I had no expectations coming into this game. I had vaguely heard of the game, but had never researched what it was about or how it played. Needless to say, I was very pleasantly surprised when I booted this game out and immediately fell in love with it.
The game is all about the music and the colorful graphics. For the most part, you are on a track (either on a bike/skateboard/motorcycle) and collecting hearts while dodging walls and attacks from enemies, as well as sometimes shooting things from a distance. The game is one of the most creative concepts I've ever seen, and it deserves all the praise it gets from fans.
The music is incredible, and the gameplay matches with the gameplay perfectly. There are timed button-presses that you have to push along to the beat, and the animations on screen match up exactly with the song that is playing. They took a basic concept (the best I can describe it is the bonus levels in Sonic where you're on a halfpipe trying to collect all the rings), but they continuously add new and innovative concepts to the game throughout, and it never even gets close to being boring or stale.
I personally loved the levels where there were pseudo-boss battles, and the ones where you are playing on a virtual reality screen on someone's head. The entire game is only about an hour and a half long, but I was smiling the entire time I played. It's not a hard game by any stretch, but sometimes you just want to zen out, listen to kick-ass music, and collect hearts. There are rankings you get after each level, but I wasn't entirely sure why I should care about them. It didn't seem to matter what score you got, but I imagine some people are invested in being the best at the game, and presumably those people will play the game until they've perfected the whole thing. But I appreciated that, even if you weren't very good at the game and never got a "gold" score, the game let you continue regardless.
I always appreciate a game taking chances, and this one certainly did. By coming up with a really fun and creative new idea in video gaming, and making it exceptionally fun throughout, and not over-staying it's welcome, this is one of my favorite games this year.
9/10