I have been an off / on fan of rhythm games for a while now, I enjoyed the Guitar Hero games of the past, and the most recent one I loved was AVICII Invector which I class as just about perfect. Well, Spin Rhythm XD has decided to join an already crowded rhythm market, but does it have what it takes to break it down with the best? Read on to find out.
This plays more as a DJ rhythm game at its base, I played with the basic mouse controls, but to get the most out of this you can play with a MIDI DJ turntable that you can connect to your computer.
Music in the game is of the electronic dance variety, and there are 60 licenced tracks, although to be brutally honest, I didn't recognise a single song.
Controls are pretty simple, spin the wheel at the bottom of the screen so that the colours match the colours and the beats on the track. You will also need to press a button to match certain beats, and even spin the wheel in one direction or another.
The are 5 difficulties to master, Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert and XD, when you complete a level, you are graded on how accurate you were, and get a score which then will appear on the leader boards. As you progress you can unlock new skins for your wheel, a so on.
There is also a create mode, where you can make your own levels, but I found this to be rather confusing, and instead of just allowing you to upload your own song and let the AI create the level for you, it expects you to place every beat etc yourself, which instantly put me off. I am sure if I looked at the create mode closer, I could figure it out and there is probably some automation there, but the system is poorly designed and confusing.
Control using the mouse I found to be easy and fun, meaning you can play the easy levels of the game with one hand very easily, you can also play with a gamepad, but I did not try that.
Gameplay is fun, the graphics are nice, the style of matching the beats etc is not at all original, but I did like the spinning of the wheel.
The Good
Gameplay is easy to pick up, there are plenty of levels to beat, everything looks great, and controls are pretty much perfect for a game like this. Also being able to play with a MIDI DJ turntable is awesome, even if I never got chance to try it, I imagine it is a lot of fun.
The Bad
Create mode is poor, needs to be simplified.
I am in general a fan of electronic dance music, but I really struggled with a lot of the songs here, I understand that to get famous songs costs money so I understand why they had to use who they did, but when you compare this to the Avicci Invector, where every song is a well-known banger, you start to realise how important the songs are. No different than in Guitar Hero, games like this win and lose on their songs.
Just make it super easy to have you play your own MP3 albums, or let you connect to your Spotify account etc with level creation totally AI created, and then you have a winner. If that is possible in this game, then I could not figure it out.
Overall
Fun game, great controls, let down somewhat by the music, and the creator mode.
I score Spin Rhythm XD on PC a decent 7.5/10
Out Now on Steam
