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This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Touch Music (ID: chuappgame), Author: Feiyun

Talk about Perfect Sound Waves and the years Tango Studios has gone through.

On January 25, Tango Gameworks 'game Hi-Fi RUSH was officially launched, combining action and music gameplay with refreshing gameplay and winning a lot of praise from the media and players. Popular styles, cultural manipulation, and design that lowers the bar are all hot topics.

Tango is the development company founded by Sanshang Shinji, the father of the "Resident Evil" series, after its independent portal in 2010. Like Bethesda Softworks, Tango belongs to parent company ZeniMax Media and is now owned by Microsoft. Tango's history of more than ten years is simply a little high and low. The first game announced at the beginning of the company,"Evil Spirit Possession," won a high degree of attention, but from "Evil Spirit Possession 2" to "Ghost Line: Tokyo," it is increasingly reflected in the lack of gameplay. Tango's mobile game Hero Dice launched last year was suspended after only five months of operation. Therefore, the arrival of "Perfect Sound Wave" can be said to be born at the right time. For Tango, which has not developed smoothly in recent years, it is a gorgeous turnaround, sweeping away all kinds of doubts from the outside world.

Although Tango's game graphics are becoming more and more cartoonish, the gameplay has also gone out of its usual rut. Touch introduced this game in the weekend recommendations a few weeks ago: Happy youth who dreams of becoming a rock star accidentally broke his arm. After visiting an amusement park-like mechanical factory, he wakes up to find his right hand replaced with a robotic arm and a music player embedded in his heart.

Ah Cha thought he could become a cool cyberrock star, but unexpectedly, as soon as he walked out of the warehouse, he was stopped by a group of park management robots, calling him a "defective product" and had to be taken away and destroyed. At this moment, his mechanical arm seemed to come alive, turning itself into a strangely shaped industrial guitar. With the ubiquitous rhythm, Acha needs to escape from the sky with the mechanical cat 808 and other friends who happen to meet, through the quality inspection building.

Why are there so many good reviews? Perfect Sound Wave's critical reviews stem primarily from efforts on several levels. The first is the combination of action and music, which is the core feature of this game.

Action games have been developed for so many years, from 2D to 3D, ideas have been almost thought out, new games have been difficult to make earth-shaking innovations on the system, so we can see that some works are exploring on different levels_the new "God of War" and "God of War: Twilight of the Gods" become open world,"Angel Hunter 3" adds "Summoned Beast" mechanism, will be the past classic action game play integration.

The idea behind Perfect Sound was similar: since there was no way to come up with new tricks in the action system, why not combine them with other game types? Of course, action-plus-sound gameplay had appeared in some independent games, but it was rare, if not unprecedented, for a commercial game like Perfect Sound to try it.

Perfect Sound Wave was essentially an action game. Its action system consisted of the usual combinations of heavy and heavy attacks, jumping, dodging, and so on. The sound game element was mainly reflected in the damage and combo bonus that could be obtained from attacks carried out with the beat. This combination makes the experience different, achieving the effect that one plus one is greater than two.

The second level of effort is to lower the threshold.

The "Ghost Cry" series and the 3D "Ninja Dragon Sword" series have achieved great success, but there is a major problem that has been difficult to solve, that is, the difficulty is too high, the main audience is hardcore players.

High difficulty is a difficult problem in this era, and not everyone can endure the pain of "soul" games. Many new players have not experienced the baptism of arcade, FC and other era high-difficulty action games, the difficulty is the real threshold_3D "Ninja Dragon Sword Legend" in the third generation after a long silence, so far has not continued;"Ghost Cry" series launched the fourth generation in 2008, until 2019 there is a sequel "Ghost Cry 5"(2013 rumor "DmC: Ghost Cry" developer is not Capcom). On the other hand, after many years of development, the difficulty of audio games is not low, it is a test of the player's reaction and operation ability, many of the hardcore players seem familiar with the operation is enough to make ordinary people stunned, also raised the threshold for newcomers to enter the pit.

It wasn't easy to clear Ninja Dragon Sword 2 in terms of difficulty. Perfect Sound Wave clearly considered the needs of ordinary players and lowered the threshold through various methods, hoping that everyone could easily learn it.

Roughly speaking, the rhythm element in the game is a sufficient condition, not a necessary condition-players fight according to the rhythm, and typing commands into Beats at the right time will have a considerable bonus; even if they do not follow the rhythm input, the game will continue as usual, but the rating will be slightly lower. On this basis, the intonation rhythm of the game is also relatively loose, and there are few maddening difficult songs in hardcore music games.

The game also thoughtfully designs many scene items to move according to rhythm, creating an effect of "environmental resonance," so that players have reference objects to find the rhythm of hitting, and even can set up a metronome at the bottom of the screen to assist in rhythm.

The third level is the construction of popular culture.

The picture of Perfect Sound Wave is a cartoon rendering style of "three colors and two colors," plus the expression form of European and American cartoons, as well as a large number of color differences with high saturation. The background music also adopts European and American pop music, establishing a complete world full of European and American pop culture atmosphere.

Prior to this, Sega's "Doodle Kid" series and "Insomnia Group""Sunset Overload" also shaped the era atmosphere in European and American pop culture in this way. The breakthrough of Perfect Sound is that it may be the first work to combine 3D action with European and American pop culture so closely.

It's a hodgepodge of European and American trends. The fourth level is to pinch his culture. Perfect Sound pays tribute to many classic passages and elements in movies and games, and there are many places that make people laugh.

In the game, many bosses pose in homage to the classic actions of characters such as Chengtaro in the Japanese cartoon "JOJO's Wonderful Adventure," and the game director's name is John Johanas, abbreviated as "JOJO." The main character has a finger-snapping plot cut, apparently a tribute to David Lynch's famous TV series Twin Peaks.

A tribute to JOJO's Wonderful Adventure Perfect Sound Wave certainly pays tribute to some games, among which the most surprising for Japanese RPG veterans is the "different armor" clip "borrowed" in the second half of the game. Developed by Square and released in 1998, Alien Armor is an old game. To justify the tribute, John Johanas also wrote to Square Enix asking for authorization, and SE replied: "No problem, although it seems a little strange, it's okay. "

The most interesting thing is that this tribute is actually very rushed. Because of the lack of development time, the plot can only be explained by "the protagonist sits in the chair and the subtitles are played on the other half of the screen," which is the same as the dilemma encountered by "different armor" in those years. Generally speaking, it is easy for players to criticize a large section of the story that cannot be made into a play experience with subtitles, but after processing it into "salute," although it is suspected of cheating, it also brings a different kind of fun.

Tango's own "Evil Spirit Possession" series is certainly a tribute to "Alien Armor." In that section of the museum, there is a place where the classic glowing mirror and music from "Evil Spirit Possession" appear. In addition, there are many tributes to this work, and there have been players who have been completely sorting out and analyzing these eggs.

He might not be able to recognize these pinches. After all, everyone's gaming experience was limited, but adding these things would undoubtedly increase the popularity of the game. The reason why pinching other cultures has become a trend is used by many entertainment products. The key is identity. When players discuss these in various communities and forums, it is easy to form a perception that developers are also "own people" and also like these ACG works. Moreover, if he hadn't been paying attention to this aspect for a long time, he might not have participated in this discussion at all. This also strengthened his reputation among the core players to a certain extent.

Tango, the glowing mirror from "Evil Spirit Possession", has developed in twists and turns over the years. We talk about Tango, and naturally we can't avoid Sanshang Shinji. Sanshang and the Resident Evil series have had a profound impact on the gaming world. After leaving Capcom in the early 2000s, Sanshang worked briefly at Platinum Studios for a few years before founding Tango in 2010, which was subsequently acquired by ZeniMax, although Sanshang remained head of the studio.

Among Tango's post-creation works, the most successful in terms of fame and sales is "Evil Spirit Possession" directed by Sanshang himself, which is already a 2014 game. Since then, Tango's game performance has not been very good,"Evil Spirit Possession 2" evaluation is only "OK," the director is not three up (become the John Johanas mentioned above), players think the overall quality of the game has dropped sharply, lack of the level design level of the first generation of grandmaster level.

After "Evil Spirit Possession," Sanshang has not taken on the role of director again, and "Ghost Line: Tokyo" released in 2022 is also disappointing. It attracted a lot of attention when it was announced in 2019, and Yumei Nakamura, the creative director who introduced the work at the E3 conference that year, became a celebrity for players because of his cute performance when speaking. Nakamura later left Tango, and the game did not receive much news for several years, with mixed reviews after its release. Players generally believe that the game concept is outstanding but the content is empty, and many places are not well designed.

Also in 2022, Tango launched a turn-strategy kryptonite hand game called Hero Dice. In the game, players roll dice to determine the hero's attack, use cards to obtain various effects, and support up to 4 people to play. The game began operation on March 31, and at the end of June, it was announced that it would stop service. It officially ended operation on August 31, which was quite short-lived. Although there are many mobile games that have been poorly operated in these years, the five-month life cycle is quite rare.

Tango's first mobile game was so defeated because of the poor performance of the work, the outside world questioned Tango four times. One of the most important views is that Tango's game can only be successful if it is played by Sanshang himself. Without Sanshang, the output level will only get worse and worse. Many people expect Sanshang to come out as a director again and save Tango's embarrassing situation.

However, from all kinds of signs, Sanshang himself does not want to do so, he has said many times in recent years, he is unlikely to personally do a game director, because he feels old, energy is not as good as before, he is more willing to play the role of mentor, just as he once promoted Kamiya Yingshu, Takeuchi Run, Kawada Masao and others in Capcom.

In Ghost Line: Tokyo, the producer and director are not Shinji Mishang, but the younger Masato Kimura and Kenji Kimura. Many employees in this project, like these two, joined in the process of developing the "evil spirit possession" series, and lacked experience in developing large-scale commercial games, which may be an important reason for the poor performance of Ghost Line: Tokyo. Of course, Sanshang didn't ignore Ghost Line: Tokyo. He just tried not to intervene in the project at ordinary times, hoping to give young people more opportunities to play freely and only give some guidance at critical moments.

The concept of Ghost Line: Tokyo is very good, and there is a gap when playing it. As mentioned earlier, John Johanas, director of Perfect Sound Wave, is also the director of Evil Spirit Possession 2. After Evil Spirit Possession 2 suffered a bad review, Sanshang supported John Johanas, highly recognizing his performance and seeing him as a game creator with great potential. John Johanas didn't disappoint, proving himself as both director and creative director on The Perfect Sound.

At present, we don't know how much Sanshang participated in the development of Perfect Sound Wave. Referring to Ghost Line: Tokyo, I personally think Perfect Sound Wave belongs to John Johanas, and Sanshang may have only given some help in some key places. John Johanas is confident, too; in a recent interview, he rated Sound Perfect as Tango's best game yet.

Looking at the numbers alone, John Johanas may not be lying. Perfect Sound Wave received a 98% positive rating on Steam, slightly higher than Evil Spirit Possession.

In a sense, the success of Perfect Sound Wave proves that Tango doesn't need to go back to the production line, and Sanshang can continue to play the role of mentor happily. Take the long view. Although Kimura and Kimura failed to succeed with Ghost Line: Tokyo, they may have a bright future after experience.

Of course, the birth of Perfect Sound Wave also had accidental factors. John Johanas said that the idea of the project came entirely from him. After coming up with the idea, he did not report it to the next level, but directly told the big Boss Sanshang Shinji. Sanshang is an enlightened leader who has given strong support to this innovative project with certain risks. Therefore, although this game was conceived and led by John Johanas, if it was changed to a studio and lacked a mentor like Sanshang, then whether the game would still have a chance to come out, and whether the effect would still be the same as it is now, perhaps it is still unknown.

The success of small-volume works such as Perfect Sound Wave is also related to Tango's overall development strategy changes over the years. In an interview with Famitsu, Shinji Mikami looked forward to Tango's future, hoping to change the studio's image of focusing on developing horror games, instead of targeting a single genre, but to develop more small-scale games of other genres. John Johanas also mentioned in the interview that Perfect Sound Wave was not a game specially developed for Microsoft XGP members, but had been established in 2017, when ZeniMax and Microsoft had nothing to do with each other.

Perhaps 2017 can be seen as a year of transformation for Tango: After the release of Evil Spirit 2, Tango shifted its focus from huge triples to small and medium-sized game development-at least part of it. From this perspective, we can also expect Tango to launch more "small but fine" works like Perfect Sound Wave in the future.

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