In 2017 the game development team Harmonix, creators of Rockband, released a card game called DropMix. DropMix was a card game about being a DJ. You collected cards which each had a track on it and dropped those cards on the game board which then started to play music thanks to the NFC chips in the cards. I loved the game, as a big card and board games fan I’m always looking for something different. DropMix was limited to the cards you collected and it cost quite a lot to get the whole package. DropMix is the origins of Fuser except it is now expanded and available on consoles.
Fuser is the same concept as DropMix, you are a DJ with a crate of songs, each with each element of the songs separated. Each set you have to drop discs onto your virtual DJ table and mix them with various techniques. The rhythm element is switching between songs and adding songs in, you can also add in beats made by yourself in the game.
Fuser has a few ways to play, the campaign which sees you learn new skills and complete different stages is quite a good length. I found myself completing one stage a night which kept the game fresh and having a lot of replayability. You can also play freestyle and just mix tracks to your heart’s content and play multiplayer online mixing tracks with other players. My favourite feature that I found myself spending a lot of time on was the social aspect of listening to other players mixes.
Going into Fuser’s social section will present you with featured mixes by other players which you can give praise too and it’s really quite satisfying creating a mix and having a random player praising it. Getting into the music is key and constantly wanting to try out different techniques and attempting to perfectly mix tracks is what keeps the playability of Fuser alive. Hitting the perfect beat on a mix and hearing the fake crowd cheer is a great feeling. Creating your own DJ, mine is an astronaut, and making 80’s to 00’s mixes is my DJ’s speciality.
Fuser is also a difficult game to master at times, with many mixing options there is a lot of ways to get a five-star performance. I only got a five-star performance once in my first play-through which was felt like finally beating a major boss after dying over and over again. Freestyling and finding different ways to mix in Call Me Maybe is also just as exciting.
The downside to Fuser, which comes with the high price of music licensing, is the cost. There are over a hundred songs in the game for you to mix. There are also special edition versions with more songs and preorder bonuses with a few more. I was lucky enough to get a code from Harmonix which was the deluxe edition, that edition includes some of my favourites from DropMix like Bring Me to Life by Evanescence. The pre-order songs include one of my favourite songs, Mr Brightside by The Killers.
I love unlocking things in games, unlocking songs in the game is fun but the paywall in front of a fair chunk of the songs will be the only thing hindering Fuser’s success. I would love to play Fuser on my iPad on the go but that would be far too expensive as the regular version is £59.99 and the VIP edition is £100. Adding in the fact that the game is hard to stream and show off without getting copyright strikes it really leaves Fuser in a tricky spot of being a great game that may not get noticed for a while.
As Rhythm games go Fuser makes me want to play Rockband and Guitar Hero. It feels like every few years there’s a new big Rythm game to revive the genre. Fuser is that game, its the game you can play with your friends, the game you bring out at parties and late-night jams. Fuser is the next evolution of popular rhythm-based games and overtime if its library is extended and the price drops a little then I think the game will be a raging success. If you’re a fan of Rockband and Guitar Hero then Fuser is the game for you, it’s just a shame it costs so much to play now.