Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 55 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 63 Ratings

  • Summary: Sound Shapes has you play, compose, and share on the NGP in this side-scrolling platformer, where you create music with your actions using the touch screen.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 46 out of 55
  2. Negative: 0 out of 55
  1. Sep 5, 2012
    100
    Overall, I found Sound Shapes to be an absolute joy to play, with little to no complaints about the actual game itself. Outside of some clunky feeling mechanics on the level editing side via the Vita touch screen, this marks my favorite platforming experience since Rayman Origins.
  2. Aug 10, 2012
    100
    This is a game where visuals, audio, and mechanics sync up in a way that feels effortlessly organic. I'm sure the work put in to making it that way was anything but effortless, but it paid off. Sound Shapes is a reminder that great, creative things can be done in the music gaming genre.
  3. Aug 31, 2012
    70
    Sound Shapes is an experiment that doesn't quite live up to its potential, but if you play it as a challenge of your skills as a level and audio designer, there's a unique experience here that shouldn't be missed.

See all 55 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 22
  2. Negative: 4 out of 22
  1. I bought the game in the morning and playing since then, It is awesome game, It is a steal at 15$ for both Vita and ps3. Everything about the game simply rocks, buy it if you love platformers, customization, infinite gameplay , music, trophies, art, graphics or casual games...well I only hope that the menu interface for community levels is changed...i would feel more happy if there were options for top rated levels, top played, most favorite users and highly rated and things like that. Expand
  2. Bought this game for two reasons: 1) appreciation it was receiving from all directions 2) being among the first few Playstation game releases that support: cross save and the latest addition 'cross buy'. The cross buy proved out to be a great feeling, and I was thrilled to see the game on both my consoles at the price of one. However, the short campaign is the main reason you won't probably get to enjoy the cross save feature. It makes a major meaning only when your game campaign is a long one where you might want to play it on one and continue on the other. The gameplay was fun but not extraordinary and the platforming experience was satisfying but not extremely rewarding. The checkpoints are quite close so the difficulty is not too hard. The editor is fun and great way to boost your experience (designers are going to love it), but it will take a bit of time for the community to have great levels. The connection with music is cool and the city based album is the greatest connect with music and game elements. The game also feels like a cross between Super Meat Boy, Little Big Planet and Space Mutant Blob attacks. The developers can however elongate the gaming experience by either introducing more game levels or by reducing the difficulties in Death Mode, or else the game will not see a launch after you've completed the campaign and are not challenged much by the Death Mode. Expand
  3. The game started really good. First, you have to play the campaign. It lasts about 2 hours, and was quite nice. Nothing revolutionary game-play wise, but nice art and music, an interesting experience. When you have finished the campaign, you unlock two new modes: Beat School and Death Mode. In Beat School, you hear a track and have to write down the "notes". It was nothing special, but a nice addition. The next mode, Death Mode, is were things are starting to get ugly. There are 20 Death Mode levels, for each level, you can get a silver trophy, it is a big part of the game and you need to complete it to get the platinum trophy. Every level consists of one screen of the campaign, where you have to collect a number of notes. These notes appear randomly on the whole screen. The problem with this mode: You have an extremely strict time limit. In combination with those randomly spawning notes, it means that most of the time, even if you are playing perfect, you won't get all notes. So you have to repeat the level over and over until you get lucky with several notes spawning nearby. To complete all levels, you need on average about 50 tries per level (sometimes I needed only 30, but too many times 100+). That means you will probably die 1000 times, and will need about 20 minutes or more per level, that's at least 7 hours on those boring, and really horrible levels. I don't think this is acceptable for a video-game in 2012, and it is certainly not fun. The last important feature of the game is the editor. Here you can build your own levels, upload them and share them with others. This is probably the best part of the game, which is, in some way, quite sad. I think the game has potential. I liked the (short) campaign, the editor, and Beat School isn't too bad. But what really destroys this game is Death Mode. It is so unfair and bad, that it made me really hate the game. Maybe they will release a patch to make it a little bit more bearable, but I doubt it. PS: If you want to see what Death Mode looks like, you can find some levels on youtube Expand

See all 22 User Reviews