Developer: Harmonix Music Systems
Publisher: NCSOFT
Platform: PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Tested on: PC
FUSER – Review
Missing the fun of music festivals and the sound of sweet beats going through your ears? Well, you have to hold on for just a while longer as it seems we aren’t going to any concert any time soon. Don’t fret, however, because developers Harmonix Music Systems can give you the next best thing. From the creators of Rock Band and Dance Central comes FUSER – a nonstop digital music festival where you and your friends control the music! Combine parts of popular well-known songs to create your own sound or partner up with friends on epic collaborations.
Story
You are an up-and-coming young DJ, ready to take over the scene by persuading the crowd of your mad skills; one festival at a time. Hopefully, as you progress, each one being bigger and better. You’re climbing up the career ladder, starting as an opening act in the early morning all the way to headliner on the mainstage. It’s up to you to lay down some sick beats by mixing up elements from well-known hits and make the crowd go wild.
Graphics
If you are a frequent music festival goer, you will definitely recognize the lively ambiance and flashy colors you are used to. The game perfectly portrays the vibe as if you’re actually there. FUSER can give you that little bit of socially-distancing comfort of being at a festival safely.
The motion designs and the character design, however, can use a bit of work. The textures can get somewhat patchy and the overall motions can feel unnatural at times. The gravity effect is too heavily put on, making the hair and clothing wave too freely, making it glitch through other elements of the character; e.g. hand through shirt, hair through headphones, etc. This stands out the most in character customization (which is somewhat limited in terms of items and clothing).
Sound
For a music-based game, the sound must be astounding. We can safely say that FUSER delivers quite nicely in that aspect. As a renowned DJ, you’ll be mashing up top hits from different genres from different eras together, creating a killer mix, pleasing the crowd, and setting the roof on fire. Most of the songs in the game you will definitely know. In FUSER, you’ll probably find yourself turning tables with old classics such as Salt-N-Peppa’s Push It or Madonna’s Material Girl, and brand-new hit singles such as Dua Lipa’s Don’t Start Now and Lizzo’s Good As Hell. It sounds odd to be combining Hard Rock with Dance or Pop, but with FUSER, it just seems to mesh perfectly.
Gameplay
Like its predecessors, Rock Band and Dance Central, FUSER is a casual music/rhythm-based simulation game where you pretend to be an aspiring DJ, and this experience is developed by Harmonix Music Systems and published by NCSOFT. You will have to hype up the audience at a digital music festival with your bomb tracks, that you, yourself, mash up by choosing specific elements from songs from your crate.
The game has multiple game modes such as the campaign, (co-op) freestyle, and battle. The story of the campaign is pretty slow and at times boring but great for figuring out on how the game works. The campaign builds up the difficulty, getting more challenging the further you go, by giving you commands and quests you have to complete. The more stars you can achieve, the better your DJ status will be. Grinding through the story will help you unlock more content such as songs and character customizations. It’s a slow grind but the rewards do make the game more exciting.
There’s also the ‘freestyle’ mode where you can let your creativity loose, solo or even co-op with your buddy! A neat feature is that your baller mashups aren’t gone to waste, since you can save your mixes and share them online through in-game social features for everyone to check them out.
Then there’s the ‘battle’ mode which is online-only and it pits DJs against each other, creating a sense of competition. It’s quite similar to the campaign, whereas you get requests and demands. Executing this well will bring more points to your side.
No matter which mode you choose, the premise and gameplay are pretty much the same overall. Besides the context you’re DJ’ing in, you’re still mashing up songs together. And with the extra grinding for rewards, it makes the game repetitive and dull very fast. If you get the hang of the game, there’s barely a challenge left.
Conclusion
Even though the gameplay of FUSER can get repetitive, it’s great that there are multiple game modes to play. It’s nice for casual play and it’s still very fun since you’re a fricking DJ! Creating your own sick beats with – in my opinion – great music we all know well. This soundtrack is like a fine wine that ages from decades ago, with a few new decent inclusions. Add having the ability to share this with the world, and then you can have a lot of fun. Besides the glitchy graphics, FUSER is a party. We dub this title perfect for any music-loving gamer, who likes a fairly casual experience.
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