Games
Getting hands-on with Harmonix's newest game reveals it's a great DJ simulator
What do you get when you mash together the strings from 50 Cent’s In Da Club, the bassline from Fatboy Slim’s Rockafeller Skank, the melody from Lizzo’s Good As Hell, and the vocals from Lady Gaga’s Born This Way? A headache, you might think. But Fuser – a new music mixing game unveiled by Guitar Hero developer Harmonix this week – is here to prove you wrong. No matter what genres and decades you combine it blends keys and tempos seamlessly, making your customisable avatar look like a pro DJ.
It also continues a fine tradition of music games that can let wannabe music makers play with a toolkit. Fuser isn't about creating music from scratch, but mixing different tracks together gives people a safe space to play at remixing tracks and gain confidence and experience they can take to their own projects.
Fuser is, at first glance, more accessible than what you might be used to from Harmonix. Chasing high scores feels secondary to concocting your own unlikely club bangers by chopping up different sections from more than 100 tracks. Each song is divided into four elements – drums, bassline, lead instrument and vocals — and you begin each themed level by combining four of these individually from the available tracklist (in the level Harmonix showed to press this week, you could choose from 16). You then swap different tracks in and out of your mix in response to mission objectives, or to fulfill requests from the whooping crowd. Expect a full 10-15 hour campaign that chronicles your rise to stardom, gradually ramping up the challenge. There’s also a do-anything “freestyle” mode, and multiplayer modes, although Harmonix isn’t detailing them yet.
If this all sounds familiar, then you may well have played DropMix, a mixing game the studio released back in 2017 that combined physical cards with a Bluetooth game board and a companion app. Fuser feels like an evolution of DropMix: because you’re swapping everything with a controller, rather than picking up and placing cards, you get a lot more control over the music you make, and more ways to adjust your mix.You’re encouraged to start your set with one of each track element (vocals, bassline, etc), but you can override that formula, combining multiple vocal tracks, or three basslines for extra funk. Under the hood, the game slots everything together automatically, and every track will match your selected key and tempo, which you can adjust at any time. Some combinations, naturally, sound better than others, but it’s hard to create a mix that would sound out of place on a poppy radio station. Even four vocal tracks, in the right combination, get your head nodding.
Musical prodigy
The joy of Fuser will be in finding your own style, and in learning how different elements of tracks mesh together. Maybe you like blending The Clash’s melodies with 90s Hip Hop vocals, or creating instrumental tracks by smashing modern pop with 80s rock. Tracks repeat on a 32-bar loop, and as you play you’ll get to know each section by ear, forming ideas for when you should swap them in and out. You might cap an upbeat section of your mix by bringing in Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” chorus just as the vocals blare, for example.
In the tutorial, you’re simply swapping tracks in and out by pressing the face buttons, which feels relaxing – meditative, even. But advanced controls rack up quickly, increasing your control over the mix at every step. When you pick a track, it will instantly jump to the mixer stand at the bottom of your screen (holding the face button will let you override the 1-1-1-1 split between drums, bassline, instrument and vocals). If you hold the left trigger while selecting a track, you’ll queue it underneath the existing tracklist, meaning you can have eight songs in your mix at any time: four that are playing, and four queued. At the tap of the button, you can build the track into a huge, climactic drop that swaps all the songs at the same time and makes your fans go wild.
Hovering over each of your current tracks displays four options mapped to the face buttons: you can swap them for the queued track, mute the track, solo the track, or eject it from the mix. When you learn the timing for the trademark bassline from J Balvin and Willy William’s Mi Gente, you might solo it for a few seconds and then immediately swap to a different track after it loops once. When you combine quick swaps between tracks with muting, solo-ing and pulling in particular sections of songs you love, there’s enormous scope for self-expression. There’s even a bank of instruments to create custom melodies that you can use to flesh out a beat.
If you miss a note in Guitar Hero, you hear a horrible screech. In Fuser, tracks never mute, but timing still matters. You’re ultimately trying to rack up points on the same five-star rating system as previous Harmonix games, and to get the highest score, you’ll have to swap tracks in time with the beat. This comes partly by watching a timeline at the bottom of the screen, which indicates when the downbeats are coming, and partly by feel. If you can get into the rhythm of a track, you’ll be switching tracks in and out without having to glance at the timeline, and getting a “perfect” rating every time.
Freestyler
In part, you’ll decide what tracks to choose in response to in-game objectives. But you’ll also have to deal with requests from a crowd, who might ask you to add some piano keys, a guitar track, a fresh set of vocals, or a bassline from the 80s. These requests are on a timer, and failing to answer them impacts your score. But you can also create combos: if one request is for Hip Hop and the other is for a new set of vocals, swapping in Warren G’s Regulate on a downbeat will net you a perfect score.
Harmonix reckons the freestyle mode will go down a storm at house parties, with different players fiddling with the mix over time. The campaign mode’s themed levels – the studio showed off an elaborate stage based on Ancient Egypt – will teach you the ropes, and later levels will offer plenty of challenge. Multiplayer is the unknown quantity: for now, the developer is simply saying that it will offer both co-operative and competitive elements, but we’ll find out more over the next few months.
Fuser feels like a step change from Harmonix’s previous headline releases. It’s a game for the masses, where finding your own style feels more important than nailing combos. Even if you make a mistake, the mix keeps rumbling on.
Want to rock, DJ? Here are tips to get everyone's head nodding:
- Don’t worry about your timing. Trying to match your track swaps with the timeline at the bottom of your screen will ruin the fun: instead, just try to enjoy the music and get into the rhythm. Before you know it, you’ll be naturally timing your swaps in time with the beat, racking up points.
- Know your audience. Crowd requests are a huge part of Fuser, but aren’t displayed prominently on screen – they pop up as small icons on the right-hand side. They’re therefore easy to miss, and letting a request time out will kill your score. Make sure you keep an eye out for them, and try to match two requests at the same time to create combos.
- Experiment as much as possible. Swapping tracks every few seconds will stop your mix sounding stale and keep the crowd on side. Plus, the more you swap, the more likely you are to find banging combos, and create a style that’s all your own.
- Know your tracklist. At the start of every mission, scroll through all the tracks you have available using the left and right bumpers. Note genres, instruments and eras – that way, when a request comes in, you’ll know where to look.
Fuser will come to PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch this autumn.
