- Developer: Crypton Future Media
- Publishers: SEGA
- Genre: Rhythm Music Game
- Release Date:10/1/2017
- Platforms: PS4
- Game Supplied by: SEGA
That cheery little Japanese vocaloid diva, Hatsune and her friends are back again, less than 6 months from her last outing, but this time in the game Future Tone. The base game of Future Tone is actually free, but only comes with 2 base songs. The main content of this game comes via two DLC packs called “ Colourful Tone “ and “ Future Tone “
As a bundle these two DLC’s will cost £46, but separately come in at £50. Now before you groan at the thought of having to buy DLC to make a game, hear this first. Combine those two DLC’s and you have, wait for it, a total of… 224 songs! Shove that up your pipe and smoke it Rock Band!
This is frankly a STAGGERING amount of content. The Colourful Tone batch of songs are a collection of Hatsune songs from the Japanese arcade game and DS system, not playable on consoles before from the “Mirai” range. The Future Tone batch of songs is from the “Project Diva” range of games.
However even this stupendous volume of songs is not all of them! There will be more, LOTS more at a later date. The game also allows you to set up your own playlist of song videos to watch, and your limit for this playlist is a staggering 393 songs. To remind you, so far we only have 224! So obviously at a later date this base game will have more DLC’s with lots more songs to play and videos to watch. For those that like to get their monies worth out of a game, this certainly fits the bill, and some.
So the actual gameplay itself consists of different levels of difficulty, ( 5 ), for which players have to tap, swipe, or hold buttons in time to on screen prompts that appear in time to the music. The idea is very simple but devastatingly addictive, as it’s so tempting to think, oh i could do a little better next time and replay the same song again. It also helps that there is a wide variety of song types to play.
Admittedly, the theme of most of the songs is J-Pop, but within this there will be heavy guitar based rock tunes, as well as standard pop to the downright weird and quirky!
Add to the awesome catchy music, you have some eye popping, stunning 1080p 60fps music video visuals! The uber detail is not there, but the artwork and dance choreography, is so enthralling to watch. Each of the 224 songs has a superb, very watchable music video with it.
You can’t actually play all 224 songs on the easy setting though. The game breaks down the songs with only 149 playable on easy, 216 on normal, but all 224 from the hard setting onwards. This brings me to one of the game’s biggest gripes, and that’s the difficulty.
As a fan of the series i’m used to what the game is about, but even I am struggling on normal to do anything more than just clear, let alone get near perfect scores. Part the reason is the new gameplay action is to press/hold multiple buttons at the same time, either the circle, square, triangle, or cross. The issue is not that it’s too hard to do this it’s just that the prompts to tell you what you need to press come in from the edge of the screen far too late to register with your brain before it’s too late.
The only way around this was by either pausing the game to see what was coming or just flat out repetition learning. Once you remembered, the actual act was easy enough to complete. It was just irritating to have to find a way that broke the flow of the game and the song to do it.
As well as the base game full of songs, those who like to customize the characters will have their boots filled with joy! There are a whopping 340 modules ( costumes to you and I ) to collect, or for £9.99 just be unlocked via a shortcut, as well as accessories on top. The change of clothing on your chosen characters then do appear in the music video’s you play.
Also in a departure from the last Hatsune game, ( Project Diva X ) there is no RPG or story to complete, this game is simply just flat out songs and rhythm gameplay.
My only other gripe is, that although you can create a playlist of videos to just watch, you can’t then compile a playlist of songs to just play. Each time you want to play a song you either have to find it or add it to your list of favourites and select. It would have been a great and simple idea to just play a few of your favourite tracks in a row.
Summary
Amazing visuals, simple but challenging gameplay, an EPIC amount of in game content, and superb music tracks, there is very little to find wrong with the latest Hatsune Miku game. When it all comes together in a music track you like the whole game is utterly infectious. It also surprised me a lot, in how many of the music songs I thought I wouldn’t like, I actually did.
If not for the fact the new multiple button press system is irritating, and that there is currently no function to compile a playlist of your favourite songs to play in a row ( you can make a playlist to watch ! ) this would have been a full 10/10 game. These two little issues just bring it down a tad, despite the games utter homage to all that Hatsune has done for this genre over the years with a breathtaking amount of in game content.
What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!