The Beat has Switched! Superbeat Xonic Review for Nintendo Switch

The rhythm genre has evolved since the days of Dance Dance Revolution and Pump It Up (the latter being my first experience in a genre that I have come to love).  We have evolved from being gamers that used our feet to enjoy the game to our whole bodies because–let’s face it–music is in our genes.  Time-immemorial music has become an important part of our different cultures, and there are so many different genres that truly demonstrate music as art.  Now cue in video games: rhythm games are an important staple in the industry.  Since their humble beginnings in the genre with DJ Max, PM Studios has been evolving and delivering more than games has been delivering experiences. After a lot of experience and with that pedigree of great games the latest in the genre has arrived on the Nintendo Switch in the form of  SuperBeat: Xonic.

Superbeat: Xonic is a rhythm game in which your objective is to match the light projectors on the screen with the mapped buttons on your controller. The layout plays really good on the Nintendo Switch and, for me, the Joycons are the way to play the game. Now you might think that this game is only for experienced players in the genre, but let me tell you that good guy Superbeat has you covered!  When you first boot the game, you get access to the opening movie.  It’s really good, and I love the song, though you’ll hate it later.  You get an interactive tutorial that tells you what’s what and how to play and ultimately enjoy the game experience to its fullest.  After that, you may choose to play on the Stages to hone your skills, or if you are like me and like adventure, you can try the World Tour.

The Stage mode is the bread and butter of the game.  There are different game modes: 4Trax for beginners, 6Trax for more advanced players, 6Trax FX for rhythm ninjas, and Free Style in which you can play the songs that you have to unlock thought your play time. There is also a variety of genres from Easy Listening, to K-Pop, R&B, Rock (and even Merengue or Salsa), so there is something that you will like. As you play the songs and get better you level up, the higher your level the better rewards, you unlock more songs and unlock more clubs to visit on the World Tour mission based game. There are also DJ icons to help you in your quest to be a rhythm ninja.  Some of them raise your experience gain, and some give you more HP increase your score.  There are also a lot of customization options such as the speed in which the light projectors appear as well as the sound that will play when you hit the keys.

The mode where your training pays off is the World Tour Mode.  In here, you go to a series of “Clubs” and in each one there is a ClubMaster that gives you a series of challenges, which can vary from achieving a set number of combo hits to completing the mission with the fewer break mistakes as possible.  In World Tour as you level up, you gain access to more clubs and more challenges, hence my advice to train in Stage Mode. As you complete challenges and clubs in Word Tour, you unlock more Key Sounds as well as songs that you can play in stage mode.  You play and beat the songs as they become available in Free Style, so there is a lot of replay value here, not to mention that the higher your needed for accessing each club.  The harder become the challenges.  Some of them use Effector (a handicap you can set yourself on Stage Mode), and some are really hard especially with the song Stargazer. In The Option Mode, you can change your game settings such as the way the music sounds and the difficulty settings (on Hard you gain more Experience)

Bottom Line, SuperBeat: Xonic feels right at home with the Nintendo Switch.  With more than 60 songs, there is a lot of variety, and the hybrid nature of the Nintendo Switch complements SuperBeat: Xonic even more because you can rock it on the go.  I definitely recommend it to fans and newcomers alike.