With the ‘Beat Memory’ genre so grossly overcrowded on the app store it’s a wonder why anyone even dares to touch it. The ultimate aim for the developers that do take on this task is to make a game that is instantly familiar but with a new, exciting twist. I can see the thought process involved in making Beat Monster but unfortunately the end result is a terrible game that’s barely playable.
The aim of the game is to repeat back the pattern that is being played to you; this is done by placing your device on a hard, flat surface i.e. a table, listening to the beat, and then drumming it back on the surface. Your device will pick up the hits and make the button on the screen tap out what you are tapping on the table.
Sounds fun right? Well, being an actual drummer myself I thought this would be far too easy, oh how wrong I was. Not only is it incredibly difficult due to the delayed reaction of the app but with no actual musical angle on the patterns; it’s damn near impossible to actually play. Just to make things that little but more annoying, there is background music which isn’t in any way a guide to the patterns, it’s just a random piece of off-putting music completely out of sync with any of these so called “patterns” you are attempting to listen to.
Why not turn off the music I hear you cry…because that in-app option also turns off the sound of the pattern!
I will not be writing a Pros and Cons section for this review as there are no Pros and this game is pretty much a con.
Maybe I should avoiding showing my head here but I am the developer of the aforementioned game. I thought I would say that I appreciate your comments and wish that you had sent me a link to this review as I do appreciate all feedback. I have already submitted an update that improves the sound of the patterns and I have started work now on a new update that will address turning only the BG music off. In terms of a delay when hitting I can’t say I have seen this and I have tested on a range of different gen devices ( this is why you must have IOS4.0 or above because older gen devices that can’t run ios4.0 can’t run this properly). Because of the way that taps on the table are detected this limited the beats that I could play and score. I am open to feedback from anyone and really keen to tranform this game into something that muso’s would be keen to play