Inside Social Games

Casual multiplayer site OMGpop.com has been busy with its mainstream mimicking titles — like its Hover Kart version of Nintendo classic Mario Kart, released earlier this year. Its latest one, called Hit Machine, follows a similar, pattern.

Released earlier this month amidst the multimillion dollar games of The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5, like the Facebook app RockRiot, it intends to capitalize on the popularity of virtual music-playing competitions. Hit Machine is online, free, social — and complemented by a good choice in music. It’s worth trying out, despite some shortcomings, if you’re into these sorts of games.

Hit Machine plays like its mainstream brethren, with players using the A-D and J-L keys, in a piano-like fashion, to hit falling, multi-colored notes as they reach the bottom of the screen. Players compete in real-time against other opponents, with each of their scores viewable during play. Looking away from the notes is not highly recommended.

With all music games of this nature, it is the track selection that really makes the difference, and surprisingly, the music — of the underground sort — is not too bad. While there aren’t any major names on the song list, the songs are pretty good, play well, and are even coupled with corresponding music videos. Best of all, for the artist, is that their CDs are linked at the end of each song for anyone interested in their music. It’s another outlet for an up and coming musician.

Unfortunately, not all is perfect in the game. While the synchronous, competitive multiplayer style is nice, and the music videos amusing, there are two glaring complaints. One, there doesn’t seem to be any real, noticeable, fail mechanic for missing a note, other than some text that says that you missed. With games like Guitar Hero, a miss equated to a cacophony of squeaking and the note in the music track did not play. That is not the case here. The music plays regardless — apparently to allow for the multiplayer competition — but the immersion of being a “rock star” is lost.

Moreover, and perhaps most obnoxious, is that you have to finish a song on a lower difficulty setting before moving on to a harder one. Not all players like to start on easy, and frankly, easy tends to be a bit boring. Why on earth would you not give the player a choice in their personal difficulty setting?

Overall, Hit Machine isn’t too bad. With simple, yet familiar, mechanics, the game is heavily the underdog when compared to the console releases this month, but its online, free, and social capability features help to make up for some heavy short-comings.