Whilst the rhythm gameplay may be dated, nor as fun or fluid to play as the best the modern VR rhythm genre has to offer, the Quest version of Audioshield has added a dedicated fitness mode and borrowed one element from BoxVR and Beat Saber that really saves the title for me. Fortunately, my experience picked up a lot from that point on, however.
It makes the port feel a bit lazy and gives a bad initial impression. Initially, I actually thought my earphones weren’t plugged in properly as during the first song the musical notes made their way silently towards me until the first note hit my shield and the soundtrack kicked off. It doesn’t help that there are absolutely no sound effects in the menu whatsoever. This isn’t always the case, some songs certainly induce some epic moments, but not nearly as consistently as Beat Saber does. In Audioshield I don’t feel as if I’m experiencing a song and moving to its beat, it’s more a case of objects raining down on me and I’m defending, whilst music happens to be being played. If you are familiar with Beat Saber, or SynthRiders you’ll instantly be able to recall the moves of your favorite tracks, they feel like a choreographed dance.
The 20 included songs are largely forgettable and no songs have any particular character to them. The gameplay, which back in 2017 seemed exhilarating to me as a VR newbie, now feels rather lacking compared to the polished, addictive, rhythmic perfection of Beat Saber. On the normal game mode, I find playing this version somewhat bittersweet. Occasionally you’ll be faced with a stream of purple notes, which you must defend against by holding your shields together. Single notes can be punched into oblivion whilst long chains will eviscerate against your shields in a pleasing hail of particular explosions. You must match the red shield to the red notes, blue shield to the blue notes. Rather than slicing a la Beat Saber, here you hold twin shields, one red, one blue which act as defensive weapons.
Unhappy with losing what they regarded as a key feature, many users complained, abandoned the game, and then along came Beat Saber… Audioshield became something of a distant memory, all but forgotten, but now has a surprise reemergence on the Oculus Quest platform.Īudioshield works by translating musical notes into flying orbs that rain down upon you. It was great, but sadly and rather inevitably Youtube ordered its removal. Users loved it for its ability to easily play your own songs, and for the Youtube integration that let you not only play the song but also watch the music video on a giant screen in front of you. Immediately a hit with Steam VR users, Audioshield racked up thousands of positive reviews on the service. Audioshield is the original virtual reality rhythm game, birthing the medium’s most popular, some might argue derivative genre when it launched way back in 2016.
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