Superbeat: Xonic

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1

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Review:

Superbeat: Xonic is a Music-Rhythm game with a night club aesthetic and a good selection of music (68 songs plus another 7 via free DLC, with more on top of that if you want to pay for DLC), as well as a decent variety. The game looks great and sounds good. As for how it plays… well…

Players play the game hitting a corresponding button on a circle as notes pass by that button – up, left and down on the left side, and X, A, and B on the right side. So already, we have one more button than the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games (unless you count the strum bar). Add to that special notes that require you to hit the L and R buttons. Add to that special notes that require you to take the left and right stick and hold them in a certain direction… this game expects a lot from players, and it doesn’t take long before it feels like a “pat your tummy while rubbing your head… or is it the other way around?” sort of situation.

It’s really unfortunate too, because I would love a good button-tapping music-rhythm game to fill the void now that Guitar Hero is dead and Rock Band is running on fumes (and neither on the Switch), and while Voez absolutely fills me with joy, it’s not quite the same experience. Superbeat has the style, the attitude, and the tracks to make it happen, but the controls just fall apart into a convoluted mess.

Superbeat: Xonic is still very much worth a look if you’re a fan of the genre. It does a lot of stuff right, and if the controls work for you, you’ll probably have a blast. But for me, I felt like a simpler game that put the emphasis on timing and coordination rather than convoluted controls would have made this a much better experience.

tl;dr – Superbeat: Xonic is a Music-Rhythm game that gets the music part right with a great presentation and a good mix of music. However, the controls are overly complex which make this game way harder to enjoy than it should be.

Grade: B-

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