PICK AND MIX
Chasing after the ultimate high is what makes FUSER electrifying.
I’m grooving nicely to my current Fuser mix. I’ve got Carly Rae Jepsen’s upbeat drums from Call Me Maybe blended with the deep synths of LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem and the cool guitar riffs from Don’t Let me Down by The Chainsmokers. It’s going pretty well, and the crowd is diggin’ it, but I’ve got one space left for vocals. I have one song in mind, but I’m hesitating. Do I dare use the vocals from Smash Mouth’s All-Star?
The mischievous streak in me needs to know what it would sound like, and before I think of the devastating consequences of a hundred people shouting “Hey now!”, I’ve already clicked on it. The disc drops, and to my astonishment, it’s not terrible!
Fuser’s music mixing does a great job of inviting you to mix to your heart’s content. It’s essentially a DJ simulation where you mash up music on the go, taking samples from different songs and playing them together. You can choose which elements of a song you want to mix and assign it to one of the four turntables, praying that it sounds great when the disc begins to spin.
With the 100-song playlist, it may seem almost impossible to try to find a musical match, but Fuser cleverly blends each of your chosen samples together—it’s quite incredible. No matter how different your chosen song’s genre, tempo and musical key might be, Fuser morphs each song effortlessly to match the other. Not every mix is going to be a masterpiece, and sometimes it sounds like your discs are making their way through a shredder but when it works it’s harmonic euphoria.
There’s nothing quite like stumbling upon this sweet spot and it’s this feeling that is at the heart of Fuser’s campaign. Playing as an undiscovered DJ, you need to prove your mixing skills to a string of eccentric music producers by headlining gigs at a sting of different venues. How well a concert goes depends on how many points you can score from completing timed mini-goals throughout your set. Tasks can be anywhere from fading out a disc, switching between keys, or creating a loop and all while keeping in time with the rhythm of the music. Audience members will also shout requests at you during a set, and completing them earns you more points towards your overall performance.
Most of the time I found rising to these tasks enjoyable, like including Rick Astley into my Latin-Pop fusion. But sometimes Fuser can lob tasks at you that put a real damper on your flow. When an audience member shouts that they specifically want the vocals from Coldplay’s Clocks for the purpose of letting me score more points, I gasp in offence and duck the request. A bit counterintuitive, but I’m making magic here.
DECKS-TERITY
It may sound like Fuser’s campaign is all solely about point-scoring, but the campaign does much more than that. It’s tempting to fire on all four cylinders, switching discs as quickly as possible to get cheap cheers from the crowd. But Fuser encourages you to create music with more depth. Bringing a crowd down with a humble drum loop is just as important as launching them into the sky with an exhilarating bass drop.
It’s all about creating anticipation and then landing the ultimate pay-off so when that high hits.
If Fuser’s campaign mode is blood-pumping EDM at 150 BPM, then the game’s free play mode is a calmer rhythm of laid back R&B. It’s an endless mode, free from pointscoring or crowd demands where you can experiment as much as you like. Free play gives you the space to create interesting mixes in your own time, and you can revisit the mixes you quickly saved in the rush of campaign mode.
Although it’s tempting to stay in the comfort of freestyle where the crowds magically enjoy everything you play, the campaign mode is where you’ll find the game’s exhilarating highs. When you’re in the throes of mixing and you create an absolute banger (on purpose or by accident) it’s electrifying, and after you’ve done it once you want to feel it again and again. Fuser is a rhythm game where you never stop chasing those incredible highs.
Fuser encourages you to create music with more depth