Gamesugar

lilt: “to sing or play in a light, tripping, or rhythmic manner.”

Recently released by Gaijin games on WiiWare, lilt line is a game being marketed as “a retro rhythm racing beat ’em up action game with a dubstep flavour,” which bothered when I first started the game.

I took one look at the UI and level design and flashbacks of raver kids tripping on E wearing stunna shades at HARD Summer’s electro festival came to mind, not dubstep. Around here, dubstep is a mellow, mostly downtempo scene, devoid of bright neon colors, and saying “rapid” is almost an oxymoron, so I feel it is an imperfect visual representation of dubstep. The scene is becoming a bit more commercialized as groups like Magnetic Man lead it into the mainstream, perhaps melding perceptions of dubstep into an all-encompassing view of electronic music, but I digress.

Apart from my disapproval of the stylistic design choices, lilt line is a fun game that breezes by too quickly. The game adds an accelerometer element (it was originally released for iPhones) to a musical game that’s not far from Rock Band, where the movements are tilting the remote and hitting the 2 button on the marked beats. There are 15 levels in which you control your line by tilting the horizontal WiiMote forward and backwards. Your lifeline is the score shown on the bottom left of the screen, depleting every time you hit the wall or miss a beat.

Most levels are fun and easy, but some stages are frustratingly challenging. The lilt line is fast, but not resilient – it sometimes gets lost in its own liltingly carefree self. Bad level run throughs go something like this: tilt up, hit 2, keep it tilted up, tilt down, dodge the menacing walls, hit 2, beat break, hit 2, tilt up, hit wall, keep hitting wall, tilt up too high, hit wall again, miss beat, hit wall, “game over,” throw controller. Once you hit the wall, the line moves too quickly to bounce back into the groove.

This game made me contemplate the correlation between presentation and gameplay and how there is a certain visual/gameplay ratio for games.

There are games that look spectacular enough to forget substandard gameplay issues, and games that are nowhere near the cutting-edge in visual terms but provide play that invites the imagination to overlook presentation. lilt line’s simple but engaging mechanics allow me to overlook my own design issues with the game, even though the visuals portray more of a “music visualizer” vibe and the neon colors and geometric shapes come across as flat and abstract on a first impression.

lilt line

Developer
Different Cloth

Publisher
Gaijin Games

System
Nintendo Wii (WiiWare)

Modes
Singleplayer

Release Date
December 13, 2010

Price
500 Wii Pts

*A copy of this title was purchased by Gamesugar for review