If "Guitar Hero" is about the fantasy of becoming a rock legend, "A Musical Story" is about reality. Here you can't smell the notes or strut around your living room like a rock god. This is a tough and unusual rhythm game that demands perfection in every single instrumental song. It is perfection through memorizing the rhythm, getting a feel for the music, and repetition. Perhaps a more accurate representation of the process of learning a song. Real rock stars don't get a timeline that tells them exactly when to hit each note.

So in the game A Musical Story, the timeline is (mostly) gone. Instead, you have to memorize the tempo and rhythm of each song (tapping your toes or nodding your head like a gay man helps). It's an uncompromising rhythm game, and I like it. Passing each exam-like section of songs is rewarded with another chunk of story told by beautiful animation and (no doubt) this year's game soundtrack.

Jumping between multiple instruments, the story follows a guitarist in a 1970s rock band as the gang embarks on a road trip to the Pinewood Music Festival. However, the game is about the guitarist's drug addiction, as represented by the crows that begin to invade his perception of reality.

No dialogue is necessary, thanks to the quality of the visual storytelling and an outstanding soundtrack that makes you feel as if you own it. The film is an endless series of funk rock, folk, fat 70s synthesizers, and sections of math rock that test one's ability to tap to an unseen tempo.

Now let me explain how it works: at each song verse, a small icon appears in a circle around the screen and the scene gets smaller. These represent notes, which must be pressed in time to the music using the keyboard or the two keys on the controller; in Guitar Hero, you can literally see the notes coming toward you, but in this game, there is no indicator of your position in the song, so each It is difficult to keep track of the time between the gaps. Failing even once means saying goodbye to the optional bonus star for that entire chapter and having to start the loop all over again.

Repeated failures result in subtle position markers that silently disappear as you improve. It should also be noted that there is an option to make this help permanent at the cost of earning bonus stars.

After being lulled into a sense of security early on, I failed miserably. The last two-thirds of this nearly two-and-a-half-hour game had a disappointing zero stars. Part of the reason for this is that I am not a fan of rhythm games, even with the assist mode. However, it is curiously difficult to improve on A Musical Story. It is a game of constant, slightly unsatisfying learning.

Mastering the music doesn't mean you'll be able to play the whole song; in A Musical Story, you only play short snippets. It plays a bass loop, then drums and guitar, and finally a nice synthesizer. It's like McDonald's handing you a piece of bread, but withholding the burger and cheese until you've finished it.

To be fair, this is an approach that keeps the music fresh and the challenge level high. But at the same time, it also means that mastery is essentially thrown away when you finally finish a guitar riff, drum loop, or whatever it is. You are not given time to demonstrate or enjoy your new skills before the game turns you on to something new.

Of course, you can replay chapters. When I returned after finishing the story, I noticed that my playing had improved a bit. But the performance is still so tiny and strangely disconnected from the story being told. Why is it important that I perfect this song when the band that wrote it is now collapsing?" The protagonist is experiencing a drug-induced breakdown, and I am in the corner doing my musical homework. Very strange.

It's easy to see from the screenshots that A Musical Story feels like a game between two worlds. There are cutscenes, there is gameplay, and they are not meaningfully connected. The story even fades out so as not to get in the way. Still, I enjoyed returning to the thread, felt relief with each frustrating ordeal I completed, and enjoyed the songs slowly building up around me. There is a wonderfully varied soundtrack that blends perfectly with the animation and shifts from one genre to another as the scenes unfold.

While there are some problems with the way the rhythms are connected, the actual rhythm mechanics are powerful and give the player the feeling of playing a real instrument while keeping the genres to the essentials. "A Musical Story" draws a lot of challenge from just two buttons and keys. A Musical Story" offers many challenges from just two buttons and keys. Tapping and holding one, the other, or both at the same time is all it takes, but it takes skill to grasp the rhythm of each song.

Despite many failed tests, I was able to feel a connection to the music without having to plug my plastic guitar into the computer. I just wish I had known what this game wanted to be.... As it is now, it's awkwardly in between.