VOEZ Guide
There was some consternation when VOEZ was announced as a launch title for the Switch back at the tail end of February. The game had only come out on iOS and Android systems prior to this, and due to its interface would be playable in tablet mode only; in fact, the buttons and sticks play absolutely no part in VOEZ whatsoever. VOEZ is a rhythm action game, but unlike the more well-known titles like Project Diva and Guitar Hero, you don’t push buttons in time to the notes. The game’s interface is a series of lines, one horizontal and several vertical, note markers flow down from the top of the screen to the bottom where you perform the required action to ‘play’ the note. Movements required include genre stalwarts such as tap and hold, but will be regularly interspersed with times you’ll need to swipe, and others where you’ll need to slide as the path changes. It doesn’t sound very special but it’s all down to how it’s presented.The game has a tracklist of over a hundred songs ranging from Pop to Trance, and while the rhythms and note placement change they’re all presented the same way. The vertical bars pass back and forth across the display, stretching, contracting and reacting to movements and swipes in time with the music – kind of like an interactive visualizer – and while it doesn’t sound like much it’s utterly charming watching these lines dance around the screen; you can’t help but get sucked into the rhythm. If you just want to chill and play with the music, then playing through this on Easy mode is the way to go. If you want a challenge, however, you also have Hard and Special modes for each song. Hard mode ramps up the quantity of notes to a considerable degree giving you a challenge to really get your teeth into.
Special modes takes this one step further, changing the note types and placements and moving them around the screen much more, meaning your eyes and fingers need to do a lot more work to keep up. Additionally, you also have the option to change the speed the note icons fall at from a serene one to a nightmare factor of ten. At least if you find Easy to be too gentle and Hard to be too much you can adjust the challenge to your liking, I don’t know why anyone would want to take on speed ten as it requires a certain degree of foresight to be able to stand a chance of registering the input, but it’s optional and it’s there, which I guess is better than not having it at all. Other than this, all the game has to offer is a set of diary entries that unlock as you complete tracks; this tells the story of a group of kids in a band as a justification for playing a music game. There’s no branching narrative, no choices to be made, just sections of text to read; once again, it’s entirely optional and can be a welcome distraction from the tip tapping on the screen. It’s all held together with an interface formed around diamond tiles, from your profile picture, to the track icons, to the notes that you’ll play; it’s minimalist, but looks great. There is some input lag in the menu screens, with selections taking a second to register, and swipes through the music selection are heavy and slow, but thankfully this isn’t an issue during play so as a result it’s a non-issue. The game does also have a story attached to it through the use of a diary. Each diary entry has a requirement for you to unlock ('complete two songs on hard difficulty', for example) which when completed fills in another piece of the story. You follow the story of Chelsea and her high school classmates as they embark on a journey to start a band together. Whilst this is a nice addition and once again contains some beautiful artwork, it is very easy to forget about and oddly doesn't seem like as much of a focus as it could have been.
The story is never forced upon you; rather it is kept hidden away in the diary section of the main menu for you to discover on your own. The thing that instantly sets VOEZ apart from its countless rhythm game rivals is that it is aesthetically stunning. Before you even jump into a song this is abundantly clear - the menus look great with a very sleek design and each song has a gorgeous piece of artwork complementing it on the song selection screen. During gameplay the notes travel down different lanes which can land at various points across your line, but rather than them being static lanes such as what is required for games such as Guitar Hero, these lanes dance with the music, moving all over the screen in time with beats that don't contain any notes for you to hit. In a way this can be quite distracting, especially as the lanes can sometimes switch sides even when a note is travelling down it, causing you to quickly reassess where you need to press at the last minute. This is a welcome challenge however, not an annoyance. Accompanying a difficulty system of "Easy", "Hard" and "Special" (which includes things such as complex drum fills and both hands having to play independently) for your song choices, it helps to create a game which has a nicely balanced learning curve; starting off simple and increasing the pressure at a pleasing rate. Upon completion of a song you will be rewarded with a grade – A, B, C etc - and can also try to obtain a "Full Combo" (meaning you hit every single note), or an "All Perfect" (meaning you hit every note at exactly the right time). These can be tough to acquire and you feel a great sense of satisfaction when you finally manage it on a tough song. The main menu displays how many each of these you have achieved overall so the drive to increase those numbers is always there.Also displayed on the menu is the number of charts you have played. Overall there are 348 charts in the game – this includes each variant of a song such as their difficulty – but even so results in a very impressive total of over 100 completely different songs to play through. The soundtrack mostly consists of J-pop, K-pop and Vocaloid style music, faster electronic music with some examples of dubstep and a few songs containing a more Western influence. The quality of these songs varies with some beautiful examples, ones that get stuck in your head for days and others that leave a lot to be desired – although of course musical preference will vary for everyone based on their tastes. The game's first and main song, 'Colorful Voice', seems to be constantly stuck in this writer's head for example, with 'Wilt' being a close second on the favourites list. While these new mechanics are welcome, and the soundtrack has 40 songs of relatively varied genres from pop to dubstep and rock, the setlist doesn’t have any classic songs that you’d find in license-heavy games such as Rock Band.
If you’re a big fan of certain niche music genres such as J-Pop some of your favourite songs could be on here, but for the majority of players there will likely be no songs that you are familiar with, which is a shame with such brilliant mechanics that would really set songs from Arctic Monkeys or Aerosmith alight. Another issue is that it can only be played with an internet connection, and as it is a free to play game, there are only 8 songs available off the bat, and they can be unlocked from the in game currency of 1 fish ‘key’ per song. However, these are available for purchase for $0.99 per key and a limited amount are unlockable by achieving certain challenges the game sets you, such as reaching a certain score on a specific difficulty. With the promise of new packs of free and paid songs, there should be enough to tide over any fans, and there aren’t any timers, barriers or ads that force you to pay to play. If this was where VOEZ ends, it would still be a highly recommended download for rhythm game fans. However, Rayark have created an anime-style story that works alongside the action and provides an incentive for you to beat high scores and keep playing. Immediately in the intro there is a fantastically well designed anime video which looks beautiful and helps to create the world in which the game is set, and really goes above and beyond anything you’d expect from the opening of a iOS rhythm game. After this, you can unlock through achieving challenges different chapters of the tale, which vary from artwork of places set in the world or stories about the characters who are attempting to make it big with their eponymous band 'VOEZ' while battling with teenage college life. The plot is by no means groundbreaking, and maybe a little generic if you’re a big anime fan, however it’s a very clever way of intertwining achievements with a story that gives you extra motivation to beat “Extreme Attack” with over 900,000 points on the hardest difficulty.
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