Posted in: Games, Review, Technology, Video Games | Tagged: Dropmix, Harmonix, hasbro

Adding A Few More Beats As Dropmix Makes Two More Expansions

Published Sat, 17 Feb 2018 20:45:25 -0600

A few weeks ago we got the latest expansion packs from Dropmix, the card-based DJ game that allows you to compete with and against your friends in a battle to make the best mixes possible using samples of popular songs. The two latest additions that came to our door were specific sets with Pop and Hip-Hop samples, so we broke them out and gave them a test to see how they match up.

Now to be clear, this isn't the first set of expansions for the game we ever received, we actually got a four-pack shortly after the game came out which we reviewed here. Included in those sets were a Pop and Hip-Hop expansion set, identified by a pair of shades and a rollerskate in the corner like you would see on a deck of Magic: The Gathering cards so you know what set they belong to. This time around the sets we have been identified by a spray can and a diamond. So we had to do a bit of a double-take when these came our way because we weren't sure why Dropmix made two sets of the same genre.

As we came to find out exploring each of these packs, these are both nearly identical in content. The same array of songs are in here, using the Hip-Hop set, for example, they're still using The Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face", but where we got the drum track in the last pack we now have the guitar track in this new pack. They both share Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It", but where the first pack had the vocal track, this set had the drum track. There are some different songs here and there, but essentially both packs are using the same library, just different samples of the same tunes.

While by definition these are two totally new and different packs of music, there's no escaping the fact that it feels cheapened by the idea that Harmonix and Hasbro haven't made any headway to expanding their library. When I literally have almost enough cards to recreate a single song in full by its elements alone, that shows a lack of originality on the part of the developers to make the game more exciting with fresh tunes, and ultimately makes it feel like a cash grab. To continue the Magic: The Gathering comparison, if you bought a booster pack and got two dragons that did the exact same thing and cost the same amount of mana, only one was colored green and the other red and both were just as common as the other, you'df feel ripped off and question what the point was. Dropmix is an awesome game, but as far as the expansion packs go, we need more variety.

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