Critical Hit
Welcome to Critical Hit, where I (or someone else on the PC Gamer team) celebrate and lament all things videogame music, audio design, and the ways our favourite games make our ears tingle.
I’m almost certain my love for videogame music was the pipeline to becoming a chronic rhythm game enjoyer, combining two of my very favourite things (funky beats and button mashing), into some ridiculously good audio-visual experiences.
It’s still a genre that is woefully underrepresented on PC, though—sorry to all the Osu! enjoyers out there, I do not count myself among you—and as someone who primarily got started in arcades and continues to dwell in them, I’ve been yearning to bring that experience to my desktop.
Luckily for me, In Falsus recently launched. It’s from the same developer behind Arcaea, the mobile rhythm game that was very heavily inspired by Japanese arcade rhythm game Sound Voltex. That DNA carries through to In Falsus, with lightning-fast note streams and mouse-controlled skylane laser notes that require the kind of dexterity I still massively lack despite my many years served in the scene.
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I’ve been putting a whole bunch of time into In Falsus over the last couple weeks, and it may be one of my favourite rhythm games on PC to date… or at least it would be, but I’m not sold on Lowiro’s attempt to package it as a visual novel-slash-puzzler.
Don’t bind me
In Falsus posits itself as a game that can do it all—a narrative laden with depressed teenage anime girls trying to navigate an equally depressing world where lies and emotions are displayed to all via colour-changing necklaces called Binds; a card system layered with light puzzle elements; and tying it all together with complex rhythm gameplay with over 70 songs to experience.
If you’re looking to simply dive into the latter, you’re out of luck. In Falsus ties almost its entire discography to the story, something I wouldn’t have particularly minded even as a relative rhythm game purist. Unfortunately, the story is simply not very good. It smacks of poorly-written fanfiction, despite offering an interesting premise. Worse yet, its skip button is instead a misleading fast-forward button—one which still forces you to read through what it deems “important” story beats—leaving you to sit through slightly sped-up text boxes regardless.
It’s a shame, too, because In Falsus has some of the coolest music I’ve heard in rhythm games. It’s secured some of the best composers in the biz: Feryquitious (one of my personal favourites), Camellia, TAK, REDALiCE, and a whole bunch more that veteran rhythm gamers will recognise in a heartbeat.
It’s a solid mixture of originals and borrowed tracks, from the upbeat poppiness of Cryogenic to stranger, more experimental tracks like F0 CHA0S that has what my partner would lovingly refer to as “rhythm game-ass” qualities to it. You know, super weird. But in a good way. The former has been in extremely heavy rotation on my Spotify playlist ever since it was released, and there are many more songs across In Falsus that are well worth listening to outside of the game. Looking at you, Deep Into The Vibe, Memories in Noise, and New Vision.
But all of this comes with the caveat that you have to play the story. Do I think it’s worth slogging through, either by reading it or fast-forwarding? Honestly, yeah. If you can stomach its juvenile writing style, there are some genuinely interesting story beats lying beneath the surface. Even if it doesn’t necessarily resolve any of them in a meaningful way.
But even if you have no interest in its narrative, its thrillingly challenging rhythm gameplay, which is delightfully moreish and comes with a surprisingly high skill floor. All six button inputs are handled with the left hand—yes, that is more buttons than fingers, I’m so glad you noticed, meaning you need a pretty good handle on both your own dexterity and your keyboard layout. That’s because the right hand is taken up by the mouse, which is needed to hit flick notes as well as long laser notes that float above. It takes a fair bit of getting used to, and I’m still very much riding the learning curve right now. But with killer music and some wonderfully striking visuals along the way? It’s all worth the struggle.
In Falsus is out on Steam right now, with current plans for even more music in the form of DLC packs coming soon.
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