LOUD: My Road to Fame

Ever since Bohemian Rhapsody made nearly $900 million at the box office, Hollywood has been in a big hurry to capitalize on the demand for classic rock biopics. But what about video games? Let me introduce you to LOUD: My Road to Fame, a new rhythm game that follows a young musical prodigy on her path to superstardom. It has everything that those Hollywood biopics have ... except for recognizable music, a well-known band, dramatic setbacks and award-winning acting. Okay, maybe it’s missing a few of the key ingredients that made those movies so popular, but don’t write off this game just yet, because LOUD is ready to take you on a rock ‘n roll adventure and turn the volume to eleven.

This is the story of Astrid, an introverted teenager whose only form of escapism is using an old, dusty broom to rock out to all of her favorite songs. Sensing a budding interest in music, Astrid’s father buys her a guitar, setting the wannabe star on the same path traveled by Kathleen Hanna, PJ Harvey and countless other rock ‘n roll rebels. From busking on the street to forming a garage band to performing at a local dive bar, this is a wholesome and generally good-natured journey to be a rockstar.

While the rise to fame is predictable to anybody who has seen a musical biopic before, the road to superstardom is still an enticing premise that is rife with rhythm game possibilities. LOUD basically uses each stop on Astrid’s journey as a way to show off a few of the game’s original rock songs, generally starting with the easiest and then working its way up to more complicated heavy metal licks. It’s a formula we’ve seen employed in both Guitar Hero and Rock Band, only this time we get cool cinema scenes that make you actually care for the rise of this teenage rocker.

Much like those other popular rhythm games, the gameplay is easy to learn and accessible to pretty much anybody who can keep a beat. There are six guitar necks on the screen when you’re rocking out, with three on each side. The note highways on the left are controlled by the up, left and down buttons on the D-pad, while the necks on the right use the face buttons to get the job done. When a star gets to the end of the note highway, you’ll want to hit the corresponding button to play it and keep the streak going. Miss it and the combo (and score multiplier) will reset back to the start.

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Obviously, there’s more to it than that. Some notes will need to be held for a few seconds, giving you the ability to bend the sound for a few extra points by moving the analog sticks up and down. There are also notes that you’ll need to mash, for the times when the game wants to toss in a speedy guitar solo or quick finger picking. All this gets tricky as the stars will come at you from every side, forcing us to pay close attention and hit a series of increasingly complicated note patterns. It’s nowhere near as fun as playing a fake plastic guitar, but the layout does a reasonably good job of using the controller to approximate what it’s like to play Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

Aside from the obvious gameplay changes, the biggest difference between this small indie game and those big rhythm game franchises is the music. Guitar Hero was built around the idea of playing some of the most recognizable songs from the last sixty years of rock ‘n roll. Unfortunately, the developers of LOUD do not have that luxury, because licensing hit songs is extremely expensive. Instead of playing some of the most recognizable guitar riffs of all time, you’ll have to settle instead for nearly two dozen instrumental songs that are designed to evoke the spirit of classic rock, the 1990’s alternative scene, hair metal and all kinds of other rock genres. You won’t recognize the specific guitar riffs or anything like that, but every song feels like it would have fit in alongside the hit songs of the time.

That said, LOUD runs into the same problem that a lot of rhythm games have to face – the music sounds more like half-finished jams than real top 40 tracks. Don’t get me wrong, there are some genuinely catchy tunes throughout the soundtrack, but nearly all of them feel like they are just waiting around for somebody to add lyrics and a more interesting guitar solo. And that’s odd, because there’s no reason why most of the songs needed to be instrumental. We’re told early on that Astrid is writing her own lyrics, yet the only time she’s given a chance to sing is in the very final song. Why not have her sing when she’s in that garage band or playing at the dive bar? She spends the first several songs pretending to play guitar with a dusty broom, so the developer could have chosen almost any song for these levels. This feels like a big missed opportunity.

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Sadly, that’s true of the story, as well. Because there are no real conflicts or setbacks, Astrid’s rise to fame comes across as boring and predictable. The very few setbacks she faces are no big deal and resolved within a cinema or two. She never deals with the typical rock and roll problems, such as drug addiction, destroying a hotel room, being kicked off her label, getting into feuds with other bands and the countless tabloid stories. Instead of anything intriguing, her story is straight-forward and only going in one direction – Up. Even Astrid seems a bit underwhelmed with the story in the game’s final cinema, which makes LOUD feel like it ended right before anything interesting happened.

While the story may be a little disappointing, I still had a lot of fun with this game. A lot of this has to do with the rockin’ music and the addictive gameplay. I’m a sucker for this type of rhythm game, and LOUD gets a lot right. The charting is good across the different difficulties and I liked a great deal of the soundtrack. This is a good game, but with more story beats and a few actual lyrics, it could have been great. Still, it’s way more fun than rocking out with a dusty broom.