Preview: Fantasia: Music Evolved

For the second year running, I walked out of my Fantasia: Music Evolved E3 booking deciding the game was in the running for my game of show.

In a hands-on demo, I was able to play The Police’s “Message in a a Bottle”, remixing classical and jazz into the iconic rock song, all the while feeling like a musical genius doing so. I left the demo with a grin from ear to ear… and then snuck back in fifteen minutes later to try Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons Winter” in a co-op experience.

For those familiar with developer Harmonix’s games — Rock Band and Dance Central, to name a few — you know any rhythm game they make will be solid. Fantasia takes songs, both contemporary and classical, and lets you play conductor and DJ at the same time. You move you hand, like a conductor, from left to right, right to left, top to bottom (and so on; you get it) with the music, stepping out of the song at times to record drum, guitar or bass loops to inject into the mix. At midpoints during the song, you’ll choose to remix the song with classical, jazz or rock influences. The end result is a song that will never play out in exactly the same way twice.

The interface is simple to understand, easy to pick up and Kinect did a tremendous job of tracking my movements on the show floor of a very disco-lighted, very loud show floor. Like other Harmonix games, Fantasia is a Kinect game that really makes perfect use of the peripheral.

You can inject your own flavour into a song by matching on-screen swipes to create a jeweled multi-sided shape. If successful, you’ll get an interface that lets you record a guitar, drum or bass loop. The best thing about this is, the length of the loop is predetermined but the amount of time you have to create it is not. As you learn how the sample is to be made, you can fine tune it as many times as you’d like by moving your hands to create a new composition; when satisfied, you simply drop your hands to your sides and listen to your work before it’s added into the song itself.

By the end of “Message in a Bottle”, I left like rock god. Rated as a two-out-of-five difficulty song, I amassed over 1,600,000 points and was rated four stars a for my efforts. Thinking that wasn’t bad for my first try, I took on the four star “The Four Seasons Winter” the next time around.

I wasn’t prepared for how hard it was going to be. Nor how enjoyable.

By the end of the composition I was waving my hands around like the composer at the beginning of Fantasia himself, though I’m sure with far less grace. I’d also managed to gather quite a sizable crowd around me as I played, but I didn’t care if I looked a little foolish. I was having far too much fun to care. My smile seemed infectious; those watching all had large grins plastered across their faces and quite a few asked where the line started to play the game themselves.

Fantasia: Music Evolved is everything that Disney is rolled into one title. It’s fun, creative, wondrous and vibrant, and it definitely a game you should try for yourself on Xbox One with Kinect. Look for Fantasia from 21 October on Xbox One and Xbox 360.