To get something out of the way first, Beaterator is not a game, and should not be classified as one at all. It’s more a Sound Editing and Music Making piece of software that let’s you create your own music with ease and on the fly, especially because it’s on hand held. You sit down with the title, get some beats going with the tools on hand and make music, which can technically be called gameplay...but realistically it’s not, it’s sound editing, but that is certainly not a bad thing because Beaterator is damned good at what it does.
First off, we were given the chance to play around with Live Play, where you basically test and record a loop for your song. Prior to trying out different loops, you can set yourself a template for different genres, so if you want to have a Drum and Bass type of track or Rock, you can pick the template so you can grab the sounds associated with the genre. Once you’re ready to go, you select different layers of sound and hit available buttons on the layers to produce a loop. Each layer has 4 different sounds and there are usually about 8 layers, so once you’ve looped each layer, you can come out with some great sounding beats in mere minutes, and that’s only scratching the surface.
After recording your loop, you can go even more in-depth by going into an editor that allows you to cut out certain layers of sounds, add ones, and mix and match. It feels much like that of a proper sound editing program where it has a time line and several layers of sounds, and you can edit it all on the fly as the music plays, so you get instant previews. This is also where you can edit the beats per minute, mute certain layers to test the track, set more loops and a whole lot more. It’s difficult to explain the depth of the sound editing and the live play sessions, but the basic idea is that there is a massive amount of customisation and editing available.
The best part however is the sounds you hear in Live Play are not the only sounds you have. After creating your loop, you can access the menu systems (which is integrated and made seamless very nicely through the shoulder pads) and go through literally thousands of different sounds to further enhance and personalise your track. Musical Producer Timbaland has supplied the title thousands of his own high-end noises, and mix this with Rockstar Game’s added sounds as well, and you have a ton of content jam packed in there.
And even if you don’t like the sounds supplied, you can actually edit the sounds as well, by reversing the track loop, cutting certain areas and adding several different effects to the loop. If you’re stil not happy with it however, you can also import your own sounds that you’ve put onto your PSP, or record yourself through the integrated microphone. It’s an incredibly in-depth system that allows pretty much complete customisability in creating your tracks.
Once you’ve finalised your track and its ready to go, you can export your track and share it with the online community to be rated and heard. The best part is that it’s completely uncompressed as well, exporting in a .WAV format so you can further enhance it on your own computer if need be.
Beaterator’s level of depth in customisation and music goes very, very deep. We were only barely able to scratch the surface on the capabilities of the title and even without that, we were already making solid sounding beats at a very fast rate. It’s a fairly difficult title to describe however, as it really needs to be seen (and heard) to be believed. Out next week on the PSP and PlayStation Network (and sometime later on the iPhone), audiophiles and music lovers should definitely take a look at Beaterator, as it’s not only a fun and accessible program, but seems to be the definitive, cheaper alternative for music and sound editing, and we can’t wait to play with it some more.
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