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So "Beats" is out in NA now...

Good that it's out in the NA store finally. I think I'll get it since I have a ton of music on my PSP and it sounds interesting.
 
Agent X said:
That's the reason they gave, but that didn't stop them from putting up classic PS1 games earlier in the year, at a time when they were only playable on PSP and not on PS3.
Click to expand...

People threw a tantrum about that, you want them to do it again? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
 
I've got no rhythm or something, I can never get the hang of these type of games. I try playing this on Novice or Normal and it's too easy but then I try to switch to Hard and I start missing beats all over the place. Seems like a nice package overall thought - lots of skins/themes to choose from, full options to record, share and download the jam tracks, etc.
 
Holy crap! Why is this friggin game not the center of everyone's attention. Seriously, it's the best five bucks I ever spent on my PSP. Infinite replayability, a slick, customizable interface, multiplayer, music making application. This game has it all!

I would like to nitpick a bit though: Please just keep in mind that I'm using custom firmware so these impressions might be messed up as a result of that. However, I'm getting messages saying it can't use my songs with certain MP3s. I was looking at the encoding and 128 and 160 had some problems. Music encoded at 320 was fine. One song was playing fine and in the middle of it stopped and gave me the same error as songs that never load up. I also hear a bit of a skip within the songs sometimes. It's almost like the game is trying to cache the music but is having trouble keeping up.

Maybe if some people without custom firmware could talk about their experience, we'd get a better handle on what the problem is. Also, if anyone knows what type of encoding the game prefers for its songs, that would be a big help.

I'm going to use the custom firmware to bump up the processor speed and see if that gets rid of the little skips during gameplay.

Seriously though, this is a tremendous deal! I just bought a new Zen yesterday and now I don't want to use it because I'd rather load all my music onto the PSP and make a game out of it.
 
kaching said:
I've got no rhythm or something, I can never get the hang of these type of games. I try playing this on Novice or Normal and it's too easy but then I try to switch to Hard and I start missing beats all over the place. Seems like a nice package overall thought - lots of skins/themes to choose from, full options to record, share and download the jam tracks, etc.
Click to expand...
Can you fine tune the notes appearing timing over an existing song? Say if I can tell that it's just missing the beat on my favorite song, can I go into the pattern it generated and edit the beat timing, but leave everything else as it is?
 
No, no option to edit the timing as far as I can see. You just select the song from your library, select from one of four difficulties and the rest is handled automatically.
 
Sweet, if the PS3 trick works, i'm doing it tonight!

These sorts of projects are exactly what the PSP needs. I just hope Sony hasn't taken their focus off the system. BTW: why doesn't that system have Playlist support yet?!?! Its practically 2008!
 
av club, i had some of the same problems as well. i couldn't get about two of my songs to work, which really sucked. and it stuttered at times as well. it's still really good though.
 
AVclub said:
Holy crap! Why is this friggin game not the center of everyone's attention. Seriously, it's the best five bucks I ever spent on my PSP. Infinite replayability, a slick, customizable interface, multiplayer, music making application. This game has it all!

I would like to nitpick a bit though: Please just keep in mind that I'm using custom firmware so these impressions might be messed up as a result of that. However, I'm getting messages saying it can't use my songs with certain MP3s. I was looking at the encoding and 128 and 160 had some problems. Music encoded at 320 was fine. One song was playing fine and in the middle of it stopped and gave me the same error as songs that never load up. I also hear a bit of a skip within the songs sometimes. It's almost like the game is trying to cache the music but is having trouble keeping up.

Maybe if some people without custom firmware could talk about their experience, we'd get a better handle on what the problem is. Also, if anyone knows what type of encoding the game prefers for its songs, that would be a big help.

I'm going to use the custom firmware to bump up the processor speed and see if that gets rid of the little skips during gameplay.

Seriously though, this is a tremendous deal! I just bought a new Zen yesterday and now I don't want to use it because I'd rather load all my music onto the PSP and make a game out of it.
Click to expand...

What this man said. (BTW, I'm having the same issues as you) This game is brilliant. Finally, a rhythm game that lets you select your own music! Unless you hate rhythm based games, there's no way you can not buy this. Could this maybe be handheld GOTY? (The bliss of it's greatness may be affecting my judgement)
 
Awesome, awesome game.

I tried Diablo Rojas by Rodrigo y Gabriela on hardest difficulty setting. OUCH. :lol

Obviously it is $5 well spent, but I think it is actually worth even more.

Anyone else assuming they are going to add more skins via DLC?
 
I'm using official 3.72 firmware with a mix of mostly 160-192Kbps MP3s. So far I haven't encountered any errors, I've only encountered an occasional hitch in songs during their Beat playback that's not encountered during normal XMB playback (ie., its not a hitch in the recording itself).
 
I think I figured out what might be wrong with some of the songs not playing. I had a song that wouldn't play that had a sample rate of 48.000kHz. I noticed the tracks I was using that did play had a sample rate of 44.100kHz. I re-encoded the track down to 44.100kHz, and the song played fine in-game. Can anyone try this with a song that isn't playing for them to maybe confirm this?
 
I'm having trouble transferring the game from my PC to the PSP, using 3.71 M33-3 firmware. The PSN Downloader keeps giving me a "Retry" prompt, as if it isn't detecting the PSP (and yes I have it in USB Mode).

Anyone else having trouble on custom firmware? I noticed a few people with CFW have gotten it installed fine, so I'm wondering if this is something specific to M33-3...
 
The game does a really great job at matching up the beats to whatever song you've chosen. Sia's "Breathe Me" and the title theme from Metal Gear Solid 2 stand out as particularly great.

It's like a dream rhythm game - you can play any song you want. Great $5 download!
 
slicknick1986 said:
I'm having trouble transferring the game from my PC to the PSP, using 3.71 M33-3 firmware. The PSN Downloader keeps giving me a "Retry" prompt, as if it isn't detecting the PSP (and yes I have it in USB Mode).

Anyone else having trouble on custom firmware? I noticed a few people with CFW have gotten it installed fine, so I'm wondering if this is something specific to M33-3...
Click to expand...

I'm using 3.71 M33-3 as well and I had no issues. Are you able to browse the content of your memstick once you're in usb mode? Maybe you should try uninstalling the sony software, plugging the usb cord into a different usb slot on your PC and try the whole thing again.
 
slicknick1986 said:
Thanks I'll try another USB Port and reinstall.
Click to expand...
Also worth checking that you have your USB mode set to use the memory stick. I've lost count of the amount of times I don't get what I expect, only to find it's still pointing at flash0.
 
im trying to download beats from my ps3 to my psp it once it copies over to my psp, it says that the game is corrupt.

has this happened to anyone else or do you have any advice?
 
Great game, but some of my songs don't work for some weird reason.

But awesome interface, graphics, etc. Reads the music extremely well 90% of the time.
 
Riskbreaker23 said:
im trying to download beats from my ps3 to my psp it once it copies over to my psp, it says that the game is corrupt.

has this happened to anyone else or do you have any advice?
Click to expand...

Try redownloading it.
 
I tried it with 5-6 songs (it didn't work with 2 songs of those that I've tried) and it's good I guess. Good for the price for sure. Very often it pulls of nice button combos, and rarely it happens that it goes out of sync, but my biggest complaint is that there's no audio feedback to my button presses or maybe it should momentarily distort the music when I make a mistake. I think they should have put that as an option, and just make it very silent. That way it would maybe seem like you're doing something to the music other than listening to it.
 
Marconelly said:
I tried it with 5-6 songs (it didn't work with 2 songs of those that I've tried) and it's good I guess. Good for the price for sure. Very often it pulls of nice button combos, and rarely it happens that it goes out of sync, but my biggest complaint is that there's no audio feedback to my button presses or maybe it should momentarily distort the music when I make a mistake. I think they should have put that as an option, and just make it very silent. That way it would maybe seem like you're doing something to the music other than listening to it.
Click to expand...

I agree. No audio feedback is kind of a shame. But it is beautiful when you get going :)
 
Holy fuck, I wasn't expecting this would be so cool. Definitely worth $5. So far I've just tried out a few songs (including Navras from The Matrix on Extreme...and uh, some Regina Spektor songs). The rhythm that it creates its awesome. I noticed that you have to play around with difficulty settings -- some songs are easy even on Hard, while others get pretty crazy. There is also the occasional stuttering that many have already mentioned, and sometimes some slowdown in the movement of the buttons.

This seems like one of the best timekiller games to come along in a while. I was surprised to actually feel like I was "getting into it" -- the visualizations are great and I can see this rekindling my interest in a lot of music I haven't listened to in a while, if only because you can "interact" with it.

I initially wished that there was some audio feedback, but now I think that if they add audio, it should only be some kind of chime when you get/use Overdrive. Otherwise, I think the lack of audio feedback actually improves the experience, because you get to hear the original song as intended while lala-ing over the eye candy...

It would be nice though if you could "fail" a song to create more of a challenge. I hope Sony has updates planned for this.
 
slicknick1986 said:
Holy fuck, I wasn't expecting this would be so cool. Definitely worth $5. So far I've just tried out a few songs (including Navras from The Matrix on Extreme...and uh, some Regina Spektor songs). The rhythm that it creates its awesome. I noticed that you have to play around with difficulty settings -- some songs are easy even on Hard, while others get pretty crazy. There is also the occasional stuttering that many have already mentioned, and sometimes some slowdown in the movement of the buttons.

This seems like one of the best timekiller games to come along in a while. I was surprised to actually feel like I was "getting into it" -- the visualizations are great and I can see this rekindling my interest in a lot of music I haven't listened to in a while, if only because you can "interact" with it.

I initially wished that there was some audio feedback, but now I think that if they add audio, it should only be some kind of chime when you get/use Overdrive. Otherwise, I think the lack of audio feedback actually improves the experience, because you get to hear the original song as intended while lala-ing over the eye candy...

It would be nice though if you could "fail" a song to create more of a challenge. I hope Sony has updates planned for this.
Click to expand...

I'm still torn if direct audio feedback would help, or be annoying, because I still kind of suck on the harder difficulty settings, however I think the ability to fail a song would still put a bit more focus on playing better, because right now it still doesn't matter how many notes you screw up, as the only thing that affects is your total score.

But, I don't think I have too much room to bitch considering the price. The thing I still love most of all though, is that the game sits right on my memory stick. There are still a few other PSP games I've been playing, and it's nice that I don't have to switch out the UMD I have in the PSP to play a completely different game.

I'd like to see some updates for the game, but more than anything, I'd just like to see more games like this (creative, cheap, and downloadable) on the PSP altogether.
 
Marconelly said:
but my biggest complaint is that there's no audio feedback to my button presses or maybe it should momentarily distort the music when I make a mistake.
Click to expand...
Definitely agree, at the very least it feels like it should provide an audio cue when you miss a beat or press the wrong button.
 
Man... I'd love to have a version of Beats on my PS3! Nice little game for $5 dollars.

Hope they are working on one...
 
Anyone try a podcast by any chance? Almost harder than some of the songs I've tried, if people are talking back and forth quickly. Can't imagine trying to keep up for an entire 30-40 minute but imagine the points you could wrack up! :lol
 
Has anyone who has gotten the game been able to have it find ATRAC files? I had ripped some files from a CD into ATRAC and it puts them in an OMGAUDIO directory instead of the MUSIC directory and the Beats game doesn't seem to find them. The PSP itself doesn't recognize the ATRAC formatted songs if they are moved to the MUSIC directory - only if they are in that OMGAUDIO directory.

I encoded them in ATRAC (actually ATRAC3plus) because I really liked the sound it gave when I compared those same songs encoded other formats at the same bitrates, but maybe I will have to reencode as MP3s to get Beats to recognize them. Strange if this is true that Beats does not discover Sony's own file format, but maybe the format is considered so dead they decided not to bother.
 
This thread is only two pages and on the fourth page of threads in GAF? That really sucks. Sony is so great at fucking things up. On the rare occassion they get something like this right and put out a great game at a great price, I really wish they'd get more recognition for it.

There really is no reason why every single PSP owner (even the pirates) couldn't spend a couple of dollars in support of this idea. If you hate rhythm games, you can think of this as a pack of alternate visualizers for music playback on the PSP.

I love the idea of user-created content and that's what this game provides in its purest form. I'm hoping it's a sign of things to come from Sony.

So has anyone tried plugging in Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR, or Frequency tunes yet? One of the things I love about this game is that it is a DIY version of every other rhythm game available. You just have to plug in the songs!
 
Most of my songs don't work :(. Anyone figure out what exactly works and doesn't? bitrates, etc?

- edit - I was able to get them to work after coverting them... for some reason.
 
Just downloaded this and none of my CD songs or iTunes Plus songs work in-game, they work on regular XMB playing though. What is the fastest way to fix this? How do I convert them?
 
Thrakier said:
Does the US-Version work on EU PSPs? I would save almost 5€. ;)
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Only if you tie your PSP to that account. If you re-activate it with your US account, it won't work.

(This needs to get rectified soon)
 
If anyone is still interested, there's a trailer with gameplay in the store as well. Don't know if it was mentioned.
 
So a couple of questions, since I will have limited time to mess with this prior to heading out on travel for a week... (I have to create MP3 files specifically for this game, since the vast majority of my collection is in AAC.)

1) What MP3 settings (bitrate, sample rate, etc.) are required for songs to work with the game? Does it handle VBR as well as CBR?

2) Is there a maximum filesize and/or song length?

3) What kinds of songs work best? In particular, do highly repetitive songs (electronic, hip-hop) work better than non-repetitive songs (rock, pop, folk), or are they more boring to play? Is it best to have songs with a lot of dynamic range, or would a song which is consistently loud/soft throughout be OK?

4) Any recommendations for particularly outstanding songs that you've enjoyed?
 
-jinx- said:
So a couple of questions, since I will have limited time to mess with this prior to heading out on travel for a week... (I have to create MP3 files specifically for this game, since the vast majority of my collection is in AAC.)

1) What MP3 settings (bitrate, sample rate, etc.) are required for songs to work with the game? Does it handle VBR as well as CBR?

2) Is there a maximum filesize and/or song length?

3) What kinds of songs work best? In particular, do highly repetitive songs (electronic, hip-hop) work better than non-repetitive songs (rock, pop, folk), or are they more boring to play? Is it best to have songs with a lot of dynamic range, or would a song which is consistently loud/soft throughout be OK?

4) Any recommendations for particularly outstanding songs that you've enjoyed?
Click to expand...

1) Bit rate can be anything you want. I've successfully use songs at 192kps, 256kbps, and 320kbps (all CBR, not sure about VBR). The only thing I've found that needs to be consistent is the sample rate has to be 44.100kHz. Every track I tried at 48.000kHz would not play. Maybe someone else had success with that sample rate.

2) No file size limit that I've seen. I think the longest track I used was a little over 5 minutes.

3) Songs with strong guitar and drum lines seem to generate more 'beats', but can't say for sure.

4) My personal fav's are Hikaru Utada's 'Keep Tryin' ' and Tommy Heavenly6's 'Lucky Me'

People with better taste than me could probably post more/better song suggestions .
 
hard to type out all the songs that worked for me
you really need to play around with your song collection (I spent more time on this game than I spent on some RPG games)
 
I bought this off PSN and transferred it to my PSP from my PS3 with no problems.

It's a really fun game for $5, I like that I can use my own music, and can just switch out the tracks when I get bored. Good stuff!
 
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