Phase for the iPod, A Review

I recently purchased the brand new iPod game, Phase. Now I don’t really make a habit of reviewing video games on this blog but I had to make a special exception for this game.

Phase is a game made by Harmonix, you may know that name from a little game called Guitar Hero. They also made another couple of games that you may not have heard of called Amplitude and Frequency (the reason I mention those is because they are basically the same game as Phase).

The basic idea behind Phase is that notes come towards you on the screen and you have to hit the |<< button for notes on the left, the select button for notes in the middle and the >>| button for notes on the right when they reach the targets at the bottom of the screen. When you are able to hit the notes back to back you eventually build up multipliers, getting you more and more points.

The song that you play is split up into different checkpoints, in each checkpoint you have to get a certain number of stars, you collect stars by hitting notes at the right time and using the scroll wheel to hit what are called sweeps (pictured below).

If you are unable to collect enough stars you lose lives, when you run out of lives the song is over.

So let’s really get into what makes this game so fun, the problem with other games by Harmonix, like Guitar Hero and Frequency is that you can’t pick any song you want to play, you can only choose from the songs that come on the game. With Phase you can play the game with any song in your music library, all you have to do is drag the song into the “Phase Music” playlist (added when you downloaded the game) and iTunes will analyze the song and now when you sync the game to your iPod the song will be added to Phase.

I’ve played the game on Easy, Medium, and Hard, you can unlock harder difficulty levels by playing through Marathons (which are basically just 5 songs back to back). The game is a little challenging at times when playing on Hard (which is what I play on now) but for those who aren’t really into gaming Easy or Medium may be better suited for them.

I really suggest just about anyone with an iPod that can play games should spend the $4.99 on this game, it is the best game that I’ve ever played for the iPod. I really think that the game has great game play and is fairly challenging. The idea that you can expand the game play endlessly by just adding new songs to the Phase Music playlist just means that the $4.99 you spent on the game should get you hours and hours of play time.

Purchase Phase here.