Fuser, a Nintendo Switch game developed by the creators of Rock Band and Dance Central, Harmonix Music Systems and published by NCSOFT, is a nonstop virtual music festival game where you control the music. With Fuser, it combines elements of the world’s most popular songs to collaborate with friends or create your own mixes to perform. Fuser puts you behind turntables and mixers as an up-and-coming DJ, where you use different elements of songs to create unique beats. In doing so, you can work to gain the respect of other DJs in the festival field as well. The features of Fuser include a library of over 100 songs, including tracks from the world’s top artists from the past and up until around 2019 and early 2020, three different game modes, customization for your set up and character, and a platform to share your created mixes with others online.
The instructions of Fuser are not that difficult to begin with. You are given a DJ set with the ability to place four different disks on your set. Each of the discs represents a different type of sound from the songs. The four different types of discs you can grab from each song are bass, voice, synth, and instruments. From there, you are able to mix different tracks together to create a unique mix.
Once the basics are down, you can either play from three different game modes, single player or even multiplayer. You can play the campaign, freestyle, battle, or even co-op battle and freestyle. The campaign mode is recommended for beginners, where you can learn the basics and progress to advance your mixing techniques to impress the crowd. Freestyle is where you can mix beats on your own or even create your own to save without the constraints of Campaign or Battle. Battle mode is where you can go against another person to create the best mix out of the both of you, seeing which DJ is the best. Multiplayer mode for freestyle and battle is the same as single player, but the only difference is that you can play with your friends instead of random people.
You are also able to earn currency throughout the game the more you play through the different game modes. This in game currency allows you to buy customizations for your set up, character, and more tracks. Within certain game modes there is also a battle pass type of reward system the more you play and level up as well. The rewards can vary from various customizations to more currency or even tracks.
With songs from all across different genres and the world, there is a lot of variety offered for what types of songs you would like to listen to and mix. It can range from rock to even country, from older songs to the more recent songs released this year. The pool of music is large to accompany the different types of mixes you can create in Fuser. While I am a person who does not really listen to these types of tracks offered in the game, I was surprised at how well the music could mesh together so smoothly. I even tried to mix a country and a rap song together and it actually did not sound terrible. The game does an excellent job meshing together the elements needed for mixing the music.
While Fuser is a good beginning journey into learning how to mix music, the gameplay itself is not at all that interactive. For most of the game modes other than freestyle, you’re required to fulfill tasks that appear in a box during your round. By fulfilling these, it allows you to gain more points and woo the crowd. This makes it feel more like a puzzle game or a task fulfilling game when playing battle or campaign mode. It may be fun to others, but for me, I found it relatively lackluster and easily tiring. I usually enjoy beat games, but the premise of Fuser felt very tacky and the objectives were too simplistic and repetitive.
The visuals of the game give off a very nostalgic tone. The art style reminded me of The Sims and the era of Rock Band CGI. For a game on the Nintendo Switch, I would’ve thought that the graphics would feel more up to the current times rather than Sims avatars from the earlier 2010s. I personally did not like the art style or the different options of customizations. I felt that it wasn’t diverse enough for the character customizations and the set customizations were very standard.
Overall, I feel that it has dated visuals, the gameplay is lackluster, and it just feels clunky overall. I would recommend Fuser to players who are passionate about music and want to learn how to start mixing. I think that Fuser serves as a good beginning guide to learn how to create your own unique tracks from songs without having to buy your expensive set up. Despite the gameplay itself being lackluster and repetitive, you can still do whatever you want in Freestyle mode and if you want to show it to your friends you can put it in multiplayer mode. For me though, I personally would not play Fuser that often as it is not the type of beat game that is up my alley. It feels like it is trying too hard to bring back music games from the same era as Rock Band with Sims avatars, except they are not updating it to the current times. Rather, they’re keeping the same style from then, just updating the music and putting it on new devices such as the Nintendo Switch.
Check Out the Fuser Trailer:
For more information, please visit: https://www.fuser.com/en-us
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I really love playing video games! Growing up, my dad introduced me to video games, the first being Street Fighter. I have always been surrounded by them growing up and even now. They really impacted my life allowing me to share this commonality with my friends and new ones. I play a wide array of games, mostly PC, but sometimes PS4 and Nintendo Switch. Some of my favorite games are Final Fantasy VII, League of Legends, Persona 5, and Stardew Valley. As of recent, I've been playing Fall Guys and Among Us as well!
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