Record Run

Record Run takes the style and enjoyment of the rhythm game genre that Harmonix has mastered over the years and blends it well with an infinite runner in the mobile space. With missions to go through and the ability to add your own music to the game there is a decent amount of game to play. There are free-to-play hooks and some irritating ads, but you can get by without paying anything as long as you are OK with playing some songs on repeat. While some minor control issues and limited visual and interface scope keep it from being a major hit, Record Run remains a fun little package to play at home or on the road.

Record Run has the look and feel of your typical outing by Harmonix. Picture the traditional note lane found in any of your Rock Bands, but instead lay it on a sidewalk inside of a third-person perspective drawing of a repeating, yet somewhat random, city block. The city block is brimming with style, as are the characters you play as and the obstacles you overcome as you make your way through a song. Objects in the environment often animate in time with the music, which is a nice touch when not being a minor detriment to the gameplay. Some of the obstacles can cause an initial visual challenge of knowing how exactly you should avoid them. The environment does a serviceable job pulling you through the song, but it would have been nice to see a little variety in the venue since I could start to see the city block theme feeling repetitive after a while.

While automatically running to the right with each foot hitting the sidewalk to the beat, your character will have to dodge around, over, and under objects that are laid out in two lanes. Timing is key as points are given depending on how well you can avoid these obstacles to the beat of the music. In typical rhythm game fashion, you are rated on a five-point scale at the end of the song based on your total score and accuracy. Also, Records, which are one of the game’s forms of currency, appear in the lanes and can be picked up and used to purchase boosts and upgrades that can help you while playing the next song. Groove World, this game’s version of a multiplier bonus similar to Overdrive or Star Power of games past will also help you on your way to five stars. Dodging, jumping, and sliding are done with various directional swipes on the screen, and this works well most of the time. When it doesn’t work it feels more like the device is at fault than the game itself, but can still be somewhat frustrating.

A key feature of Record Run is its custom soundtrack. While the game comes with a few songs to get you started, you have the ability to add and play through songs that you have on your device. This allows for a soundtrack only limited by your device’s available storage and your current number of available song slots. Additional slots can be purchased with the game’s second in-game currency, the Backstage Pass. It usually only takes around a minute to analyze and add a song to the game, and it does a decent job mapping out the level to match the feel of the song. That said, if you pick a song that’s a little slow or repetitive, it could lead to some somewhat boring game time.

The mission system, friend challenges, leaderboard, and in-game store make up the rest of the total package allowing for a decent amount of replayability.

Each of the twenty missions is made up of three objectives. These range from things like earning a number of stars on a song to collecting a number of Records while playing through any number of songs. If a mission objective is too challenging you can skip it by spending some of the Records you have picked up along the way. Completing a mission will net you some of the Backstage Pass currency. While you can view your mission from the mission select in the main menu, and when you start a song, I would find it helpful if there was a quick way to see your current mission objectives while in the middle of a song, even if they were relegated to the pause menu.

While being a nice addition, friend challenges only benefit those who share a similar taste in music or more specifically an on-device music library with their friends. The leaderboard, on the other hand, is a little odd as there is too much variability at play. You can rate high just by basically playing more songs than anyone else. It does show individual songs and a score that someone has been playing, but it would be nice if you could select one of the songs you have added to see a more specific global leaderboard for just that song.

The in-game store is there to spend your in-game currencies on various upgrades, unlockable characters, and outfits. There is also a real-money store, which is where the free-to-play microtransactions kick in.

In this real-money store you will find your fairly egregious, yet typical, free-to-play pricing. For example, why not spend $99.99 on 281,000 Records? If that’s a bit much, which it is, they do have other various price points for Records, Backstage Passes, and bundled deals where you get a bit of both. I have not done the math to determine how many Records or Backstage Passes you would need to unlock everything the game has to offer, but I’m not sure why anyone would purchase anything, as you can earn everything fairly quickly. The money stuff is really there to just provide a quick bypass to a lot of the things you might otherwise have to play a few songs over and over again to unlock. What I would be willing to buy is the ability to bypass the occasional video for another app available on the marketplace that autoplays after every third song or so. This is no doubt the most annoying part of the game.

Overall the game is entertaining, and you can get a lot out of it without paying any money as long as you don’t mind a little repetition. It’s really cool to be able to quickly play any song you want, but you may want to choose something you think might actually be fun to play. While it would be nice to have more level variety, a way to skip out on ads, and controls that worked 100% of the time, Record Run still feels like a decent little title with a generous amount of replayability.

On a side note, this game really just makes me wish for Rock Band 4 to be announced already.