When Rhythm Zone launched on Steam not that long ago, there were a lot of people bashing it as a terrible game. A lot of the complaints were legitimate. Notecharts that seem to have little to do with the songs that you import, no way to track your scores unless you go into the leaderboard which is very out of the way, no unicode support, converting your song files to large .wav files so that it can read them, etc etc etc. It had numerous faults and was generally disliked.
 
None of that affected me all that much, but for those that it did, an update has released fixing numerous problems. Large .wav files are no longer stored on your PC. The song results screen shown after completing a track shows your score place on the leaderboards. While actually playing the game, your old high score is shown in-game so that you have a target. This now puts it in line with other Steam music-infused games like Audiosurf and Beat Hazard.
 
The notecharts? Still not always that great. The problem isn't really with their system of creating notecharts. If you give the game a simple, beat-heavy song then it'll give you a notechart that remains relatively faithful to that track, more faithful the simpler it is. If you give it a complex technical death metal song, the game won't quite understand what to do with all the noise. It depends entirely on the tracks, you can't expect an automated system to decipher complex music and form a notechart out of it.
 
Of course, that means that it's a concept flawed from the get-go. However, not everyone is concerned about accurate charts. Those who are will stick to the likes of Frets on Fire for their Guitar Hero knock-off rhythm gaming. For those who want something easy and that will play virtually any song in their library, Rhythm Zone offers that experience.
 
If you understand that you won't always be getting accurate notecharts but still want to play some GH to your music library, consider giving it a shot.

When Rhythm Zone launched on Steam not that long ago, there were a lot of people bashing it as a terrible game. A lot of the complaints were legitimate. Notecharts that seem to have little to do with the songs that you import, no way to track your scores unless you go into the leaderboard which is very out of the way, no unicode support, converting your song files to large .wav files so that it can read them, etc etc etc. It had numerous faults and was generally disliked.
 
None of that affected me all that much, but for those that it did, an update has released fixing numerous problems. Large .wav files are no longer stored on your PC. The song results screen shown after completing a track shows your score place on the leaderboards. While actually playing the game, your old high score is shown in-game so that you have a target. This now puts it in line with other Steam music-infused games like Audiosurf and Beat Hazard.
 
The notecharts? Still not always that great. The problem isn't really with their system of creating notecharts. If you give the game a simple, beat-heavy song then it'll give you a notechart that remains relatively faithful to that track, more faithful the simpler it is. If you give it a complex technical death metal song, the game won't quite understand what to do with all the noise. It depends entirely on the tracks, you can't expect an automated system to decipher complex music and form a notechart out of it.
 
Of course, that means that it's a concept flawed from the get-go. However, not everyone is concerned about accurate charts. Those who are will stick to the likes of Frets on Fire for their Guitar Hero knock-off rhythm gaming. For those who want something easy and that will play virtually any song in their library, Rhythm Zone offers that experience.
 
If you understand that you won't always be getting accurate notecharts but still want to play some GH to your music library, consider giving it a shot.