Back in the mid-00s you almost couldn’t go to any store without seeing games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band being displayed throughout the gaming departments on the demo systems or in advertising. Each game had its own spin-offs with different peripherals and entries that added new tracks, bands, or instruments. They started to fizzle out but became slightly relevant a few years back. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough evolution in the games or hardware to warrant a return that really broke new ground, until now. FUSER is the penultimate music video game that has broken that ground and is paving the way for the next round of similar music titles.

Story

I’m not going to focus too much on the story aspects, because like in every music game there really isn’t much to hang onto. You’re an up-and-coming new DJ whose thrust into the music festival scene. You’ll meet a vibrant cast of veteran DJs from all walks of life who’ll teach you the ways of flow. Through their teachings, you’ll grow more in tune with your music style and how to win over the crowd.

Gameplay

As a rising star in the DJ world, you’re going to want to start with the campaign that FUSER has to offer. It’s the best way to learn the gameplay mechanics, become comfortable with the tracklist, and how to add flair to your shows besides what’s coming from your dashboard. FUSER makes it incredibly apparent that it was made for you the player to show your unique style and never pulls you away from that. This is your time, so make the most of it.

When you’re tossed into the game everything gets explained in little bits as you progress through the campaign. I like the way that the devs structured how players would learn the steps. Each one is done at a great pace and organically fit into their respective segment. The game gets fairly difficult as you progress so the need to bake these parts of it into your mind really had to be done correctly so that it eventually became muscle memory. There are a ton of different moving parts that you’ll have to learn and become comfortable with in order to fully see what you and this game have to offer each other.

FUSER is a playground when it comes to what you’re able to do as a DJ in your element. Besides the obvious things like parts of specific music tracks, there are things like your own music samples that can be created in real-time, the abilities to drop tracks, pausing each individually, focusing on a specific track piece, changing pitch, and even more. You have to balance these too as they’ll pop up as specific objectives that are needed in order to keep the crowd morale up and you earning more stars. This doesn’t even include things like individual requests or playing enough tracks that the crowd is into. Everything has to be done precisely in order to keep you sailing smoothly.

There’s a freestyle mode implemented and it really begs for players to experiment with it. This offers some real fun to be had by bringing in an actual DJing experience that supersedes it just being a video game. It’s really a unique thing to get the chance to put together pieces of music that traditionally wouldn’t go together and make it work. I’m a big rock fan myself, so being able to merge it with hip-hop, R&B, or Latin/Caribbean arrangements was always fun to experiment with. It almost makes you feel like a genius when you find a combination that really “fuses” together perfectly.

Besides the campaign or freestyle mode, there’s a multiplayer freestyle and an online battle mode. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t able to find someone to connect to in order to see what these really had to offer. I’m sure the freestyle was the same as the single-player version but it would’ve been awesome to vibe off of another player. I’d love to see other DJs and their style, and maybe even pick something new up along the way. The battle mode though is a complete mystery to me as to what it adds extra on top of what I actually know about the game. I guess we’ll see more when other players start taking the stage.

There is a sort of upgrade system for multiplayer whereas you play, more items will be unlocked as you progress. It doesn’t look to be a season pass of sorts which is a breathe of fresh air. The items unlocked seem to be customization options for your character like clothing. This game does a great job of allowing you to tailor the customization to your favor. There’s definitely a lot of character customization inspiration that has been taken from Rock Band and was implemented here, and this is a great thing.

There’s almost nothing you can’t customize when it comes to FUSER. You can change your character’s appearance, your crate (setlist songs), and stage effects. As you progress through the game you’ll unlock new outfits, song credits, and more to fully developed your own style to its fullest. Your character is an extension of yourself and Harmonix gives players an amazing character creator that offers diversity to show a representation of every community around. There are no specific genders to choose from and everyone can wear or look however they want. This is a fantastic choice that Harmonix has made, and more games should be doing things like this in my opinion.

Besides the characters, you can add just about whatever song you want to your personal track crate which you’ll bring up on stage and you’re free to choose what stage effects will happen during your set. There’s the laser lights, fire or sparks, fireworks overhead, or beach balls for your crowd to interact with. Everything has been carefully crafted to make this cartoonish world feel like a real music festival. I can’t think of anything else I would’ve added myself that could’ve made it any better!

Visuals

FUSER has a deeply colorful palette that brings a joyful nuance to the game and helped to hype me up during each show. I definitely got Rock Band vibes from the way the characters looked and I loved it. It made it feel as if these could take place in the same universe. I enjoyed the diverse variety of characters as well. They really reflect the diverse world we live in and the community that exists in the music scene.

Sound

This is the game’s strongest attribute and that’s a good thing due to the fact that this is a music game. Being able to pick apart songs from my favorite artists and creating my own mixes felt amazing every time I’d find a combination that sounded cohesive. There aren’t many games that give you this kind of creative freedom with real-world media, so it’s definitely addictive. The songs themselves sound amazing and the fact that you can change the actual pitch and speeds really adds even more than just stitching songs together.

Replayability

There’s definitely a lot of replayability in this title. Of course, there’s the freestyle mode which aspiring DJs would have a ball with, online multiplayer to indulge in, and what looks to be an ever-growing library of music tracks coming down the pipeline via DLC. There really isn’t an end-game here, just like in the music games of the past. While I wouldn’t call this a party game like past titles in the genre, this is more along the lines of something you’d play in order to relax after a long day. The music is upbeat, the gameplay is complex, and the outcome is Superb!

What It Could Have Done Better

I played it on the PS4 so I used a controller for my entire playthrough. Because of the cursor type of controls, I think this game is better suited for a mouse and keyboard. Sometimes I felt like I didn’t have enough time to really go hard on a song because the cursor was either trailing behind or I’d overshoot my landing. It wasn’t a horrible experience, but I wish I had other peripherals hooked up.

Something I wish the game had at launch was a bigger tracklist. There are over 100 songs and admittedly it is a ton of tracks to play with but when you’re mixing between songs constantly, there’s a bit of monotony to be had. Maybe even an additional 20 songs would’ve helped in that aspect. I’d also wished there was clearer instruction at times when following the objectives on screen. When you’re trying to juggle the crowd reception, objectives, timers, and measures, it got annoying when I’d mess up something easy solely because of the way it comes across in the objectives area.

Verdict

Even taking into consideration the nitpicks I had with the game, it’s clear that this is what games of this genre needed to finally break the mold. Music games were once a shallow pretend version of the real thing and now they’re starting to become more than that. If Rocksmith was able to merge games with rockers then FUSER does the same thing for DJs. I truly feel that it lives up to what it set out to be, and that’s the evolution of music games. If you’re someone like me who misses the days when games of this genre were plentiful but you want something innovative, then this is right up your alley!