If you only started listening to music in the last ten to fifteen years, you’ve probably never heard the sound of a cassette player running out of batteries. The iPod generation is unfamiliar with the sound of their favorite songs becoming slower and lower as they turn into a garbled mess. After all, when a CD player or iPod runs out of juice, it just shuts off. Now the younger generation has a chance to hear their music slowly die, because that’s the sound of Riddim Ribbon going off the rails.
Riddim Ribbon is a new music game from Tapulous, who has made a big business out of selling digital music and games together through the Tap Tap series. While the Tap Tap games are all about tapping your fingers on the screen, a percussive motion that is completely natural, in Riddim Ribbon you are forced to delicately balance your iPhone like you’re using a carpenter’s level on a rickety roller coaster.
You control a freewheeling neon tire as it zips over hills marked with a bright strip of light. You have to keep your wheel directly on the strip to keep the music going, or the soundtrack will immediately start to lose its pitch and tempo. The sound of poppy dance songs going instantly out of tune with the slightest mistake is jarring and unpleasant, and it might as well be nails on a chalkboard if you like the Black Eyed Peas.
I gotta feeling my Walkman needs new batteries.
And if you don’t care for the Black Eyed Peas, then you have no business downloading this game at all. Riddim Ribbon comes with just three full songs, all of them BEP singles: Meet Me Halfway, Boom Boom Pow, and I Gotta Feeling. You can buy a few additional songs from other artists like Tiesto and Benny Benassi, but Riddim Ribbon needs a much wider selection before we can recommend it to all types of music fans.
Riddim Ribbon seemed like it had a lot of potential when Apple included it in an onstage demo back in September to show what the iPhone and iPod Touch were capable of. The features we thought were so impressive back then, like branching pathways for alternate remixes, come across as distracting in the final product. You are constantly forced to awkwardly transition into remixes throughout each song, and it gives the music an inconsistent feel. It is also very difficult to get the 80% accuracy required to unlock the medium and hard stages.
Walk the line.
Our biggest disappointment with Riddim Ribbon is not the music selection, which we think will probably get better in the weeks and months ahead. It’s the fact that the core gameplay is so unnatural and entirely at odds with the pleasure of listening to music. Enjoying music shouldn’t be such an irritating, disjointed experience. It should be as natural as sitting back in your favorite chair while wearing a pair of headphones, or stepping into a crowded room at a party with a drink in your hand.
Riddim Ribbon sounds and feels off. The few moments the music, visuals, and gameplay come together are not necessarily worth the aggravation, and there are only so many times you can replay the same few songs before they fail to excite. We’re hoping Riddim Ribbon becomes better over time with a few updates, because right now it’s not so Boom Boom Pow.
8 Comments
Andrew, thanks for the thoughtful review.
Obviously, as the founder of the company that built the game, I don't agree with all your comments. A few thoughts:
- Just like we have invested tremendous energy into Tap Tap Revenge over the past year, we are going to do the same here. We see tremendous potential in this game, to build the next great music gaming franchise, and we will keep improving the gameplay, adding great music, and building an entire social layer on top of the game.
- This is a brand new gaming experience, unlike any other music game we've seen before, so we weren't assuming the game is perfect just yet. We are already tweaking the game based on initial feedback - so you'll see changes to the game in the next few days! And a lot of those are about increasing control, finetuning the gaming experience, and making just the right amount of audio distortion kick in to motivate the user to play better!
- We are going to keep audio distortion in (but we'll keep tweaking it of course, per the above), since it's a core part of the gaming experience. And of course tying the music experience to how well you play is also baked into games like Guitar Hero etc.
- Have you tried out the Tiësto and Benassi levels? Those are my favorite levels yet. I expect that we'll get better and better at building levels that are fun, challenging, and make you want to play over and over!
It's a journey! Join us:)
Thanks for your comments Bart! We will continue to follow this game's updates, especially if it becomes a "platform" for more downloadable content.
I disagree. I found it awesome to connect my iPod to my big ass speakers and the music does come together with the game very good. Also it isn't that hard to unlock new difficulties in levels
"It is also very difficult to get the 80% accuracy required to unlock the medium and hard stages."
Okay, first of all...if a guy working at a game reviewing site cannot get 80% on Easy mode, then he needs to be fired. Secondly, who in their right mind would want to play a higher difficulty mode if they can't even pass a lower difficulty?
I'd say the reviewer did nothing but say "Yeah look at me! I was too lazy to get used to a new type of game and since I suck at it, I'm gonna give it a bad review! I'm a retard!"
Christ. Lets see you make a better game than this.
Tapulous +100
Haters -100
I don't make games, but I do play a whole lot of them. And replaying the same songs over and over again because you get 78% instead of 80% is not that fun, especially when the songs sound distorted so often.
Glad you liked the game more than me. I'd recommend writing a user review instead of name-calling.
I fi d the gameplay good, but what would make it a really good game for me would be having a free track of the week like in tap tap. It would draw in so many more people
I think people will buy it anyway (as shown by the iTunes charts) because: a) Tapulous made it, b) BEP are, regardless of your stance on their music, a popular band, and c) it was in an Apple event. Free songs likely won't come as it takes much more work to do a layout with remixes for Riddim Ribbon than just mapping beats with TTR.
if they were on track to make it as a song anyway, i was thinking maybe put it as free for a week then make it cost 59p after a week. and maybe even for only free track 1 week a month :) but i see your point.
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