Review: Audiosurf (PC)

Indie games, at least in my mind, have a pretty bad reputation for being weird just for the sake of being weird. In the pas year or so, however, there has been a large influx of Indie games that have been really, really good. Which category does Audiosurf fall in to? Read more to find out.

Audiosurf is a very unique music/rhythm game, that some have described as F-Zero meets Guitar Hero. You choose from one of 14 ships that all play radically different, choose a song, and then speed down a track, collecting colored blocks. Whenever you get 3 or more blocks of the same color touching, you get points.

The 14 ships each represent a different game mode, and they are all extremely unique. Every ship has one or two special abilities, which are used by clicking the left or right mouse buttons. Some ships can jump over unwanted blocks, while others can push blocks into different columns, making it easier to sort out your colors for maximum points. One mode even has two ships, one of which you control with the mouse, and the other you control with the keyboard.

One of the best things about Audiosurf is the songs. You can play any song you have on your PC, provided that it's the right filetype. This is where I ran into a few problems. You see, I prefer not to get sued by the RIAA, so I buy all my music from iTunes. For some reason, only some of the songs I had bought are compatible with the game, while some are not. I don't know why, as they all came from the same place, and I assume they all have the same DRM. However, I haven't had any problems running songs I had ripped from CDs or anything like that.

Once you find a song that's compatible, that's when the fun starts. As I mentioned, you speed down a track that has been specifically designed for the song you're playing. A slow song will have a pretty straight, uphill track, whereas a fast, energetic song will have lots of curves and will mostly be a fast downhill track. The graphics are pretty simple, but the atmosphere is great. It usually nails the feel of the song perfectly.

Audiosurf surprised me in that it's actually a really unique game, and one that doesn't get as old as I thought it would. Since you can use any song ever created and every song that will ever be created, just like a game like LittleBIGPlanet, you can play forever and theoretically never run out of things to do. 4 out of 5.