User Review : Spectra

Not what we’ve been racing towards

“Have I ever played a game that was ostensibly a video game adaptation of a…soundtrack?” This is the one characteristic which caught my attention of this title upon initial discovery. The retro aesthetics, the racing gameplay, and, yes, the chip-tune soundtrack itself are qualities found within a plethora of other indie titles, but this unexpected method of adaptation in the milieu of the oft-examined comic book series, pulpy science-fiction movies, and high fantasy novels is at least some kind of tangible nuance from the norm. Inspired by the recently-released soundtrack of the same name by Chipzel, a chip-tune extraordinaire whose beats are played through a Gameboy, Spectra has its moments—rare as they unfortunately are—of keeping one mesmerized to the marriage of neonic imagery, adrenaline-infused racing and retro music; unfortunately, problematic design issues and general lack of any compelling structure result in yet another ID@Xbox mobile port that wouldn’t even qualify as a fun experience for a weekend.

Billed as an “F Zero meets Audiosurf,” Spectra’s concept is quite simple to understand: maneuver a Gameboy/spacecraft hybrid down a 2-lane Rainbow Road, remaining on the track until the song of that particular stage has finished. Falling off the track results in a fail state and having to restart from the beginning. Acceleration is automatically controlled but players must weave around purple elongated hexagons that are placed on the left, center, and right of these tracks while picking up yellow pellets and flying over boost pads that double as a temporary speed increase and score multiplier.

Part of what can keep anyone rapt in attention with Spectra would be the ten unique, euphonious music tracks tied to each individual course. Anyone familiar with praised minimalist indie darling Super Hexagon will be reacquainted with those up-tempo beats along with some laid-back, dreamy soundscapes on other stages. A big oddity about this adaptation though is the near-singular focus developer Gateway Interactive put towards the game proper, namely how it almost feels like a courtesy in service TO this soundtrack rather than its own complimentary-yet-equal piece to a greater whole. The music remains fixed while the racing tracks will change up via procedural generation. The result: moments of fortuitous maneuvers that don’t compliment the background music.

While this method seems contradictory in nature, the issue could’ve been negligible if there were more than several simple variations between tracks. Forked junctions that will temporarily split between two or three lanes, dips and climbs, straightaways littered with pellets and obstacles, quick turns with about fifteen pellets squished together, and a few other nuances that’ll all be seen within the first half-hour of the game. And it’s a bit disingenuous to consider the maps akin to Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road either. Yes, this takes place on a floating highway in space (with stars flying past) but the track always remains purple.

In one respect, I can understand not going for the hand-crafted map route with its inherent arcade sensibilities. Putting a greater demand on split-second decision-making and assiduity over map memorization makes sense with prodding the player to climb up leaderboard ranks. And I would pay no mind if whatever map algorithm weren’t so adventitious in setting up obstacles; this thing can vomit out obstructions like early/mid 80's Rare games could vomit out enemies. Starter levels may not seem so bad but the difficulty spikes can often be outrageous, especially in the Hardcore versions.

Further hindering player success would be the controls themselves. To clarify: they aren’t bad per se. The sense of acceleration harkens back to the likes of F-Zero X and the success of grazing through the narrow gaps between obstructions are euphoric moments. But the game feel for steering leaves me feeling betrayed especially when such a comparison to F-Zero has been given. What made the F-Zero series, and its better clones, was the minutiae in its handling ALONG with its fast pace. Skilled F-Zero players could weave in and out of traffic because of how perfectly control stick movements corresponded with the vehicle’s movement on screen. Here, any move, big or slight, shows the ship’s animation aim at a sharp forty-five degree angle. This kind of disconnect, tiny as it may seem, made it impossible for me to ever feel as though I weaved through tough parts with only an adroit set of hands but also with some blind luck. As I’ve stated in the past, I understand game feel can be a tough thing to get down pat, but when as reaction-demanding a game as this, one of flying down a narrow road with a cluster of objects between you and your objective, can’t adequately get down the sense of player control there’s a fundamental issue at play here that can’t be ignored.

Addressing that cardinal sin, I’m also compelled to not disregard the nice touches found in the gameplay either. The scoring structure creates its own sort of rhythm within the game. While collecting yellow bits within a small window of roughly two seconds keeps that score streak going, and multiplying those points with boost pads accordingly, the different ways of getting points by acquiring some air time or grazing the side of an obstacle rather than a full-on collision benefit the player experience in some profound ways. Providing just enough ways for players to get a few more points towards their high score allows opportunities for more player experimentation and the operant conditioning of trying to outlast the cooldown timers for more rewards makes it so entrancing at times.

Benefits with the structured score tracking aside, there’s quite a demand for anyone to be relentless against what’s at best artificially-taxing race courses. Pitting players against the upsurge of impediments typically found in the last quarter of specific tracks can be almost insuperable to push through, especially when even a short lapse of judgment can result in game over. Even the very completion of said task leaves one drained! Since completion is directly tied to the completion of Chipzel’s song there’s no 8-bit official with a checkered flag at the end or any such applause; instead, the music will simply end, a screen pops up to tally the score, and be done with you.

Similar to my criticisms of another ID@Xbox mobile port Nutjitsu, but with the disparity of production values inverted, there’s not a whole lot to hold with high esteem except for one key aspect. The retro 8-bit style benefits thru presenting information on screen clearly for players to make split second decisions. But to see the same forks in the road, same colors, and everything else ad nauseam by the end of the first few racetracks gives me the impression of Gateway giving just enough effort to let the computer do the heavy lifting. The animations are pretty basic and even the retro pastiche found within the menus and font look discordant with the aesthetics during play.

Similar to my clarification found within Nutjitsu too, I don’t want to equivocate my intentions with retro graphics and sounds as being of bad quality by default. The criticism is focused against the inconsistency, artistic intent in question, and so forth. One may bring up the humble beginnings on mobile devices but, again, having a relatively exorbitant price of $7.49 (standard) on this format of gaming devices means some higher standard needs to be met. And to some extent they are. Having this multifaceted soundtrack plus the sound variations whenever colliding with an obstacle work much better for better-quality speakers than the standard mobile can offer. But unfortunately that ‘future proof’ aspect of Spectra only carried over in respect to sound design.

What’s left is really just an indie game offering up more fun ideas than racing for me. Sure, music’s informed a lot of cutscenes and gameplay moments before; but the conceit of music as the whole framework OF a game sounds like there’s under-cultivated territory here. What would a videogame adaptation for a John Williams score look like? What about hip-hop, country, or other genres? Games like this and Crypt of the NecroDancer using music in unexpected ways gives me optimism of this potential; however, that doesn’t offset bad game design lest you’ll have players wanting to forego the whole purpose of the adaptation in the first place, providing the same ignominious gesture treated to the typical movie-licensed game.

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