Symphony: Liberate Your Music Review
Symphony: Liberate Your Music Information
Developer(s) By: Empty Clip Studios
Publisher(s) By: Empty Clip Studios
Rated: “E” for Everyone
Price: $9.99
Release Date: August 6th, 2012
Platform(s): Steam
Symphony: Liberate Your Music is a top down shooter that utilizes your music to generate unique levels. This action intense shooter is only $9.99 but does it pay dividends in the fun department? Let’s find out!
The story behind the game is somewhat simple. An evil being has infiltrated your music and is corrupting it; by doing this it is apparently able to enter into our world. The player must fight through their song collection to liberate the Symphony of Souls and put an end to the spirits nefarious ways.
While the story is not extremely compelling the real reason to battle your way through this game is to find new weapons, upgrade them, and customize your ship to lay the smack down on as many geometrically shaped baddies as possible.
The weapon types have good variety that range from guns, to missiles, shotguns, beam cannons and they can be positioned directionally on your ship so you can decide how to best defend yourself.
Each level you play has a weapon that is unique to it, and with six difficulty levels that unlock as you progress, even previously played songs will change and have new challenges to face. With the multiple levels I found the game to be exceptionally enjoyable. Very quickly I found a spot on the difficulty scale that would challenge me without frustrating me, and that allowed me to settle in and really enjoy the experience. The difficulty does ramp up nicely, and for those of you with the skill for it you will find it challenging at the high difficulties.
All of the actions are controlled with the mouse and different attacks can be linked to different buttons; you can even choose to have your weapons fire constantly. The simplicity of the design is brilliant and gets players immediately into the fun without a steep learning curve.
The multiplayer aspect of the game is tied up in its leader boards for each difficulty, for each song individually. While that is logically the way the game should work, because of the sheer number of possible songs that exist, you won’t always find competition on some songs. Obviously if you are playing well known or current songs this will change, but if you are like me and enjoy playing through some older music you may not have much competition.
Visually the game is reminiscent of Geometry Wars with its bright colorful weapons and explosions. The ship you pilot as well as the enemies you fight are all polygons and create a stunning visual display as the intensity of the song escalates.
Since the game creates unique levels based on your music files I came in with just over 600 levels of play. Obviously this will be more or less depending on your own music collection but the game does come with 21 prepackaged songs, so even you don’t have any music on your computer you will still be able to play.
What was great about the game for me is that it gave me a reason to revisit some artist that I have not listened to in a very long time; to listen to those songs again that have so many memories tied to them, and it never ceases to make me smile.
In summary, Symphony is an amazing game. I always seem play it longer than I intended to and that is never a bad sign. I love to sit and listen to music and by adding in a gameplay element it becomes addictive. I constantly find myself wanting to try “just one more song” and it puts this game near the top of my list of must have titles. Besides a less than thrilling story I really can’t think of anything bad to say about this game. I play it to rediscover my own music collection and that in itself is worth way more than the price of admission. If you have not picked up this game yet, you really owe it to yourself to do so. While Symphony might not be a game I play every day, it is one that I plan on playing for years to come.
