Posted in: Games, Review, Video Games | Tagged: game review, Rayark, Voez

Feeling All Bubbly As I Tap Away To The Songs In 'Voez'

Published Sun, 12 Mar 2017 10:45:42 -0500

If there's one thing I've learned in all my years of being a music lover and a video game lover, it's that people still play Guitar Hero and Rock Band like they're fresh titles. I can't say I blame them, I get the appeal of playing a rhythm game with cool music, a lot of it you love and some of it you don't know or care for. But it's still an interactive experience that gets people hyped while enjoying themselves. Rayark stepped things up a bit with a game of their own that just hit the Nintendo Switch with Voez.

Originally released as a mobile game, Voez is a touchscreen pattern game that follows the beat of the songs in their selection. You're given a quick tutorial that somewhat matches rhythm games as you will hit notes at certain moments, hold down notes for extended moments, and swipe for more dramatic moments. The songs themselves are pretty lighthearted and sound like a soundtrack to an anime adventure game, so you're not dealing with anything too loud or hardcore genre wise. That isn't to say there aren't any hard songs on this game, you just won't be rocking out is all.

After you succeed at the tutorial, the entire library of songs are opened up for you. You can choose to go the easy route with everything which will give you the basics, or you can kick things into a higher gear and put your fingers to the test. Easy will only require you to use one hand for most of the songs you play, anything higher will require you to play with both hands on the touchscreen, much like you would play a piano. There's no way for you to play this game on your TV, and you won't even need to use the controllers on the side. You'll be doing everything with the Switch out of the dock and in your hands.

Voez is pretty fun in it's most basic concept, you'll be following along and learning the patterns as you try to achieve an A score on every difficulty level. Much like games of this type, you'll be able to button combo and create a bigger score for yourself based off the consecutive amount of notes you hit and how carefully you follow along with the song's instructions. The game does get extremely hard once you hit the highest difficulty and it is unforgiving when you miss even one note. There is no perfect score for the easiest difficulty setting if you mess up a little bit, it's either perfection or an acknowledgment that you're just above average.

The songs in the library are both the best and worst feature. There's a nice array of tunes that will make you bubbly and happy, or get your heart racing as if you're about to do battle. However, you'll quickly despise these songs after failing to beat them for the 50th time on hard mode. They become the worst kind of earworms, they won't leave you until you're able to beat the challenge because you know you'll just have to come back and play it again later.

Overall, Voez is a great rhythm game, but I can see how it isn't for everyone. You'll probably be spending more time with the game with your earbuds in than playing full blast with a group of people. It's a shame the game also doesn't include any kind of multiplayer aspect or allows for two players to switch off trying to beat each other's score, which would have added some additional enjoyment. But it does make excellent use of the Switch's touchscreen, and it deserves props for taking a mobile game and making it work well on a gaming console.

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