The system seller that VR was missing?
Oculus Quest tested version
They probably didn't expect a debut like this either; a global success that also entered the pop imagination with Jimmy Fellon ready to propose it to Brie “Captain Marvel” Larson, during one of his battles with the VIP guests of his talk show. In short, one of those successes, which cause you to be given the label of "predestined", generating perhaps excessive expectations for all your future work. This is what happened to Beat Games, the small development team he created Beat Saber, one of the most loved VR games by the VR enthusiast audience, but also and above all by the casual ones, those who, let's face it, make you sell the product. A success that is somewhat reminiscent of what happened with Wii Sports, a title that contributed to the great success of the Nintendo Wii.
Beat Saber is a rhythm game available on practically all VR platforms but which on Quest finds its place of choice, thanks to the portability of the stand alone Oculus viewer.
The gameplay is simple and immediate and this, perhaps, has determined its success: holding two lightsabers of different colors, one blue and one red, you will have to make slices, cutting them in the direction indicated, the cubes of the color corresponding to the sword, which are shot at you in time to the music.
The game is kept on a rather simple level in the initial stages, useful to make you familiar with the control system, and then becomes more and more complicated as you go through the campaign: the speed and density of the cubes increases, the indications on the direction of the cut disappear and the position of the cubes changes at the last moment. Obstacles begin to appear that force you to move, to stand sideways, to get down on your knees; bombs, penalties, timers and multipliers come into play and the title changes face, becoming extremely dynamic and competitive.
At the end of your performance you will receive a score that varies according to the number of misses, errors in the cut and even according to the style and precision you have put into the noble art of slicing things. This is the aspect that we liked most about Beat Saber, his ability to perfectly draw a difficulty curve accessible even to those who are normally completely unrelated to gaming, in the early stages of the game, and then transform, if yes. look for that degree of challenge, in an extremely punishing title that requires dedication and a lot of practice to be "tamed". A dedication that, however, you will be willing to grant him also given the enormous pleasure it takes to slice things.
With lightsaber shots
The pleasure is also amplified by a soundtrack which, although somewhat repetitive, is extremely engaging. Indeed, in the rare moments when the game gives you a few breaks, you will find yourself dancing "lightsaber" in your hand.
There are only three game modes, the Countryside, which allows you to face all the possible variables that can be faced in the game; Free play with which to face single songs with customized settings, multipliers and penalties and finally Multiplayer with which by passing the viewer, you can challenge your friends to achieve a better score than yours.
The great success of Beat Saber is therefore also determined by an original soundtrack of the highest level that adapts naturally to the progressive increase in difficulty. However the number of songs in the standard version is extremely limited and after a while you will start to find them a bit repetitive. Fortunately, the store is full of more or less famous songs, which can be purchased individually or in expansion packs, all as fun and well studied as the original ones. There are for example the songs of Imagine Dragons, those of Timbaland and Green Day, but also bands less known to the general public or songs written specifically for the game.
Among those that in these days of quarantine are keeping us more busy we point out FitBeat, a piece designed to make you exercise and dispose of the yeasts and calories that we have all abused these days (a little advice, get sweat covers for your Quest, you will need it). The price of the single songs is perhaps the only negative note, 1,99 is a lot if you consider that the pack with 6 songs can be purchased for about 9 euros thanks to the very frequent discounts on the store.
Last night a DJ saved my life.
Beat Games took care of saving our wallets with the introduction of one of the most requested features by the community: the level editor. Thanks to this new feature, users can add their favorite songs, as long as they have been previously converted into Wav and OGG format, and make them perfect soundtracks for Beat Saber. The level editor, which for obvious reasons only works on PC, allows not only to work on blocks, obstacles, bombs and general difficulty, but also to customize environments with different lights and colors. Projects can then be saved and played directly in your viewer.
Unfortunately, however, this type of customization is not a job for everyone: the preparation of a single piece can in fact require several hours of work and not everyone is willing to use their time in this way. Furthermore, reasons related to the copyright of the individual tracks make it impossible to share the levels between users, effectively limiting the use of the interesting tool to very few people. This is clear as long as you intend to respect the ban on conviction: the large community of Beat Sabers has in fact already found a way to add customized tracks by users to their library, but this is a topic that, as you can imagine, cannot be the subject of this review.
Lucy in the Sky with Diamond
From a technical point of view there is little to say, Beat Saber is a psychedelic, but two-tone explosion of lights and shapes that enhance the automatic and satisfying gesture of cutting things to the beat of the music. Oculus Quest is the ideal home for a game of this type because it doesn't need a lot of computing power, but rather freedom of movement and tracking accuracy, all of which Oculus' stand alone device excels at.
