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Preview: Fantasia: Music Evolved

The show floor is a terrible, absolutely terrible place to demo both music games and motion games, let alone a combination of the two. The constant rattle of gunfire and rumble of queues crash into your ears while people try their best Garrett impressions to sneak behind or under the view of the Kinect. That all-seeing eye struggles to identify two people shaking hands but has no trouble switching focus to the guy trying to slide past behind you to get to the Minecraft booth. When I did get into the swing of the game, I was in constant fear that arm swings or steps will result in my big frame wiping out a small (or large) child. Luckily, that only happened once while playing Fantasia, and the kids father gave him a stern telling off for getting in the way of my (undoubtedly majestic) performance.

In this environment it is a testament to Fantasia that it was still fun. Yes, it had massive troubles identifying two players (who have to shake hands to activate two player mode) and the swipe based UI was tough to use even when Kinect wasn’t confused by a crowd of dozens around us. I’m holding all judgment of the Kinect functionality until I can play the game in an ideal environment, but when it was working in Fantasia it worked well, able to tell the difference between open hand swipes and closed fist punches and rarely dropping or misinterpreting movements.

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Fantasia is best described as Dance Central without leg movement. It is very much a rhythm game; you swipe away at markers on the screen in the indicated direction, sometimes with two hands, sometimes with punches. It gives you the feel of conducting, but you are still very much responding to the music rather than directing it. When you catch the rhythm of a song it feels very intuitive and the two player choreography is cleverly designed (even if our lack of timing sometimes resulted in painful wrist on wrist collisions). As long as Kinect can handle the precision required this could be the closest a motion rhythm game has got to the score chasing thrills of Harmonix classics Amplitude and Frequency.Punctuating the rhythm sections are some improvisational moments, where you can set the beat for the next section using a variety of mini games, some saw you attempting to autotune a beat, others played like a drum machine. Unfortunately these were poorly explained both in game and by the demonstrators, which made them more of an annoyance than a feature. When they can be properly manipulated (and completed) I think they will add an interesting customisation element to songs, but this wasn’t a great place to test them.

Song selection looks pretty good so far, with the game equally at home with rock songs, pop songs and classical pieces. We didn’t get a chance to see the single player offerings, but the core game in Fantasia is a lot of fun. Easier to pick up and learn than Dance Central, but with a high ceiling to mastery, it should be equally fun to just muck about with and to play with dedication to leaderboard positions and unique mixes.

Fantasia: Music Evolved is out 21 October for Xbox One and Xbox 360, and will require the Kinect peripheral.


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About the author

Stuart Gollan

From Amiga to Xbox One, Doom to Destiny, Megazone to Stevivor, I've been gaming through it all and have the (mental) scars to prove it. I love local multiplayer, collecting ridiculous Dreamcast peripherals, and Rocket League.