LOUD Review
I remember the golden age of Guitar Hero when plastic peripherals ruled the gaming space, and Guitar Hero III was common in living rooms across the world. That heyday is long since passed and arcade guitar games have been dormant, despite attempts to revive them. LOUD, developed by HyperStrange, is one smaller effort to bring back game-based riffing.
LOUD follows the story of Astrid from her first steps learning guitar through to performing in front of crowds. To be fair, the story is merely a device to unlock new songs, guitars, and outfits. The plot is rather basic and predictable with Astrid being the sole focus. There are other characters mentioned but they hardly have any screen time, and some narrative beats lack impact because the characters were only in two previous scenes. There are fourteen levels in total with each one ramping up the skill required to pass. The game has three difficulty levels to start with, with Chillin’, Skillin’ and Grindin’, basically your easy, medium, and hard. However, to unlock the toughest Grindin’ difficulty you need to get an S rank on the Skillin’ difficulty which is a lot easier said than done.
Playing LOUD on Switch the control scheme is simple enough to follow. There are six tracks on scene with each corresponding to a button. On the left hand side the three tracks are mapped to three of the directional buttons, while on the right the three tracks are mapped to the X, A, and B buttons. Along these tracks stars will flow and you have to press the right button when that star reaches the end of the track. On the lower level the speed is easy enough to keep up with but on Skillin’, especially on later songs, your reaction times are truly tested. The Liberator difficulty, the fourth
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