Fuser (Switch) Review

It’s been a long time since Guitar Hero and Rock Band were big game franchises that came with big plastic instruments. While Rock Band still endures in the background, developers Harmonix created a new music based game; DropMix. DropMix was a pricey plastic “board game” of sorts where you needed to pair the game with an app and purchase extra music cards. You place music cards on the deck, each one representing different ‘stems’ or individual instrument/vocal tracks from popular music. The app would then play a mix of your created mash up, it is really fun, although expensive especially in Australia. Enter Fuser; the evolution of DropMix – no bluetooth-enabled deck needed. Does Harmonix breathe new life into this musical experiment, or is it time to drop it? 

You start with making your own DJ avatar. From there you’re given a bunch of music to mix with and then you’re trained across several different DJs to learn how to be the ultimate Fuser DJ. So how do you bring together this fusion of music? On screen you have a deck with four places to drop the different tracks. At the top of the screen you can scroll through all the music you have access to for the set. You move a cursor around to highlight each song. For each song you’ll get an icon for up to four different ‘stems’, usually different instrumental tracks from that song or the vocals. This means you could have access to the keyboard, drums, guitar and vocals for one song, and for another it might be a violin or bass. The goal is to put together all of these different songs into creative mixes that entertain the crowd, and ideally create an awesome mix to show off to the world.

Fuser feels very much like DropMix resurrected in digital form, well more digital than relying on an app to play the music from the DropMix deck. It not only fully realises what Harmonix was doing but adds onto it, allowing much more interaction with the music as well as being much easier to share your mixes with the world. The way that the software makes all the different music tracks work together back when DropMix came out truly felt like some kind of magic, or pact with the devil. In Fuser they are still working their music magic to make it all work. They’ve managed to make it feel easy to put together your own great mixes, more than once I was bopping away with headphones on to my latest masterpiece. 

There is a good mix of music that casts a wide net. I’ll admit feeling pretty out of touch, only knowing a handful of tracks from the last few years outside of Dance Monkey and Bad Guy. There’s plenty of classics to mix and even if you’re not familiar with all the music, a lot of it is ear wormy enough to enjoy. Not everything is available from the get go, you need to earn points in the game to unlock more songs. It is meant to be an incentive to keep interacting with the game elements of Fuser, but it might frustrate people who just want the full range.

The main draw to Fuser for me was being able to mix together the elements from some catchy songs. It’s right there as Freestyle, however you still need to unlock music for it. This pushes you into playing the campaign sets for the points, where it turns fun music experimentation into a chore. At first I didn’t mind the requests the set made of me, in fact they forced me to get a feel for a wider range of songs. However, by the end of the first block of sets it asks you to make some pretty ridiculous mixes. For example, demanding you keep the music fresh while only letting you select the drum track, making you overlap three of the same instruments to create musical diarrhea. 

The concept of Fuser and in turn DropMix is way more fun than being made to play it as a rhythm game. It’s a tricky area, having it as more of a musical/technology experiment risks not having much incentive to muck around and make ambitious mixes. However, making it more of a game keeps you from having all the tools at your fingertips from the get go, forcing players to make mixes the game wants you to. 

It is important to keep the crowd happy lest the gig stops, so there is fortunately a no fail mode to help out. I recommend turning it on because it turns out your biggest enemy is the game itself. The game also hitches throughout a set, which wouldn’t be so bad if the game wasn’t so hung up on timing. At first it seemed pretty rare, but the more the game took the training wheels off it all fell apart. I don’t know if this issue is present in the other versions, but it makes the campaign a frustrating prospect for the time being. It’s not just the timing for when you drop a track, it’s also when you use an effect or change the bpm timing. You’re scored out of five stars to how many points you racked up for fan requests, well timed drops achieving the objectives. Your score then determines how much XP you get towards levelling up. When you level up you get more points to spend on more music and points for customisation. If you’re managing three stars across the sets, unlocking music feels like it’ll take forever to get all the tracks you want let alone completing the collection.

I would still recommend working through the campaign, as you unlock important effects and additional instruments you can edit and drop into the mix. The mode ultimately serves as a big tutorial for the rest of the game. It takes its time across the different stages/DJs who show you how to use each of the effects and how to get the most out of your mixes. I might not have appreciated being at the whim of some bad objectives, I did however appreciate that it nudges you into using music you may not have if left to your own devices. 

Not only can you put your mixes out there into the world, but you can compete against others in events. Competing in these can help net you extra in game items that you can’t just unlock otherwise. Once you’re done with the Campaign and feeling a little aimless with Freestyling, events might help keep you going.

The base game of Fuser is a little pricey compared to most new releases, but then music licensing might have something to do with that. There is also a launch DLC pack that comes bundled in the VIP edition or you can get it separately for just under $70 AUD. There’s 25 songs you’d add without having to unlock in game, with some pretty mixable music too. I’m not sure what the plans are with future DLC tracks, besides that there will likely be a lot. It’s a pricey prospect with or without the DLC digitally, I would recommend checking out physical copies to help take the sting out of the DLC price. 

Fuser is great as long as you don’t approach it as a game in the same way that Rock Band was a game. It’s unfortunate that you can’t avoid having to play it as a game at first, because you need to earn levels to earn points so you can unlock more music. Fuser has some really cool tools to allow you to do more than just throw some different song elements together. For those who love music and kinda miss DJ Hero, Fuser will scratch that disc. If there’s anything like the support previous Harmonix games has seen, then there will be more music to come for some time.

Fuser is off to a good start and for any music lovers, there is so much potential to make some wild and creative mixes with some familiar beats.

Rating: 4/5