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| Title | Laserlife |
| Developer | Choice Provisions |
| Publisher | Choice Provisions |
| Release Date | September 22, 2015 |
| Genre | Rhythm |
| Platform | PlayStation 4 |
| Age Rating | ESRB – Everyone |
| Official Site | |
Have you ever wanted to throw a rave? Better yet, have you ever wanted to be a DJ at a rave? All you need is a living room, a way to block out most lights, a projector, an Ultra muscular bouncer and a PlayStation 4 loaded with the game Laserlife. I have covered other games that bring on the psychedelic colors like Electronic Super Joy Groove City or Danmaku Unlimited 2, but this one is a quite a bit more unique than those two.
Laserlife starts you off by watching an astronaut laying in the middle of space. As the camera zooms closer to the person’s face, you see a skull. It is then that you are allowed to start the game. The point of Laserlife is for you to control two beams of light that travel throughout space and recover the astronaut’s memories. Every level will focus on one particular moment of the person’s life. The levels are on rails and each has three phases with slightly different gameplay.
In the first phase, you are supposed to collect orange-ish shapes with the R2 button. Simply move one of your beams towards it and hit R2 to be awarded some points. Keep going to build up a combo. Eventually, purple objects are introduced where you have to hit and hold R2 when your beam passes through it, and then finally green spikes can appear in which you have to hold R2 and move in a particular direction. Do not worry, it is a lot simpler than it sounds. The game will remind you how to do all of this each time you play. In my opinion, the first phase is the most complicated, as the next two are much simpler.
In the second phase, you move the beams into circles to the beat of the music. The visuals here are really pretty and very trippy. One of my favorite sections has a giant silhouette of a dog running around in the background. The third phase has you going through a tunnel while dodging bright red spikes. Get past that and you are finally able to return the gathered memories to our fallen buddy. There are 12 levels to Laserlife and they are oddly addicting, though it would have been nice to have some more levels. It can also be tricky at times to see where exactly you should be positioning your laser beams. That could also just be me getting used to the controls. It is also odd that the combo meter maxes out at only 40. I am used to rhythm games with combo counters far exceeding that number. Even though the songs are only a couple minutes long, you can get to that number very quickly especially on some of the trickier songs. For additional replay value, there are trophies and online leaderboards.
For $15, Laserlife is an all right experience. However, as a rhythm game, I would have liked to see a bigger song list and, while it has some cool ideas, I did not think the songs were too memorable. Usually I come out of a game like this humming music. In Laserlife’s case, I am unable to remember many of the songs. As a game to just sit down and have some fun and show off some trippy visuals, Laserlife succeeds. Just don’t expect this to be an experience you will be returning to very often.
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Review copy provided by publisher
