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Vib Ribbon
I've seen enough "classic album" and "classic film" reviews, but no classic game reviews. I recently proposed this as one of the best games of all time, but it seems that it's still rather obscure. This clearly needs rectifying... It certainly would have been interesting sitting in on the meeting where this concept was sold, "Right lads, instead of another 3D platform game, you play a wireframe bunny called Vibri, who's mission in life is to walk along a vibrating line and avoid shapes that appear in time to music. If she doesn't manage this, she'll turn into a frog, and then into a worm." It sounds bizarre, and it is, but the game succeeds for 2 reasons : Firstly, the excellent chirpy character of Vibri. You'll be playing the game with a constant smile on your face as she dances when you win & pretends that she can't go on if you lose. Secondly, the ability to use any music CD as a soundtrack. The games lifespan is really only limited by the size of your CD collection. In the name of research, I tried out a number of CDs that you would find in the average CD collection... Crowded House : The Best Off The melancholy strumming of the Finn brothers is no match for an athletic Vibri, the tracks are easily conquered. I decide to ramp up the difficulty... Godspeed! You Black Emperor : Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada The Godspeed experience is made even stranger by the fact that loads of shapes appear during the quiet bits, but the loud bits are relatively easy, the constant tempo changes make it difficult to get a rhythm going, and the disk is removed with frustration, and replaced with... Steps : Steptacular Regular beats, with not much happening is by now meat and drink to Vibri, this disk is no challenge at all, and is replaced by. Public Enemy : It takes a Nation of Millions... Again, the regular beats don't cause much problem, even on "Rebel Without a Pause", and only Terminator X's scratchy bits cause any concern. Watching a rabbit skip along while Chuck D raps about wielding his Glock is certainly one of the more bizarre Vib Ribbon experiences though. We'll try one more... White Stripes : Elephant This is currently my favourite Vib Ribbon disk, differing tempos, swirling guitars and a mixture of fast and slow tracks are a challenge even for a Vib Ribbon veteran. The game is packed with well thought out touches, even watching the score increase is hypnotic. My favourite feature is that the "all tracks" option doesn't take the tracks in sequential order, but plays the easiest ones on the cd first, up to the most difficult ones, keeping a traditional gaming difficulty curve. There's a couple of problems with it though, the lack of a pause mode is annoying, and the facility to skip tracks would have been appreciated in "all tracks" mode (if the album has a long dull moment - Polyphonic Spree anyone?). It's a shame that this game never was a success, now copies are harder to get hold of, and go for quite large amounts (up to £30 or so) on Ebay despite it being 3 years old (compare this to the price of a 3 year old EA game). It's strange it wasn't more of a hit as it's one of the few games I own that is just as popular with women as men, it's got that Tetris appeal - a "just one more go while I see what Hooked on a Feeling is like" effect. In Tetris you score yourself on number of lines, but in Vib Ribbon, it's on the albums or tracks you've played, finishing all of Forever Changes is just as much of a challenge as hitting 100 lines for the first time. I personally think that Sony are sitting on a goldmine, and this game could be a killer app if you could make it portable & hook it up to an MP3 player. There is a sequel ("Mojib Ribbon") coming out soon for the PS2, but word on the street is that it's filled with Japanese text, and that it's unlikely to make these shores as an official release. Somehow though, I don't think we've seen the last of Vibri... Hear one of the really awful Japanese pop songs you get on the game disk & experience general Vib Ribbon madness at : http://www.vibribbon.com/#...
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