TUAW's Daily iOS App: Pulse: Volume One
Cipher Prime is the developer behind the former Daily iOS App choice Auditorium, and the company has returned to the platform with Pulse: Volume One, an iPad game that has you playing with both rhythm and sound. The idea starts off simple -- hit the notes on the screen as the radiating circular pulse hits them from the center. But as with most music games, things start slow and build up quickly until you're frantically trying to tag all of the notes in their wacky patterns to match up with the song as it plays.
When the game works well, it does feel like you're "playing" the notes as they go by, but when things get really hard, it can be confusing to keep up. Unfortunately, the game only has eight songs to play through. While the songs are good, that's not a lot of content. There's no Game Center integration or other modes to play with, either.
With the lack of extras, it might be tough to justify the US$4.99 iPad price -- the game's not available on the iPhone yet. This might be one to wait for a sale on. Still, if you like the feel of a good music game, Pulse will likely get yours going.
Update: While there are only eight tracks in the original version of the app, Cipher Prime emails to tell us that more are being added, at the rate of four new tracks a month over the next six months. All of the updates will be free, we're told, so that's a pretty excellent deal right there.
