Music has a way to the soul. A way of calming it or moving it. When the soul moves, the body is sure to follow. What type of music moves you? It could be Rock, Rap, Metal, Bluegrass, or even Electric. With the right type of music, atmosphere, and letting go, you might be surprised at what you can do. But does developer Kluge Interactive bring the note-catching, physical dancing to a better-remastered experience? Let’s find out with Synth Riders – Remastered Edition for PlayStation VR2.
Synth Riders is a freestyle-dancing VR rhythm game where you will need to catch notes and ride the rails for the unique feeling of becoming one with the music. So before you go out there and try to bust a move to a different groove regardless of the music genre, there are a few things you will want to be aware of. First, make sure you have some room as you will be moving your arms and body. You don’t want to hurt yourself or anyone else. Second, make sure those Sense controllers are charged. You don’t want to be moving about to hit that world leaderboard score only to have your controllers die because you forgot to charge them. And finally, get ready to move and have some fun. With that said, let’s continue…
Now, you might be familiar with Synth Riders from your time with it on PlayStation VR, but you might be wondering what is the Synth Riders – Remastered Edition is the same game that you know and love, but now it takes what we enjoy and brings the remastered visuals, nuanced controller haptics as you ride the rails, headset feedback for in-game obstacle feedback. and an overall better experience.
The first thing that you will need to do when you start, is select your language, height, and play area. For the play area, the more you want to move the higher you want to set the scale for it. Once that is set, by default, blue will be for your left hand and red for your right hand. You do have the option to swap them if you would like or go into settings and appearance to change the colors if so desire to. Once everything is ready, you have some choices. You can play Solo, go into Multiplayer, or be part of the party in Party Mode. But before jumping in, go through the tutorial so you can at least know what’s going on, plus, you may want to enjoy the visuals not only from the menu, but I did notice a visual improvement when I went into the Tutorial.
After the Tutorial, you have more choices such as picking one of the 58 included songs. Each song can be played on Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert, and Master levels. Highlighting each song gives you a sample of what the song will sound like, which I do like because someone may want to start out with something more easygoing before jumping into the banging your heart-pumping songs. There is also the bottom row that shows the different Music Packs that are available as well as creating your own Playlist and also view songs in alphabetical order You can also elect to have different options in the game on or off such as Obstacles to add to the fun. To the right on the song list are the online leaderboards which also show who are the top players as you are scrolling through the songs. When you find a song that you want to try and you can go right in, but also don’t forget that you can change the stage for the song as well.
Playing the Remastered Edition checks off everything that I wanted from when Synth Riders first arrived on PlayStation VR and more. We have the visuals, we have the haptics and honestly feeling the haptics while you are playing and riding those rails really does enhance the experience as you can just feel it, and in a game like this, you not only want to feel the music, but feel the experience. But there was something else that I wanted and that was Multiplayer. And seeing that was an option, I just had to try and there is nothing more like having a group of people play on a master level to not only bring the challenge but the fun as well.
Let’s talk about the graphics and sound. Playing Synth Riders on PlayStation VR, the various stages with different colors, notes, and backgrounds gets enhanced treatment on PlayStation VR2. Things are more clearer, brighter, and vibrant which is a real treat for the eye of those that are playing and for those that are watching. For the sound, this game is about music and the rhythm of that music regardless of the genre. This is one of those games that you want to have the sound up, put on a headset that is going to help amplify the music such as the Pulse 3D Audio headset. When you combine not only the music and visuals but add the haptics, you are going to get an experience. Another thing I did notice is the tracking and how spot on it is here and that does help when you are playing and trying to earn that high score on the leaderboards.
There is just one thing I would love to see added and that is custom song support. PlayStation may never allow it and even when I joined a multiplayer session that had custom song support, I could not play with those on PCVR. I guess the trade-off is PlayStation VR2 may have the best version with the haptics and visuals, but that trade-off is all the songs that we may never get to play unless a Music Pack of that selection becomes available.
Synth Riders – Remastered Edition still gives ups the freestyle dancing rhythm game that everyone loves, but enhances it for the better on PlayStation VR2 that its players deserve and should experience. It adds the songs and allows us to not only challenge ourselves, but each other. In life, we challenge ourselves, but sometimes the results may not be what we like. But it’s when we keep trying those challenges that we see ourselves grow as a person and isn’t that a challenge worth accepting?
Synth Riders – Remastered Edition is out now digitally for PlayStation VR and PlayStation VR2 on the PlayStation Store and also in a physical edition on the Perp Games Store and a retailer near you. Remember, if you own the PlayStation VR version, you can upgrade to the PlayStation VR2 version for free.
To learn more about Kluge Interactive, please visit their site, like them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, and follow them on Instagram.
To learn more about Perp Games, please visit their site, like them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, and subscribe to their YouTube channel.
Also, check out the video review:
In case you missed the trailer, please enjoy. Until next time, I have a multiplayer session to join.
