SUPERBEAT XONiC (Switch, PS4, Vita, Xbox One)

SUPERBEAT XONiC is a music and rhythm game featuring a wide selection of international techno songs.  Icons will move from the middle of the screen outward, and when they reach a line, you must hit the correct button in time with the music.  It’s available for nearly all current game consoles, but reviewed on Switch here.

The beginning tutorial in the game explains the rules very well.  You’ll just use the face buttons and twin sticks to tap, hold, and move to the beat of the music.  There are several modes of play.  The main Stage mode is like how it would play if the game were in arcades.  You can choose 4, 6, or an unlockable harder mode with more songs to play in succession, as well as a freestyle mode for playing single songs.  As you play you’ll earn points and level up, which unlocks new icons, songs, and missions.  You’ll play these missions in World Tour Mode, where not only do you have to play the songs, but fulfill other goals as well, like getting a high enough combo.  You can toggle various settings, like difficulty, in Options, view how your scores stack up with other players in Rankings, and view your records and edit your player icon and sounds in Backstage.

I had a few problems with the game, though.  One, most of the songs are techno tunes, so there isn’t a wide variety of music.  Also, the game requires you to push buttons and move the joysticks and while I didn’t have much trouble doing that on the right side of the Switch controller, it was more difficult on the left side.  But maybe that’s just me.  And finally, while the game starts out very easy, it gets impossibly difficult in the harder songs.  But if you enjoy techno-fused music games, you may want to check this one out anyway.

Kid Factor:

SUPERBEAT XONiC is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Lyrics, Mild Blood, and Suggestive Themes.  The songs aren’t any worse than what you hear on the radio, and I could hardly understand what they were saying in the lyrics anyway.  The stages you select are represented by album covers and CDs, and many of the artworks on these have anime ladies (and guys), in swimwear and revealing outfits, so that’s where the suggestive themes come from.  Unless one of the album covers had some blood on it, I don’t remember seeing any blood in the game at all.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers (and most everyone else) may get frustrated at the more difficult stages.

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