World of Tunes review

World of Tunes is a rhythm based game in the vein of Elite Beat Agents and Ouendan. You tap along to the beat, and build larger combos the longer you can keep going without missing. The tuneys need help saving their World of Tunes that has been overtaken by alien invaders. The story is told in adorable cut scenes, and I feel for the little buggers.

Playing a level is quite straightforward, just tap the tuney as it hits it’s mark. Some tuneys are fat, and require three taps. You have a life bar at the top, and if you miss to tap a tuney you loose a bit of life. Too many misses equals game over. There are also tuneys you get to tap and drag along a set path.

There are also four boss battles that I find a bit more interesting. First you have to attack using tuneys, just like in the ordinary levels. Then the boss attacks, and you have to stop incoming missiles, gas fumes or whatever is being thrown at you.

The gameplay is smooth and fluent, and I enjoy watching the cute tuneys tumble across my screen. Sadly it is lacking the fun found in games like Elite Beat Agents. The story in World of Tunes is simply too predictable and cute. The story in itself is not the most important aspect of a rhytm music action game. To me it is the music that matters and I think that the ten tracks available aren’t memorable or interesting enough to keep me going. There is variation between the tracks but most of them sound like ordinary video game music. There is two with more power to them, and those are used at boss battles. As there are no memorable melodies, to me at least, I don’t really feel the urge to play the game for the sake of the music.

As a rhythm action game it works well and provides a variety of game modes. Story mode is the main mode, and you unlock more modes as you go. There are three difficulty levels ranging from easy to hard.

Presentation & Graphics

Beautiful crisp graphics and top notch presentation. The iPhone status bar is visible which I dislike, it isn’t visible

in the screenshots at iTunes, strange. The tuneys look and move nicely, and the screen is a

festive explosion of colour and movement once it gets hectic.

Sound

A bit lacking as the tunes are few and not really packing enough punch. Would love to have some real Japanese pop tracks, maybe some Mosaic.wav to get things going.

Gameplay

The controls are simple, and work well. It is fun to chase the big combos, and get 100% perfection. The songs are rather short which works really well with the portable format and the lack of attention span we all suffer from.

Gamelife

Levels, game modes and difficulties to unlock. You can even play the music in the game’s own jukebox. Sadly I think most will tire of the songs available quite fast.

Game Rating

World of Tunes does a whole lot of things right, graphics, controls and loveable characters. Sadly it lacks in the music department and I hope future updates will bring more and better tunes. At the current sale price of $1.99 I can recommend it as a competent rhythm action game.

World of Tunes $1.99 sale price

World of Tunes lite