Welcome to my review of Soundfall on the PlayStation 5. Soundfall is brought to us by developers Drastic Games and publishers Noodlecake Studios (Alto’s Oddysey, Death Road to Canada). Drastic Games is a team of two chaps named Nick Cooper and Julian Trutmann. This totally blows me away because the quality of this game is absolutely fantastic considering only two people developed it.
Soundfall is out now on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
Shoot To The Beat
So will Soundfall please my ears and hands with a “shoot to the beat” gameplay style? Or will it be a miss with a low note? Technically I’ve already answered that above, but continue reading to find out why. You can also read our previous reviews.
The Game
Soundfall is an action-adventure dungeon crawling game that combines a “looter shooter” style with rhythm-based gameplay. It is set in the world of Symphonia, and it is down to us to defend it. The game gives players the choice of five characters to battle their way through each level. Each has its own play style as well as its own weapon and special abilities.
Also if you want to join the game with friends, you can do so with up to 4 players in total. You can play locally or via online play which is pretty cool. The campaign mode is pretty fun though, so if your friends are playing something else you will definitely have a great time playing Soundfall in single-player mode.
One of the main things I like about Soundfall is that when you’re battling through the levels, the closer you are to attacking and matching the beat, the more powerful you become.
So you “Play to the Beat!” but how many beats are there? Well, there are currently over 100 songs that you can play through on free play mode. PC players can also import their own music into the game, but unfortunately, I do not have the PC version so I cannot comment on how well this works. I have read that this is only available for single-player or local co-op play only, and not online play.
The game has thousands of loot combinations for players whilst exploring the ten dynamically different environments. Exploring Symphonia is great fun, especially seems there are many different abilities for players to unlock, as well as some real powerful music-based weaponry. We’re talking 500+ pieces of equipment for players to choose from. It’s down to you and your friends to restore harmony to the once pleasant world of Symphonia.
Look & Sound
The game is built on the Unreal 4 engine, and it shows that great pride was taken into the design of Soundfall. The graphics are absolutely brilliant, very vibrant colours, and everything just pops out of the screen. It’s quite surreal when playing as it looks so damn good without really trying. What I mean by that is think of games such as Far Cry or Tomb Raider, they try to look the best they can at that time. Whilst Soundfall does look fantastic, it’s not even trying. Kudos to Drastic Games for this.
For example, for the more technical-minded people here, it’s recommended that PC players have a Core i7-6700K/Ryzen 5 2600 or newer, a GTX 1070 or Radeon RX 5700 or newer, and 8GB of system memory. That’s not an unobtainable recommended spec for most people especially if they’re into PC gaming.
The game runs perfectly well on the PS5, achieving a solid 60fps at 4K. The game also has no graphical bugs or glitches whatsoever during my playthrough.
The audio is out of this world. The soundtrack is phenomenal and really suits the gameplay. Sound effects all fit in well and I love how you need to listen to the audio to get the real advantage in this game.
Length & Replayability
The main campaign mode will take you anywhere up to 20 hours, depending on how well you progress. Of course, as mentioned you can free play over 100 songs so you can keep coming back for more.
The game has 46 trophies for you to unlock, and it does have a platinum trophy too!
Conclusions
Soundfall is an absolutely cracking game that receives a very much-deserved 9/10 from me. If you wish to check out more about the game you can head on over to the official Soundfall website.
A code was kindly provided for us to review this.
