Video hands-on: Beats

by Andrew Yoon { Dec 7th 2007 at 9:30AM }

Wait, you still didn't buy Beats yet? Maybe you need some gameplay footage? Well, fine! We made a video late last night just for you, using the PLAYSTATION Eye. While you watch, you can also read some impressions of the game we received from PSP Fanboy readers through the evening:

"Wow! This game is gorgeous! It's much more deep than I expected from a 5 dollar game. The gameplay is simple and effective. I really enjoy the visual customizations (I picked Rock as my background) and being able to play the game with any song that you want? Priceless." - Barndo111

"i am very, very happy about this game, downloaded it, and its going to be my new crack when I'm on the go! love it! anyone that has a PSP right now should download this immediately!!" - lenny0487

"The game is awesome ... who would've thought that this will be such a great game ? :D" - Alien

Keep the comments coming in, folks. We love to see what you all think of it!

Gallery: beats

Tags: beats, joystiqfeatures

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Brody @ Jan 24th 2008 2:19PM

I think one of the coolest things about Rock Band and music in video games is that there are so many more people interested in taking the leap to playing real instruments to experiment. While I was at NAMM last week, I saw a new drum company launching this spring called Dixon Drums and they're making high quality, aggresive drum sets on the cheap. If you ever wanted to be a drummer, nows a good time to make the leap. Check them out @ www.myspace.com/dixondrums

Ilan Feyaerts @ Dec 7th 2007 9:53AM

I live in Europe so I have this game for 3 weeks or something.
When I saw the trailer I just wanted it.
It all looked very cool and nice.
And guess what it is cool I mean very cool I am still playing it after 3 weeks I think this is the longest time I have ever played a game because I ussualy get bored of a game but not with Beats.
And if you are tired of it (wich will never happen) you can just put new songs in it or make a song yourself.
And if that's not enough you can make music with friends and play online.
I have only 1 thing to say to all of you who don't have this game yet : BUY IT!

jnavasard @ Dec 7th 2007 9:50AM

This game is COMPLETE STEAL at only $4.99!!! Seriously!!!
Menus and graphic options are lush and impressive. Game play is
fun, simple to learn, and most importantly, you play against your own music right off your memory card. There is no reason why you shouldn't go to the Playstation Store right now and download this game! By far the best investment I've made for my PSP for the price!

GoBob @ Dec 7th 2007 9:59AM

For five bucks, this is amazing. I really hope Sony keeps doing stuff like this. Cheap=lots of sales.

Alien @ Dec 7th 2007 10:01AM

This could easily become the next Luminees ... seriously , that was a major hit on the PSP , and seeing how original this game is , I think it alone could give a huge boost for the PSstore :)

Kraynor @ Dec 7th 2007 10:40AM

Damn your PSP is noisy compared to my one...
Bought this game after reading the first impressions and I gotta say, apart from my 1st month of Xbox Live, this is the best $4.99 I've ever spent!

Shadowcast @ Dec 7th 2007 10:55AM

Damn you Yoon!... now I have to play Beats, again!

Jonathan @ Dec 7th 2007 11:02AM

Well, I think the game seems great and $5 is really nothing. I would have bought it if I could.

Buy apparently, people who buy Macs don't play PSP. Sony only wants to support the Microsoft-supporting PSP owners.

::confused at logic::

Tahiri @ Dec 8th 2007 3:40PM

You can still buy it if you have a PS3.

pixelator @ Dec 7th 2007 10:35PM

Sony thinks gamers don't usually buy Macs... And they're basically correct.

Hashbrown_Hunter @ Dec 8th 2007 1:08AM

Pretty much, yeah.

Jonathan @ Dec 7th 2007 11:05AM

Wait, that's "hard"?

Anyway to speed up the gameplay to make it faster/harder?

That seems like nothing. Slow = no good. Someone please let me know.

Andrew Yoon @ Dec 7th 2007 11:07AM

There's one more difficulty past Hard called Extreme. But, that would be too difficult to play while also recording.

Jonathan @ Dec 7th 2007 11:14AM

^Thanks for the reply, and thanks for putting up the video and more impressions. Awesomeness @ PSPfanboy as usual.

Tom @ Dec 7th 2007 11:26AM

Amazingly deep and very fun. No-brainer buy for $5.

Ilan Feyaerts @ Dec 7th 2007 12:24PM

Try playing Shadow Of The Day from Linkin Park.
Because it's really fun to play and it's fun because it's really good on the rythem. Really you have to try it, it will be satisfying trust me especially on hard.

oomp @ Dec 7th 2007 12:27PM

Has no one else had battery issues with the game? I've been on the phone with Sony all day trying to solve the problem.

John the Snake Man @ Dec 7th 2007 12:34PM

Its worth IT!!

daniel-kun @ Dec 7th 2007 12:35PM

Honestly guys, how can you call this game 'deep'? I've bought it, since I know I can trust Andrew, but I'm not nearly as impressed as the rest might be. I mean, it has just one 'level', the music in the background is completely irrelevant. You could as well turn it off and listen to your HiFi instead. And then there's the gameplay which hurts my fingers and became uninteresting after a few times... I'm really puzzled why everybody is so hyped?
Maybe I'm just not into repetitive gameplay like everybody else is :-)

GoBob @ Dec 7th 2007 12:50PM

I would hardly call it deep, but it's a fun little game for $5. Basically, it makes listening to your music a little more interesting. Maybe you're just not a rhythm games sort of person.

disguy @ Dec 7th 2007 1:11PM

Bought the game. Definitely a fun game for five bucks.

However, I did find one song that didn't work too well so far. Not that it didn't work, it's just that I guess it stayed at the same beat forever it seemed. It was Ne-Yo - Because of You on normal and seriously, I hit x like 100 times on the right then o 100 times on the left. It was ridiculous. However, when I switched it to hard, it actually got all the different beats and added more variety in the buttons.

I hope I don't find too much more of those songs.

NukeAssault @ Dec 7th 2007 1:37PM

I guess ill get it. >_>

Gonna need to get a bigger memeory stick though. Unless i use my extra 1gb one.

brettjr @ Dec 7th 2007 1:46PM

Beats doesn't support wma playback so if you want to use music from cds better have a handy converter and sometimes the songs lag.

DiddlyKong @ Dec 7th 2007 2:23PM

Do these games have a drm? Will I be able to put on other psp's?

Brandon @ Dec 7th 2007 6:22PM

up to 5, like ps3 games

Martin @ Dec 7th 2007 2:25PM

Do any of you others feel that the songs lag? That is my one complaint about Phase for the iPod, and it's a near deal-breaker in a game like this.

From the video view, it didn't look like there was any lag, but I suppose bitrate and filesize could effect how snappy the music is.

Looks great!

meskibob @ Dec 7th 2007 2:31PM

Has anyone had issues with specific genres of music? I have a feeling some forms of metal (my staple music :)) might not work too well.

Toro @ Dec 7th 2007 2:44PM

I honestly do not understand your enthusiasm about this game.

Yes, $5 is cheap price for any game.

However, looking at the video actually confirmed my suspicion.

The gameplay does not look like it improves or makes a good use of music genre game that is based on rhythm. Using your own music and generating gameplay from it in terms of challenging rhythm game is something that has failed many times. Basically because you can't generate "fun" off of just different equalizer data.

I have a feeling the novelty of the game will wear off really quick.

Let me know if I am wrong...

B1gC72 @ Dec 7th 2007 2:45PM

my only quip with this overview is that im pretty sure that the game only does ad-hoc online not infrastructure like you stated. im guessing this because it never asked me what connection i wanted to use and the fact that no one else is there in the lobby. either way i will be tell my friends about this and then ill have somebody to play it with. great game, great overview. everyone should be sold by now.....well except Mac and Linux using non-PS3 owners lol.

emaxximus @ Dec 7th 2007 3:28PM

@22: I've played the game with metal (Prong, Fear Factory, etc.) and sometimes it seems like the buttons dont really correspond with any kind of rhythm. But sometimes its right on also. Half the fun is just seeing which songs work the best. Did I mention that this game has a rockin soundtrack?

Kachu @ Dec 7th 2007 4:03PM

Argg the store is soo slow right now just picked up beats and Syphon Filter.

flammenwurfer @ Dec 7th 2007 4:36PM

So you CAN download this from your PS3 and put it on your PSP?

Organic_Shadow @ Dec 7th 2007 5:01PM

Has anyone tried this game with metal or hardcore music? ie: meshuggah, as i lay dying, lamb of god, etc. etc.?

I listen to really angular odd-timed stuff so this sounds fun. I drum and tap on my desk at the office constantly, and I don't bring my PSP to work because UMD games would take too much of my lunch break to play. This game would be the perfect 'quickie', as well as an outlet to vent my need to tap and drum on my desk.

Vidaluko @ Dec 7th 2007 5:31PM

To bad Sony don`t let me buy it, since my country isn`t in the coutry list....

merc25 @ Dec 7th 2007 6:30PM

just lie about what country your from

Brandon @ Dec 7th 2007 6:23PM

I love this game, some songs work better than others. Many work perfectly. Songs with a regular beat or a noticable tempo tend to work well, acoustic stuff i can image not working well, or perhaps songs that change up alot.

Vidaluko @ Dec 7th 2007 7:37PM

I can`t lie about the country, I made a account, with a fake address, I alreday download the 2 demos, but when I`m gonna buy games, my credit card don`t match the Country I put in my account...

I want Beats, Castlevania SotN, but I can`t.....

Darkiewonder @ Dec 7th 2007 8:46PM

It's a shame SCEE or SCEA didn't do any advertising on this little gem of a music rhythms game. for 5 bucks I say this is a steal and more.

What they can do is shed light on what's the perfect format and encoding to get the song really synch. I have one song. PERFECT synch. It's an mp3 of "Last Train Home" By Lostprophets.

Most of my Japanese songs don't work. I'm gonna have to recode them to match LTH ;o if that works, i'll do it to all my songs lol.

Jamesology @ Dec 7th 2007 9:39PM

If I buy this game, can I save it in multiple PSPs. Or just one?

NeoRaiden @ Dec 7th 2007 10:14PM

Okay, you guys convinced me. I'm going to buy it right now. This better be good! 5 bucks is like half an hour work! Nah, just kidding. Even if it does suck(which I doubt, sounds really cool), it's only 5 dollars...

Darth_Maul @ Dec 7th 2007 10:23PM

One of My TOP 5!

ohsee @ Dec 7th 2007 11:20PM

The thing is also, each time it loads a song, the button presses WILL be different. It seems like the pacing is similar, but not always the same. That's refreshing to me. It makes me want to keep playing the same songs over and over, regardless of how many times I've done them, they never get "stale" so to speak.

I mean for $5, this is a very good game. A lot of bang for your buck. It's easily one of the few games I'll play with for a few minutes because it's very easy to pick up and put back down. Sure, a lot of psp titles offer that, but only because you activate the sleep function and stay stuck halfway through a mission. The actual levels of this only last a few minutes depending on the song (yeah, I have Rush and Iron Maiden on it right now, so they're not short, but ymmv).

It also seems after playing this a while, I've found a trick...

When you activate the L button doubler, if you pruposely MISS button presses if you're at the max multiplier (16x) it will go down to 12x, but, each correct press after that will boost the length you get the doubler. So if you're not perfect in say, hard, you can use this to boost your scores, though, it sucks trying to spot some of the buttons on the sides, depending on the design you're using.

But yeah, tl;dr: One of my top 5 as well.

Hashbrown_Hunter @ Dec 8th 2007 9:35AM

Holy crap....just the presentation of the skins has me sold! That's like a PS3 PSN game,

And I wouldn't be surprised if it were made for PS3 next.

Julio @ Dec 10th 2007 12:38AM

I really hope sony makes more games like this, even some type of playstation 3 version would be nice

matt @ Dec 8th 2007 12:34PM

You guys made a mistake. You cannot play this game online. It is only ad-hoc. Others who buy the game might be expecting to have some fun online but you should take that out so no one else has to get a little surprise.

Austin @ Dec 8th 2007 1:17PM

Sweet... Just got it... Soooo simple but yet challenging and all for only $5. The gotta keep doin games like this

vdo @ Dec 8th 2007 5:54PM

I keep reading that Beats is supposed to detect all the music on your PSP. Does this include ATRAC files? I would think so, since that is Sony's format, but I have ATRAC files in the OMGAUDIO directory (they don't work if you move them to the MUSIC directory) and the PSP plays them fine through the XMB, but Beats does not find them.