Audiosurf is a unique puzzlye/rhythm game developed by Dylan Fitterer (BestGameEver) where players earn points by collecting the same coloured boxes on the highway - a highway that changes based on what type of music you're currently playing.

Requirements

• Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista
• 1.6GHz Intel® Pentium® 4
• 512MB RAM
• 32MB NVIDIA GeForce® 2
• DirectX® 9.0 or higher
• DirectX® 9.0c-compatible sound card

Installation

Audiosurf is available on Steam and you can already guess that installation was a snap. All you have to do after buying the game is looking in your games list and hitting install. That's it, you're done. I didn't experience any hiccups on my x86_64 system.

First Impressions

Having played great looking games most of the time, Audiosurf won't impress you that much the first time you see it. I wasn't impressed at the graphics department but it's so-so meaning I can live with it so long as the gameplay is nice. Since Audiosurf is a puzzle/rhythm game you won't see yourself blowing spaceships or aliens. For this game you're going to control a spaceship or whatever you want to call it (plus you can control two at the same time if you want) and then you have to maneuver your way on a multi-laned highway collecting coloured boxes which coincidentally is the music you're currently playing. It has some visual similarities to Guitar Hero but instead of trying to hit them all, you decide what to hit or avoid. Warm colours like red and yellow will give you more points compared to blue and violet which are cool colours. you can control your spaceship by using your mouse or your keyboard if you want to be more precise (I'm actually better at using the mouse than the keyboard).

Singleplayer

Audiosurf is primarily a single-player game since it's just you versus the music you're currently playing. And did I say that you can play any kind of music that you want? You can even play by just using an online radio station.

The ability to use any kind of music you want just made this game a lot more exciting as it turned it into a game with infinite options. For example you can just play Classical music if you want. Once you load your music, Audiosurf will analyze it and will construct the highway based on the music that you provide.

Before you start a game, I highly suggest that you play the tutorial since it makes you familiar with the coloured boxes and why their colours are important. As soon as you're done with that, you basically have three difficulties to choose from. Each with their own unique vehicles that have different abilities. I like the Eraser as it erases blocks that I don't want to collect.

Playing your own music just makes this game a lot better since I don't want to plat this game on some crappy music that I don't want to listen. Moreover, if you used Steam to install the game, then you're in luck since you'll be able to receive achievements! And then you can compare them to the rest of the Audiosurf users and make yourself feel proud.

Multiplayer

There's really no multiplayer part for this game if you think about it. You can however compare your score to other users and even compare your score with your own music against other users if they choose to play your music. Again another +1 for Audiosurf for making people think I can get higher scores than you on your own track!. It just makes it a lot more competitive if you're that kind of player.

On another note, you can play co-operatively with someone if you want since some of the difficulty levels have two available vehicles. You can choose to control both of them or you can grab someone (preferably someone that likes your music) and play with them.

Final Thoughts

Since when does game that makes you play music that you like and then earn points for it be considered a boring game? Audiosurf definitely belongs to someone's HDD. The graphics may not be 'cool' enough for gamers that want to max out their hardware but the gameplay more than makes up for it. There's just basically unlimited 'music highways' for you to try. This is one of those games like Defense Grid: The Awakening that's worth buying and never looking back as to how much it set you back. It's just plain worth it.

Ratings

Installer - Nothing beats Steam's content delivery.

Graphics -The graphics and effects are really simple if you compare it to other modern games out there especially with the hardware that's available to developers right now.

Sound - Definitely 5 out of 5 since it lets me play my type of music...music that I want to listen to.

Gameplay - This game's pretty much never-ending as faras replayability is concerne since you'll get a different user-experience each and everytime you play the game.