Dodge obstacles to the beat of the music in Beat Souls, an action game for nearly all current consoles, but reviewed on PS4 here.  First choose an anime girl to play (you can unlock three more, but they all play the same).  Then choose from 60 unlockable songs as you avoid obstacles and line up soul icons.

In each song, you can move left and right on a 5×5 grid.  Barriers and bumps will come at you, and you must move out of the way of the barriers and jump over the bumps with the X button.  On each side of your character are “Beat Souls” that you must also line up with icons of the same shape coming at you as well.  You can press the L and R buttons to make both beat souls appear on each side of you and press the Square button to change the colors of the soul icons if need be.

The more you can line up these souls and avoid obstacles, the higher your combo score will be.  You can also enter Fever Mode to boost your score even more!  If you miss too many souls or hit too many obstacles, your energy will go down.  If your energy meter is empty, you’ll have to start the song over again.

When you complete a song in Normal Mode, you can unlock it in Hard Mode.  You can also unlock new characters to play as if you pass enough songs.  Gameplay isn’t bad, but it’s not remarkable either, and the songs really don’t do anything for me.  Overall, Beat Souls is fine, but not great.

Kid Factor:

Beat Souls is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence.  You can run into neon colored walls and bumps on the floor, but I don’t know how that can be violent.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, and younger gamers may find the harder songs too difficult.

Tags: Game Reviews