Audica PSVR Review

Bringing guns to a saber fight.

Harmonix’s influence on the rhythm game genre can’t be understated, with Guitar Hero and Rock Band once the go-to pastime for tipsy house-partiers everywhere. But with enthusiasm for plastic instruments waning in recent years and recent experiments like the card-based DJ-’em-up DropMix having flopped, it’s been a while since Harmonix had a chart-topper on their hands. 

While the studio as a whole is focused on trying to reclaim the magic with Rock Band 5, a smaller team have been busily working away on side project Audica. After a brief stint in Early Access, Audica is now fully released and has arrived on PSVR. Though it isn’t quite a smash hit, Audica deserves a spot on your VR game playlist.

With motion controllers lending themselves well to being guns, we’ve had no shortage of VR shooting games. Audica takes this a step further by having you shoot to a beat. Blue and orange targets appear in your field of view, with radiuses closing in on them to indicate the right time for you to shoot. It’s target practice, only with rhythm. 

Alternative target types add variety. For some, you’ll have to hold the trigger and form an electric connection. Some, you’ll trace in a rapid-fire pattern across the screen. Others, you’ll simply punch away as they come at you from either side. It’s an effective way to represent different length notes in a song and make levels feel more dynamic.

I’ll be honest – I was concerned that accuracy would be an issue in Audica, and that you’d regularly drop notes from not quite lining up your shots right. I needn’t have worried. On the contrary, it’s surprising how intuitive it feels to aim and shoot. The auto-aim assist likely helps things somewhat, but despite it recommending you carefully square up your shots through the iron sights, I found myself able to naturally hip-fire with ease.

What I didn’t anticipate, however, was how the target range setup makes timing more difficult. Most rhythm games, including Harmonix’s own Guitar Hero and Rock Band, place their notes on a linear track. Notes steadily and consistently move towards you. Audica, on the other hand, has notes spawning anywhere in your field of view. 

This makes things far less predictable. Your only indication of timing is the circle which closes in on a note. To use a particularly tricky example, G.O.A.T. by math prog band Polyphia is a technical showcase full of irregular beats. When these can appear anywhere on-screen without warning, it’s frustratingly likely you’ll miss notes from not being able to predict them.

This lack of structure to the note placement is one of the main flaws preventing Audica from being an essential rhythm game. Its flashy sci-fi visuals only exacerbate the problem, with levels taking place on animated planet landscapes. Simpler backgrounds would have not only been less distracting but probably also allowed for a less rough overall presentation, which is prone to aliasing. 

But Audica still has some strengths up its sleeve. The size of its soundtrack is one, offering 33 core tracks – a number that eclipses Beat Saber’s default playlist, even with years of additions. It’s very heavily EDM-focused, which will be a plus for some and not so much for others. But a few surprises are in the mix, including a DragonForce song – probably in an effort to recapture the iconic lightning in a bottle of Through The Fire And Flames from Guitar Hero 3.

Some big names in EDM make an appearance, such as Deadmau5, Zedd, Odesza and Marshmello. A pretty banging remix of David Guetta and Sia’s Titanium is a personal highlight. It’s not all killer and no filler, however, with a few insipid tracks in the mix that aren’t very exciting to play. 

Stump up for the fairly reasonable season pass and Audica’s genre diversity and star quality shoots up, with the likes of Ariana Grande, Panic! At The Disco, Post Malone and Billie Eilish making an appearance. For just over a quid (or a dollar) per song, it’ll expand the game with 15 new tracks by the end of 2019. 

You’ll be able to play all of these tracks in a fairly standard offering of single-player and multiplayer modes. The Campaign mode features Beat Saber-like modifiers to add variety to levels, such as achieving a certain score, playing at a higher tempo or having notes be less clearly telegraphed. Disappointingly, it clones the daft Beat Saber challenge of moving a certain distance, which entails waving your arms like a madman in-between notes to reach the target. 

Following the breakout success of Beat Saber, Harmonix are no longer the trendsetters in rhythm games. Audica clearly takes influence from the popular VR note-slasher while differentiating itself with shooting mechanics. Unfortunately, said mechanics don’t fit quite as well into the rhythm format. But a chunky setlist makes Audica worth checking out when you tire of its mêlée-focused rival. 

[Reviewed on PS4]