GAME REVIEW: Beat Saber (Quest)

(Walk On Water - Thirty Seconds To Mars)

Let's just get right to this.

When VR became a quasi-household entertainment platform, it had one killer app that stood out amongst the rest.  That app was Beat Saber.  Launched in 2018, Beat Saber combined everything that was great about music rhythm games, injected it into a virtual environment for immersion, and gave you the single greatest way to go about pounding out the beat:

Lightsabers.

VR was a technology dominated by nerds, and there wasn't a better solution out there to let them -- us? -- flail about with abandon using the most iconic fantasy weapon ever invented.  The result was this:

If you're looking at that now thinking that it looks bonkers, you're not far from the truth. Two years later, Beat Saber remains the definitive VR app.  Any 'real' VR platform will have some kind of a Beat Saber port.

There isn't a question about this game being 'good' or 'bad'.  Even people who don't care for music rhythm games concede that this game is very nearly perfect.  If you own a VR system and you don't have Beat Saber, you're doing it wrong.

Rather than telling you why this game is amazing -- if you couldn't figure that out from the trailer, I can't explain it any better -- I thought I'd offer up a few tips and tricks for new players that I had to learn the hard way.

- Start out playing the tutorial.  Then start in on the campaign.  It's tempting to dive into Solo mode, but you'll spend plenty of time there before it's all said and done.

- Eventually, you're going to get to a part of the campaign that has a song you simply cannot beat because it moves too fast.  That's normal.  The solution is to -- finally! -- duck into Solo mode, find the song in question, and then practice it.  In practice mode, you can slow the song down, which is pretty much all you'll need to get through most levels.  Learn the song slowly, gradually speed it up, and then go crush that campaign level!

- You're going to come up against campaign levels that say you need to hold a minimum combo level of X within a song a certain number of times, but that you cannot exceed a certain combo number.  The numbers are usually very close together.  You'd not be blamed for thinking that you need to time beating the song so that you fall right into that ratio, and while that works, you'll pull your hair out trying.  Instead, play the song far enough to get the requisite minimum combo, purposefully screw up to reset your combo counter, and then just go back to playing the song normally.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

- 'Distance' within a song isn't well explained well either.  You get more points for making exaggerated movements with your sabers both before and after a cut, and that counts as movement.  You can also rack movement up by just...well, moving your sabers around a lot.  Songs with an insanely high distance requirement can be easily beaten by just moving your hands around like a lunatic between saber strokes.

- RELAX.  It's tempting to tense up when you play and make rapid, snapping cuts with your blades.  Getting into the groove with Beat Saber is more like a dance than an assault though. Songs that look like they require insane speed usually simply require smooth, fluid movement.  Play them slower, learn the movements, and then just get into the groove.  

Beat Saber is an amazing game.  It's not hard to see why it's the Daddy where VR entertainment is concerned.  Get it.  Play it.  Love it.