Music Drive: Chase the Beat Review

Music Drive puts players into the shoes of Tina & Tunner; the former being the best driver in the business while Tunner is the best shooter with a perfect aim. Our anti-heroes are on a mission to save music; destroy targets to rescue tapes or deliver tapes in due time and survive an onslaught from people trying to stop you.

Music Drive: Chase the Beat is a linear racing game where players will race through a track and reaching the destination. They choose by either chasing bums holding tapes or deliver tapes. If you opt for the former, you’ll have to chase down specific targets to grab the tapes and kill any other NPCs drivers trying to stop your mission. If you opt to deliver, you’ll need to reach the destination in one piece.

As you successfully complete missions, you’ll earn money that can be used to buy new cars, weapons or even upgrade your current weapon. While the paths are linear, you’ll be able to find money on the side of the roads to get some extra cash. Once you’ve collected the tapes, you still have to survive until the finish line. If after a few races, haters are too hot to handle, you can use your hard earned in-game money to bribe them for…like one race. Things amp up pretty fast.

The game looks great with its unique visuals, which is a nice change of pace. It’s also highly colorful. However, roads don’t vary much; often the same roads and decor which makes it a bit redundant. Also the soundtrack is mildly enjoyable; you’ll need to at least appreciate the R&B and Hip hop genre otherwise you’ll have a miserable time.

One of the game’s annoying quirk is the menu-ing and its color scheme. It’s often difficult to see which item is highlighted to “use” and seems like they made it overly complicated for reason. For example, when choosing a car, instead of just browsing with LT or RT, like you’d expect, you need to highlight an arrow and press A. The game also requires a lot of “grinding” i.e. replaying earlier level to cumulate some money for new rides/weapons/upgrades because after 1-2 races, enemies become incredibly aggressive and your car feels like it’s made from paper. You can’t defend yourself from enemies so your car turns into swiss cheese pretty quickly.

Music Drive: Chase the Beat is a fun and unique game experience. While you’d expect this to be a rhythm game, it’s not. You race down roads collecting or delivering tapes to the sound of R&B and Hip Hop while trying to survive the ride. While it’s a fun and new concept, the fact that you’ll have to grind a lot of feels like a lack of progress; nothing worst than having to replay the same level(s) over and over again. This is the perfect game to play in short bursts. If you enjoy the R&B/Hip-Hop genre, you’ll definitely want to check this out for the music alone.