The VR music genre has become quite a crowded affair. We’ve got everything from games like beat saber to some unique affairs like Audioshield with so many others in between. It seems that VR rhythm games have been the most popular types recently and it’s most likely because they are competitive and an amazing game to bring out amongst friends. They’re also incredibly easy to hop in and out of and barely require any kind of real-time commitment. But how many copycats can survive? If they’re offering more or less the same experience, where is the audience going to come from? Luckily for Song Beater: Quite My Temp, the answer to that question should be from everywhere.
What sets Song Beater: Quite My Tempo apart from other music-based games is its’ impressive presentation. It takes place in some amazing locations to start. The first one I experienced was a beautiful underwater location and it’s not just static scenery. There are sharks, scuba divers, skeletons, and squids about. Then, you’re taken into space as planets and asteroids fly by, a desert-themed area, then a jungle and riding on top of a freaking dragon. It just doesn’t stop with the variety which is fantastic to see.
The presentation doesn’t just end there as you have several slickly built menus available to you at all times starting with the settings menu where you are able to alter both your height and weight. Why do those matter here? Well, Song Beater: Quite My Tempo comes with its’ own built-in calorie tracker. While these are usually not that accurate, it still came within 20 calories of the number my Fitbit tracked so it’s definitely not bad. You can also alter everything from song speed to haptic feedback and graphics as well and the breadth of personal customization available is fantastic.
The gameplay involves balls flying at you with either a triangle or a circle on them. Your right hand corresponds to the circles and your left to the triangle. They don’t just come straight at you either, these things fly at you from all angles and if you decide to try out the 360 mode, get ready to be spinning around like a crazy person as they will be coming from every angle. In addition to having to hit all these orbs flying at you, you also have to duck and actually jump over lasers and dodge side to side from dangerous electric walls that can end your round quickly if you’re not careful.
You can also put your own songs into Song Beater: Quite my Tempo and the game will create a beat map based on them and give appropriate difficulty depending on the tempo on the song. For example, I tried Them Bones by Alice in Chains and you can only play it on impossible mode and it’s incredibly tough to keep up with. There are single-player and multiplayer modes available to you, but the most interesting mode may be the freestyle mode. What this allows you to do is pick from several different weapons like laser swords, tonfas, double-bladed staves, and lets you try your hand at these songs using completely different mechanics from the main punching one. There are several difficulties available to play on and I found the intense and impossible ones to live up to their names. The normal difficulty is tough as well, but it was a great workout and was a fun spin on the rhythm VR genre.
Preparation
You’re going to want a 5×5 play space in order to enjoy the game to the fullest. While there is the ability to play the game in seated mode, it’s not the complete experience. It is available on Oculus Quest through Side Quest and that wireless experience in a game that gives you full 360 gameplay is a definite plus.
Intensity- 9/10
This is one of the most overall physically exhausting games I’ve played in VR. The pace is relentless and demands constant attention to detail and body movement. It’s as much a mental workout as it is a physical one. I tracked my workout using a Fitbit during my sweat dripping, 30-minute play session.
Calories burned: 248
Calories burned per minute: 8.2
Average Heart Rate: 115
Max Heart Rate: 134
Active Minutes: 24
Regardless of what difficulty you choose, this is going to be a full-body workout. The normal single-player mode is tough enough with each song providing its’ own challenge to get through, but things really take a leap into the next level when you go to 360 mode. This mode causes the orbs to fly at you from all directions and requires constant attentiveness and body position awareness if you want to succeed. I nearly fell over trying to dodge the lasers at one point and had to make sure of my surroundings several times during gameplay. You get sucked into the experience very quickly and it’s among the most physically intense VR games I’ve played.
Arms- 10/10
Whether you’re using the spiked gloves or the myriad of other weapons available to you in the Freestyle Mode, your arms are heavily involved in the Song Beater: Quite My Tempo. You’re going to be punching, slashing and chopping these flying orbs out of the air constantly and your arms and shoulders are going to be working overtime as a result of it. Depending on the song you choose, you may have moments of relative ease followed by a fast-paced beat that demands you kick it into high gear and start moving your arms like a maniac to keep up. I felt my workout the next day from this game and it’s a terrific arm workout that gets even better if you add weighted gloves to the mix.
Legs- 8/10
Considering the orbs come flying at you from all heights and if you’re playing the 360 mode, literally all angles, your legs are going to be pretty involved which is refreshing when it comes to VR music games. Not only will you be occasionally crouching and altering body angles to hit the orbs, but you will also be jumping and ducking and dodging from side to side when the laser walls come into play. If you’re playing on the higher difficulty, this will be incredibly frequent get a good leg stretch in before playing as you’re going to need those leg muscles loose and flexible if you want to achieve high scores in Song Beater: Quite My Tempo.
Core and Balance- 7/10
I found myself stretching high and low during the various modes of Song Beater: Quite My Tempo and it was a surprisingly good core workout. While you can play seated, if you’re playing standing, you’re going to be reaching to the limits of your arms’ length during some of the tougher songs and you’re going to feel it in your core after a while of playing. In 360 mode, all bets are off as you’re going to be twisting and turning every which way. This leads into the balance factor here which is going to be incredibly important because during this game more than many others, I felt myself about to fall over or crash into something from all the dodging and ducking. This isn’t a disservice to the game, it’s pretty easy to lose yourself in the wild images coming at you, and considering most of the levels don’t involve any kind of floor for you to see, I had a little trouble with this. 360 mode is only for those who want an absolutely bonkers workout, it’s a hell of a time though.
Time Perception- 9/10
Because of the structure of the game, you don’t really feel the time passing as you play because you’re always pushing on to the next song or the next area, it’s easy for the minutes to fly by while you attempt to conquer the various songs and levels. It’s also very easy to just hop in and out of the game and it is a great short workout you can incorporate daily if you so choose.
Replayability- 9/10
There are several modes available for both multiplayer and single player in Song Beater: Quite My Tempo. Within each mode, there are tons of songs to choose from that keep the experience fresh along with several different levels to play through also. Within Freestyle mode, you can use tons of different weapons are available to try and each one brings a different playstyle to the table. You can also put any song you’d like into provided you’ve downloaded the correct formats. On top of all this, you can take any song and either speed up or slow down the rate at which it plays to create some truly insane challenges. The developer is also extremely dedicated to improving the game and more levels and features are always in the making.
Fitness Scalability – 8/10
While the easier difficulty modes are pretty manageable, the tougher ones are absolutely insane and require intense precision in order to complete them. If the higher difficulties are what you’d like to do workout wise, but you find yourself failing constantly, you can change your mode to never fail. In this mode, your levels go on regardless of how many orbs you miss or how many laser walls hit you, so you can safely survive the whole song and get whatever kind of workout you’d like out of it.
Lack of Nausea- 9/10
Song Beater: Quite My Tempo is a pretty smooth experience as far as dizziness and nausea is concerned. Despite the tons of images coming at you and the bombardment of orbs heading your way, I didn’t feel dizzy at all. The ONLY time I did was during the dragon-riding level as being in the sky while riding this virtual dragon is a bit overwhelming and I felt a little bit dizzy and off-balance after, but other than that level, it’s totally fine.
Social Competition- 9/10
Most music games just give you the single-player experience and leave it up to you to bring the game to parties and create the social experience yourself. That is not the case with Song Beater: Quite My Tempo as there are several multiplayer modes on display to put your best scores up against other players around the world. There are two different multiplayer modes on display and there is a solid player base supporting them both. The most enjoyable one pits you against another player at the same time and you get the final scores at the end of the round. It’s easy to jump into and there are plenty of people playing right now. Competitive workouts are always fun and the same goes for this scenario.
VR FIT Score- 8.6/10
The Good
Song Beater: Quite My Tempo is a unique experience in the VR music genre. It provides a fantastic workout for your whole body and allows you to use your own music to work out to. The multiplayer has a solid player base and gives you multiple modes to compete against other players. The levels are very creative and have some truly impressive visuals showing off the developers’ hard work. The developers also are dedicated to improving their product constantly.
The Bad
The single-player mode isn’t really structured and pretty much just asks you to manually choose different songs to play through without there being cohesiveness to it. The music available is for a very specific taste, house music. Thankfully that can be remedied by picking whatever playlist you create and inserting it into the game.
Song Beater: Quite My Tempo is available for $14.99 on Steam and playable on Oculus Quest on Side Quest, Oculus, Windows Mixed Reality, HTC Vive and Valve Index.
