Phase

Phase is a music game for the iPod. It presents the player with a Guitar Hero-like interface. Markers move down the screen in three columns and the player must press either left or right on the click wheel or the centre button as they reach the bottom of the screen. There are also ‘sweeps’ which require the player to shift from button pressing to using the click wheel as they would for scrolling through the iPod. It’s a solid adaptation of the iPod’s controls, even if it does nothing to imply any general suitability for gaming.

Like Vib Ribbon, Phase constructs its stages from your music collection. Tracks placed in a special playlist in iTunes will become available in-game following syncing with the iPod. The most notable aspect of Phase is the quality of the generate stages. In Vib Ribbon you could rely on the relationship between the music and the levels being deterministic, but not much more. In Phase we get stages that match the structure of the music across varying scales, or are at least close enough for apophenia to kick in. There’s the occasional moment that feels like it must have had a human hand behind it. I’m curious if the software behind it was developed specifically for Phase or if it had been knocking around Harmonix for while waiting for an application.

The excellent implementation of the central mechanic isn’t matched by the containing package. Track selection is performed through a menu system broadly similar to the iPod’s own but minus the multiple refinements that go unnoticed until they’re taken away. There’s no way to construct playlists for the game’s “marathon mode” where you play through five songs back to back. This means you play through the tracks either in the order they appear in the alphabetical listing or as they appear on the album. A generous spin on this would be that it encourages you to play out tracks that you wouldn’t otherwise try out in-game, but it still left me wanting something like the “On-The-Go playlist” feature of the iPod software.

Bryan Gale : 27 Aug 2008 22:20 |  Tags: Game Review |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem