Spinning to Perfection: My Review of Spin Rhythm XD, the Best PC Rhythm Game Yet
Spoiler, its really good. Also my early review of Exoprimal is in here.
Spin Rhythm XD Review
So yesterday I took a chance and purchased Spin Rhythm XD on Steam only to discover that it is without a doubt one of the best Rhythm games available on pc. Granted I played it on my steam deck, but it was still awesome. It’s basically the only Arcade Rhythm game that was made to be compatible with the PC period as far as I’m aware. Sure other games exist, but they are all ports or clones of existing games to make them work with pc. Clone hero, and stepmania come to mind. Ok well… I guess OSU is natively a pc game, but that game is mostly held up by its extensive community made maps. As far as I’m aware it does not natively come as its own experience. Spin Rhythm XD comes with a full awesome soundtrack, amazing unlockable customization features, and a really satisfying rhythm system. It’s hard to describe how satisfying it is. The system does not translate well to watched video in my opinion. Other rhythm games certainly look more impressive, and look like they have more going on. The spinning mechanic of this game just really makes you feel cool. I’ve yet to get through all the songs the game has to offer which is really nice. Additionally, I’ve been having a blast just playing through the game on the easiest difficulty. I know after my rant about competitive games being too hard you may not believe this, but especially for rhythm games I usually crank the difficulty all the way up. Its rare for a rhythm game to keep me engaged even on the easiest difficulty and this game really does. There is just something so satisfying about spinning that disk and stopping it at exactly the right time. So yeah you could do worse for $20.
Exoprimal Early Impressions
None of my friends were around to play exoprimal with me today, but I found out that the beta began on 3/16 at 5pm. So I booted up the game, made my character, and played a bit of the tutorial. I’m very, very impressed by what I’m seeing. Exoprimal has a ton of different suits to use each with different skills and abilities that all have extremely satisfying animations to accompany them. Each suit class has the standard set of overwatch abilities and an ult which honestly all felt pretty great to use. There is also some element of base building too! I think my most uttered phrase while testing the game was “Oh… Ok!” Interestingly your (silent)character and their and gender is different to your exosuits. So you could, as I tested, be a male character in a female exosuit since the exosuits have their own personalities. It wasn’t explained in the tutorial so I’m not sure the specifics behind this, but nonetheless it was very cool. Think Overwatch but every character is D.VA. The other thing that shocked me was that there is exosuit on exosuit combat. I just assumed that the game would be a left 4 dead style 4 people come in, try to survive game. But no. I haven’t played it yet, but from what it looks like you spawn into a matchmade game against other teams that have to compete to complete dinosaur based objectives. You obviously have to attack the dinosaurs, but you also attack and kill the other teams. I’m not sure if I’m in favor of this yet, but I’m always glad to see some PvPvE in a game. I feel like games don’t do that enough. Can’t wait to try this one out with some friends!
You can check the open beta out this weekend over here.
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