Band Space reinvents Guitar Hero for virtual reality

It doesn't matter what your favorite VR game is: the game you use to introduce other people to the world of virtual reality is always Beat Saber. The rhythmic sword slasher is the game that perfectly distills the core concept of virtual reality (movement) into a simple and intuitive gameplay mechanic that anyone can understand, regardless of their gaming experience. But Beat Saber finally has a competitor: Band Space.

Last year, after Gamescom, I wrote that PowerWash Simulator was a potential rival to Beat Saber. I still think that's true, with the gameplay just as simple and digestible, while the satisfaction of cleaning every item and hearing that 'ding!' pop is pure gaming serotonin. But PowerWash isn't the kind of game you can play at a party, unless your party is more likely to serve cheese than beer. Band Space is a closer rival to Beat Saber because it does the same thing – and dare I say it, I think it does it better.

Playing the keyboard in Band Space VR with the Gamescom logo

Band Space is essentially Rock Band in VR. You can play drums, bass, keyboard or guitar, and if you have multiple headphones (or connect to a friend who has one online), you can even form a four-piece band. I tried the first three instruments – the guitar had a longer tutorial that I abandoned to get the most out of my 30-minute demo – and found them all a lot of fun to play, and exactly as you'd expect.

For the drums, four different hoops come towards you (two snare drums and two high hats, one for left and one for right) in time with the music, and you simply flap your arms as they come. Some need to be hit harder, others need to be shaken back and forth, and even combos of hitting two at once can occur, but it's exactly as basic as it should be at its core. It's a similar story for the keyboard, where rectangles float towards a transparent keyboard for you to tap on, with your hands sometimes sliding across the keyboard to hold a note. With the bass, the left hand slides up and down the neck to find the same rectangle style, and the right hand strums. Nothing complicated.

It perfectly recreates the timing of plastic peripherals and makes you feel like you're playing every instrument. The complexity of the guitar obviously comes from wanting to differentiate it from the bass, and while I don't have direct knowledge of it, I can't imagine it going too far off the rails when everything else works in harmony. At the time I had Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Band Hero, with many sequels and specialist artist editions, and Band Space fits perfectly with these classics, modernizing their appeal through virtual reality.

While the feel of the music is excellent, the catalog leaves much to be desired. There are currently no major (or even recognizable) artists in the game. Thorr (19,315 monthly listeners on Spotify) is the only one I'd heard of, and only because he was the composer of Sigil 2, the additional episode of the original Doom. However, you will be able to upload your own songs at launch to complete the roster.

Playing guitar in Band Space VR

However, that doesn't make it entirely a non-issue. It remains to be seen how difficult it will be to add songs and make them work for all four instruments, and while Beat Saber has largely avoided copyright issues for edited songs even though it had official licensing deals with the likes of Billie Eilish and The Rolling Stones , any songs added to the game in this way would be unofficial and may be removed.

Your mileage may vary depending on how important this is to you, and I still had a great time playing Band Space at Gamescom – in fact, due a bit of nostalgia and the element of surprise, it was a dark horse for my show game. But I'd probably be in a bigger hurry to pick up a Meta Quest (it's also coming to Steam, but not my PS VR2) if I could rock out with Look What You Made Me Do and not Thorr's Gamer Girl.

It's rare that VR games feel like a throwback, with the technology not only so new but so focused on selling itself as cutting-edge. But Band Space VR was reminiscent of games of the past, when karaoke had extra, big, chunky plastic steps. A few games reminded me of why I loved VR at Gamescom this year, but none stood out as much as Band Space.

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