FUSER

Harmonix ditches the peripherals for a crowd-pleaser of a comeback

Developer Harmonix

Publisher NCSoft

Format PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One

Origin US

Release Autumn

Round these parts, there’s a pet theory that the success of a Harmonix game is directly linked to how good its name is. Frequency. Guitar Hero. Rock Band. And, on the flipside, Audica. The acoustics of the titles this music-game developer chooses, appropriately enough, feel all-important. So when the opening screen of this DJ sim flashes up, we frown. Fuser? It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

It’s the studio’s second run at the remarkable music-mixing tech it developed for DropMix, capable of blending songs of varying genres, keys and BPMs at the drop of a – well, card. Therein lay the problem. Harmonix tethered the tech to a game that required players to shell out for expensive peripherals: first a gameboard-slash-mixing deck, then the NFC-chipped song cards you’d place on it. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before this technologically advanced clutter was going for – apologies – a song at one’s retail outlet of choice.