Review - JAM Live Music Arcade

Thursday, 07 June 2012 11:17

JAM Live Music Arcade is a reason to blow the dust off your guitar controller, even though it might be for just a few hours it is still enjoyable for the time being. Have you ever wanted to mix songs and be a dj, JAM Live Music Arcade gives you that chance in the comfort of your own living room.

The first thing you face when you boot up JAM Live Music Arcade is the tutorial, which slowly and rather encouraging goes through every single step of how you can take control of the action and mix songs in a few minutes. It is a nice way to introduce players to the action without throwing everything at them at once they get to unlock different abilities through different tutorials.

There is in total 32 tracks for you to mix and remix and everything you do can be recorded for you to enjoy afterwards. You also get points as to how on beat you are with your mixes which is shown by a small “beat meter” above the instrument of choice, change the music when the beat drops and you get more points, more points earns you bronze, silver and gold medals, but I quickly found out that if you just button mash you can reach high scores without any hassle because you don’t get minus points.

But that’s not what the game is about, the game is about giving you the option to play around with different musical samples and mix up songs how you want to without giving you a time restrain or anything, you just press record and play around until you are finished, fade your song out and stop recording and you are set.

You play the game by both using a controller and hitting the correct colored buttons, or you can use a guitar from either Guitar Hero or Rock Band that 90% of you already have and it makes the experiences a lot easier. Hit the colored button of the instrument you want and strum upwards, then hold the button for the instrument of choice within that menu and strum downwards to make it play. You can also hold down more colors to control different instruments at the same time.

Arcade mode is where it gets a little rough for some I’m guessing because this isn’t as free and open minded as the previous mode was, this is more of you press the correct buttons at the correct time, sort of like the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games did but only a little more complicated seeing that you got different instrument options within each instrument.

For the price JAM Live Music Arcade isn’t a bad purchase, it is what it is and it is a nice little timewaster if nothing else. And if you enjoy dj/mash up games this is right up your alley, but I do recommend checking out a trial or a demo before you throw yourself at it, but overall JAM Live Music Arcade is a nice addition to the DJ music genre.