A brilliant music mixing tool trapped in a bad video game.
Ever wanted to create cool music mixes but things like matching tempo & key, handling transitions, and making your own beats are all just too much? Then get Fuser.
Fuser is one of the coolest and most accessible music creation tools I have ever used. It takes all the stuff that DJs have to do manually and streamlines it so you can just slap some songs together to make something that is usually better than it has any right to be.
But Fuser isn’t just a music creation tool, it’s a video game. A video game that makes you play through its entire excruciatingly boring campaign to progress. And by the end of the campaign you still won’t be high enough level to unlock all the songs, instruments, and effects.
The campaign is basically just a tutorial for the music creation tool stretched into something that’s about 5x as long as it should be. The campaign is bad. The characters are bad. And even playing a set for a demanding crowd is often more stressful than enjoyable. You’ll spend the whole song watching the timer, trying to meet the objectives that pop up in the corner, while also trying to meet audience requests that often conflict with the set requirements of the stage. It’s simply not fun. And the fact that you basically have to play it kind of sucks.
Honestly the best part of this game is just popping into freeplay mode and making music. What does it sound like if I take the bass and melody lines of Bad Guy and mix them with the vocals of Take On Me in the minor key? Turns out it sounds hauntingly rad. What if I mix the vocals of 4 songs from 4 different genres? That’s unsurprisingly bad. That is where the fun of this game is - and if that all sounds fun to you, get Fuser. But you’ll need to put in some time with other less-fun aspects of the game if you want to expand your DJ library.
+ Brilliant and accessible music creation tool that makes it easy to just create fun stuff
- Music, samples, and effects are locked behind a slow leveling system
- Terrible campaign that basically just serves as an overly-long tutorial
- The actual act of playing the levels just isn’t fun
Ever wanted to create cool music mixes but things like matching tempo & key, handling transitions, and making your own beats are all just too much? Then get Fuser.
Fuser is one of the coolest and most accessible music creation tools I have ever used. It takes all the stuff that DJs have to do manually and streamlines it so you can just slap some songs together to make something that is usually better than it has any right to be.
But Fuser isn’t just a music creation tool, it’s a video game. A video game that makes you play through its entire excruciatingly boring campaign to progress. And by the end of the campaign you still won’t be high enough level to unlock all the songs, instruments, and effects.
The campaign is basically just a tutorial for the music creation tool stretched into something that’s about 5x as long as it should be. The campaign is bad. The characters are bad. And even playing a set for a demanding crowd is often more stressful than enjoyable. You’ll spend the whole song watching the timer, trying to meet the objectives that pop up in the corner, while also trying to meet audience requests that often conflict with the set requirements of the stage. It’s simply not fun. And the fact that you basically have to play it kind of sucks.
Honestly the best part of this game is just popping into freeplay mode and making music. What does it sound like if I take the bass and melody lines of Bad Guy and mix them with the vocals of Take On Me in the minor key? Turns out it sounds hauntingly rad. What if I mix the vocals of 4 songs from 4 different genres? That’s unsurprisingly bad. That is where the fun of this game is - and if that all sounds fun to you, get Fuser. But you’ll need to put in some time with other less-fun aspects of the game if you want to expand your DJ library.
+ Brilliant and accessible music creation tool that makes it easy to just create fun stuff
- Music, samples, and effects are locked behind a slow leveling system
- Terrible campaign that basically just serves as an overly-long tutorial
- The actual act of playing the levels just isn’t fun