I had an opportunity to test out the new “Fantasia: Music Evolved” game at Club Nokia in Downtown LA recently. The test was in conjunction with a concert by Krewella. It was one of the weirdest and wildest events I’ve ever been to for something Disney related. This concert started at 7pm and I was there forty minutes early as it was a general admission event. Not knowing to expect, I went it and there was dance music being mixed by a live DJ. The DJ was good but wasn’t really keeping the music family friendly as this was an all ages event. When she was done spinning at about 7:15pm, another DJ took over. More dancing and craziness ensued while I was waiting for this event to begin. There were no signs as to where you could test the new “Fantasia: Music Evolved.” None of the event staff knew either. That didn’t help me at all. By the time at DJs were done spinning, I had been inside Club Nokia for three hours and my head was pounding from the very loud music. Finally at about 9:15pm, the music had died down while the stage was being prepped for Krewella. There were ads on the video screens showing upcoming events and finally an ad on where to test “Fantasia: Music Evolved” appeared on the screen. Yay!
So while everyone was waiting for Krewella, who I have never heard of before that night, I went to test the game. At first, I didn’t know what to do as there was no representative from Disney or Harmonix. Then after a few minutes, a rep from Harmonix showed up and got me started on the game. “Fantasia: Music Evolved” is an upcoming motion-controlled music rhythm game developed by Harmonix for play on Xbox 360 and Xbox One with Kinect. Apparently, you can’t “lose” the game as you are trying to gain “magical energy” to unlock items that can be brought into the levels.
There were seven songs available during the test. “Night On Bald Mountan” from Fantasia, Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons: Winter,” Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Kimbra’s “Settle Down,” “Some Nights” by Fun, Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out Of Heaven,” and “Levels” by Avicii.
While playing the game, I could barely hear the music from the game because of the concert going on. But either way, I just followed the screen and “conducted” the music as best I could. The game can be quite a workout, especially since I was playing for 30 minutes with a short break in between songs and levels. During the game, you are moving your arms up, down, left, right, forward, backward, over and under depending on where the arrows tell you to go. It’s a lot of upper body movement which definitely makes the game challenging. I think if I was able to hear the music, I would have found the game to be very entertaining, but because I couldn’t hear it, I give the game 5 out of 10 stars. To be fair, this was not the finished game and I was playing in less than ideal conditions. I look forward to trying the game at home once it is released.
After I was done testing the game, I went back to the concert for a few minutes. What Krewella had anything to do with the actual testing of this game I have no idea. Their music was quite annoying and contained lots of bad language, which discouraged me from staying even longer. So with that, I left and made my way home.