Harmonix Phase review

I have been playing this game for a few days now and I have to admit that it has grown on me. I must start by saying that I am not a massive games player. I think that I am becoming a casual game player, if that in fact makes sense. All that having been said I am starting to enjoy this, and the musical element is a major factor in that.


According to the Apple site "The notes’ placement on the path matches the beat of the music, but you encounter tighter bunches of them on higher difficulty settings. You also need to fill more stars before the next checkpoint during tougher games, leaving you little margin for error. The crowd goes wild every time you pass through a checkpoint, so keep them happy", and I'd go along with that more or less, although it is more pronounced on some songs.

I like the fact that the game is noticeably different depending on the song that you are playing to / with. It does feel like you are really doing something with the music on some tracks, and that was quite good fun. Having said all of that it isn't going to hold your attention for a long time. I'm guessing that for more serious gamers that me (and that doesn't take much) Phase will not hold much interest for very long.


Is it worth £3.99. Yes, I'd say it is. It has made a dull train journey more fun this week, and I expect that is the kind of use it will be put to going forward.

Is it a serious step towards interactive music on the iPod platforms as CDM has suggested? I don't know, at present I can't see it. I think it would be great if Harmonix made more music based games for iPods, and I'd certainly give them a try, but I would have thought that more developers would be looking to the iPod Touch / iPhone SDK in 2008 rather than focus on the older iPod platforms. Stiil, that's just my view.