Audiosurf was one of the first Steam games I bought, way back when. It was a fun visualizer, and despite its many flaws, I put about 25 hours into it. The menu was sort of a mess, it wasn't designed very elegantly, and its music recognition sometimes didn't play out as I wanted it to. Audiosurf 2 was their chance to fix everything, and when it first came to light as Audiosurf Air, I was pumped. I left my email, and waited for a response.

It never came. Maybe this spoiled my entire view of Audiosurf 2, I can't say. Regardless, I completely ignored the game until tonight, when I booted up the demo.

Keep in mind, these are my knee-jerk reactions, having not played Auiosurf 2 or looked at discussions of it prior to this.

What a mess. On first boot, everything seems so ramshackle. The UI is ugly and confusing, with the main menu being a weird split of three columns for song, visual style, and mode. Gone are the three-tired difficulties with playstyles, the pause-menu graphics tweaks, and in their place are unclear lists of nonsense. The first song I played was Voyager by Jasper Byrne, off of the Hotline Miami soundtrack. The ramps and dives worked as I thought they would, but the actual colouration of blocks is confusing as hell. I always played Mono, and I had no idea what I should or shouldn't have been collecting until near the end of the song.

PS. Changing the options in the menu in the middle of a song will restart the song, and burn one of your demo tracks. You're welcome.

When I tried to change the song, I found out that the folder interface was totally busted. It was stuck in the Hotline Miami folder without any way to back out, which was incredibly frustrating. To top it off, the main menu was constantly cycling through songs every half-second or so, changing colours and just generally being a mess. I used the search function to play one more song and chose a different visualiser. It was the dusk driving visualiser, and it sucked. I'm not sure whether that stuff is dragged in from the Workshop, or its built in to the game, but it was awful.

My takeaway is this: the actual song analyzation is miles better. Everything surrounding that seems to be a total mess. Unless the full game is significantly different, I'd say steer way clear of this. Play the demo and see how it rubs you, but don't buy this game sight-unseen.I didn't touch the new mode, but unless it's a mind-blowing game-changer, it doesn't seem worth the money.

I bought it a long time ago on Early Access and have been playing it here and there since then (around 60 hours since my original purchase). As you noted, it has many of the same issues that the original Audiosurf had. The UI was actually much worse in Early Access, with this new redesign being far superior--if not still a bit clunky. I also kinda hate all the new modes and am annoyed that Mono Classic is something you have to get from the Workshop instead of being standard. It sounds like you had some weird issues that I have never encountered in my time with the game, almost as if your files were bugged somehow. It's been a bit buggy and crashy for me over the course of its Early Access status, but it's never given me the issues you had with it.

All in all, it's not really much of an improvement from the original. It looks a lot better, with some of the included skins looking fantastic (particularly the newer ones), and the song building feels much more dynamic overall. Other than that, it doesn't really do enough to warrant a purchase over the first game, unless you really like one of the new modes. I'm fine playing it since I already paid for it, but I don't think I would recommend it to anyone either.