LOUD

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game has been removed from the Nintendo Switch eShop and Nintendo.com, and has since been replaced by LOUD: My Road to Fame. This review is for the original release of the game)

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at Untold Tales)

LOUD is a Music-Rhythm game released on Nintendo Switch in 2022, with versions for other platforms planned for release later the same year. This game follows the story of a young girl from her teenage days dreaming of being a rock star through her journey to become a performer.

The visuals in LOUD are presented using fairly simple 3D visuals with a stylized interface that fits the game’s punk rock themes. It’s nothing especially impressive, but it works well enough for the gameplay.

As for the sound, this is where I start to run into issues. This game’s tracklist includes 13 songs (including a bonus song unlocked at the end), and all of them are entirely instrumental pieces without vocals, and as far as I can tell, none of these are licensed songs. This in and of itself wouldn’t necessarily be terrible – it’s still possible for a game to rock with a completely unique soundtrack, and to LOUD’s credit, its punk rock-style music is decent, but nothing truly stands out to me as especially memorable. For a Music-Rhythm game to have no music that really resonates with me is… well, it’s not a good sign.

There’s another issue as well. By default, the game’s unnamed central character is constantly commenting on her performance as you play (“Yeah!” “Nice!” “Awesome!”), something that is extremely distracting and that pulls you out of the immersion in the music and gameplay. Thankfully, there is at least an option to turn off these voice-over exclamations.

Of course, this leads to the other issue I have with the game – LOUD makes it a point to highlight its story, such as it is. Unfortunately, there’s just not much story here. You get a vague first-person narrative about a girl expressing enthusiasm for her music, but it’s all so lacking in detail that you never truly feel like this unnamed character is an actual person beyond the “I’m sure this is what teenagers talk like” style of writing behind her voice. The only named characters are a pair of friends we never meet, and the biggest point of drama is a falling out that we are given zero details about. The game seems to behave like we’re getting attached to this character, but she never grows to be anything more than a blank slate with “likes music” and “says teenager-y things” slapped on top.

At the very least the Music-Rhythm gameplay here is decent enough, doing a variation on Guitar Hero-style gameplay that has you pressing the correct button at the proper time when the note moves over a marking on its path. However, without the actual Guitar controller, the layout has been reworked to have three paths coming from either direction and corresponding to the up, left, and down buttons on the left side of your controller, and X, A, and B buttons on the right. It works well enough as a way to get Guitar Hero-style gameplay to work on a traditional gamepad, but it isn’t quite so intuitive that it pulls you into the music like some of the better Music-Rhythm games on Nintendo Switch.

Actually, that brings me to one other issue. Many of the best Music-Rhythm games on Nintendo Switch have something in common – excellent use of the touchscreen. LOUD doesn’t use the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen at all, despite that the way the screen is laid out would work pretty well with a touchscreen interface. The gameplay here still works, but this definitely seems like a huge missed opportunity.

Unfortunately, LOUD is a Music-Rhythm game that I just couldn’t get into like many other games in the genre on Nintendo Switch. The gameplay works well enough but isn’t especially immersive, the music isn’t very memorable, and the game’s focus on story is hard to get behind when its story is so bland, vague, and lacking any genuine character. There’s nothing here that’s outright terrible, but there’s nothing here to get excited about either. For a game called LOUD, it’s a shame that it hits not with a bang, but a whimper.

tl;dr – LOUD is a Music-Rhythm game following the story of a young girl as she becomes a musician. The core gameplay here is decent but not particularly noteworthy, the music is okay but unmemorable, and the game’s focus on story doesn’t seem to realize that it just doesn’t have much of a story to tell. This isn’t a bad game, but it’s a largely forgettable one.

Grade: C

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