E3 2013: Hands-On ‘Fantasia: Music Evolved’

Last week, the music game giants at Harmonix announced a team up with Disney to bring us Fantasia: Music Evolved. A Kinect exclusive experience, the initial trailer combined the magic of Disney with the chart toping hits of today, but we didn’t really see how that would happen. During a demo session with the title, Harmonix answered all of our questions about the game, how it plays and how it relates to the Fantasia film. After trying it out for myself, I must say, the game has promise!

Fantasia: Music Evolved puts us in the shoes of the sorcerer’s new apprentice. Tasked with bringing life back to worlds that are initially dull and dreary, the opening moments of each stage are closer to a point and click adventure. Standing to the right or left of the screen rotates the camera and moving your hand over the environment has various effects. Spinning, dragging, pushing, pulling swiping and poking can transform the environment into colorful, vibrant areas that match up well with Disney’s family friendly reputation. Playing with the level awards magical energy that will help open up rifts in the background. It’s these rifts that house the musical challenges, which is where the heart of the game lies.

Inside a printing press. One of the many lands sorcerers will explore.

Bringing in a mix of Wii Music, Dance Dance Revolution, Elite Beat Agents and even Fantavision visually, sections of the songs are triggered by different motions. Some of these include swiping in a direction, pushing at a certain spot or tracing your arm along certain movement strings to keep the song going. Throughout various points in the song, apprentices will be given the choice to layer a different type of arrangement on top of the song to give a custom feel to it. The best part is that you aren’t obligated to use your hands at all. If you want to dance, use your feet or throw in a spin here and there, as long as some part of you follows the instructions, the action will register. By the time the song is over, you’ll have a brand new version that can sound vastly different from the original version.

As songs are unlocked and completed, mini games in the game world will open up new sounds that are eventually blended into the world. By the end, the once dead environment was booming with tons of activity and sounds, blended perfectly into a unique creation of musical expression, taken both from the licensed songs and the included sound effects to make it unique to the player. Even if you don’t care about any of these creation aspects and just want to rack up a high score, Fantasia rewards experimentation since various arrangements might yield higher scores than others.

While the game was way too much fun to play, my biggest complaint wasn’t so much with the game, but with the Kinect itself. Using the new Xbox One version of the motion sensor, my movements weren’t being picked up for large chunks of the song. A combination of the lighting and my fellow journalists behind me were to blamed, but the new Kinect was supposed to alleviate or eliminate these issues that are part of the original Kinect as well. It could have been that I just sucked, but the demo had no way to tell me whether or not I was doing something wrong. Unlike Dance Central, which had visual cues that hinted at what you were doing wrong, Fantasia didn’t have anything of the sort. I’m hoping Harmonix adds something like this when the game launches early next year, because it’s sorely needed.

I was incredibly curious as to how Harmonix would pull off Fantasia, and this curiosity was satisfied by a creative, colorful and imaginative game that looks to recreate some of that Disney magic in ways that haven’t been done before. With the promise of Mickey Mouse appearing in the game in some capacity, hopefully more of Disney’s history will be explored within the game’s narrative. A soundtrack featuring Bruno Mars, Queen, f.u.n. and plenty of classical tunes rounds out what promises to be an interesting ride.

Look for Fantasia: Music Evolved on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One in 2014.