching the music, there seems to just be the one arena (with a simple audience effect that looks nice but also is only loosely reactionary,) and of course all the music of course is recycled (which is a good thing for Beatmania fans but we can't give Konami credit for doing much work dragging those files out of the archive.) And then 2) multiplayer is not in it. It looks like it's a game meant to be played with other players all working together in a band (given the layout of the arena, the band is staged like a game would be in VR if you wanted to look at your friends while playing in 3P mode, not like a concert with NPCs enlivening the experience for the player,) but it's a single-player game as of now.
And 3), about the rhythm action being janky, I feel you can assess a music game to a certain degree by watching it be played and understanding its layout/motion, don't you think? I have seen Beat Saber, and I have played Beat Saber, and you can get how much you're going to want to
play it when you
watch it. Once you get to know rhythm action games, you get to understand what makes one better than another. It helps to actually play it, of course, and some games can surprise you or disappoint you, but from what I see of Beat Arena...
If the music pads are small in a motion-based game, if there's nothing to the mechanics but watching beat bars fall towards the measure (there is some kind of Hold Note but otherwise no swipes or whammy or wiggles or other motions I can see which would make use of motion controllers,) if there's nothing that takes advantage of the VR space (you can't even look around or dance because if you look away from the music well, you can't see the notes anymore, so you can't "look down" at your guitar or dance around to enjoy the music, you have to stare straight ahead in virtual space,) that all says under-designed and janky to me. (It does have a Virtual Tambourine in Replay Mode, so that's novel.) Granted, Bemani games were a little more basic than Rock Band or newer games like Xonic / Groove Coaster with their special notes and directional conducting and whatnot, but this game isn't called "Beatmania VR", it isn't tied to old Beatmania mechanics. It's a new game and it deserves to use its own play systems that take advantage of VR (and to use the versatile Oculus Touch controls better than just a Frankenstein monster hammering on a virtual keyboard!)
...Oh, and I didn't add a fourth thing, that it doesn't support any type of Bemani controller, which is of course wishful thinking but it's the kind of thinking I wish I had seen go into this product. Would have been really cool, and it would have let you actually play Bemani games more realistically (even though the musical note challenge is dialed down for VR touch controls.) That would have been a hard sell of some sort of adapter for this game, though, and I don't know that Oculus actually allows any accessories for Quest yet (if it ever will?) So I can't blame Konami there, I just wish it were doable given that more versatile game with the option of adding peripherals.
I don't want this game to suck.
It got me a little excited to see a Konami game (
such a rare thing, a game from a game maker!), and I was hoping to have at least a little bit of that throwback thrill that I had when they announced Frogger Toy Town or Super Bomberman Online, or even get some hope for new directions when Skelattack came out of nowhere. It'd be nice to get It's miserable seeing so little come from a company that has so much to give.
But, I think Beat Arena might suck?
You tell me where I'm off the mark, there's gameplay video of full Beat Arena sessions out there. Are you seeing a worthwhile $30 purchase here?
www.gematsu.com
