Cytus: The "touchier" touch-based rhythm game

During the recent weeks I have been occasionally engrossed in playing Cytus, a rhythm game for the iOS and Android mobile platforms. Most people would probably take a look at the game and just pass it for another one of those catchy touch-based rhythm games that only become popular for a few moments then slowly and painfully die out into inexistence.

Cytus is especially unique due to it being completely designed for capacitative multi-touch screens. I have also played other touch-based rhythm games like osu! (more specifically its Android port, osu!droid) in the past, but osu! appears to be designed specifically for graphics tablets. Additionally, due to its user base consisting of mouse-trotting players, a good handful of songs available for osu! made by the players are optimized in favor of mouse players more than those who play with graphics tablets, or in my case, fingers.

Cytus is also relatively easy to pick up and learn. The gameplay is easy and intuitive. A black bar continually bounces up and down from the top to the bottom of the screen, with each direction of movement corresponding to a measure (though sometimes I think a complete round trip from top to bottom corresponds to a measure, I'll have to take time to study this). A black glow on the sides of the screen repeatedly pulses after every two 1/4 beats. Colored circles (that are colored by group depending on which trip the black line is going to and fro) pop up on the screen, and the player has to hit these circles alongside the music's rhythm. Then there are the sliders, which are a couple of smaller circles connected in a chain. The player has to slide their finger through the slider, hitting all of the smaller circles in the process. Then there's the freezes (or holds), where the player has to keep their finger on a large circle with a bar running underneath, and wait until the black line has finished traversing the entirety of the freeze bar. Because Cytus is specifically written for multi-touch screens, "jumps", where the player has to simultaneously press two or more circles at one time, can be easily implemented.

As of the time of writing, Cytus comes with 26 songs (2 are cleverly hidden, and one of the songs requires the player to like Cytus on Facebook or follow Rayark's Cytus Twitter account), most of them unique and highly enjoyable. A song in Cytus is about a bit longer than an average DDR song (most Cytus songs do not reach two minutes in length). Rayark (the development team of the game) announced that the current roster of songs in the game are currently incomplete, and there are at least a hundred more songs that are about to come out in the future. They created an interesting release plan---every hundred thousandth registered player of the game awards everybody with ten more songs, possibly an entire new chapter; with all the songs presumably unlocked for everybody by the time Cytus gets a million official players.

Notice my use of the word "official" in the last paragraph. Cytus is available for both the iOS and Android mobile platforms, though it is not free (as in both freedom and beer). iOS users are expected to shell out approximately two dollars to get to play the game. Android users can initially pay the game for free, but as they play on the second and third chapters, they must wait out a 30-second and 45-second "cooldown" period (respectively) before the song plays. F2P Android players also have song restarting disabled by default.

F2P players are not included in the release "census", for obvious reasons. Additionally, those who acquired the game illegitimately through black repositories for jailbroken iOS devices and leaked .apk's for Android devices are also (hopefully) not counted for the census.

I bought the game off Google Play (with the same price as the iOS version) because I've decided that taking a mandatory 30/45 second break between each song isn't fun.

I have a couple of gripes with Cytus, especially with the Android port, since that's where I play most of the time anyway. Firstly, the game rendering performance is awfully poor on my Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101. I suspect that the primary reason for the lag is due to Nvidia implementing poorly-written Tegra drivers, where by doing so, they can effectively force game developers to optimize their games for the Tegra devices, rather than for every mobile GPU out there. The game runs smoothly on my HTC Desire HD, though there are some freezes here and there (but that's probably because of activities and apps fighting for CPU time in the background). There are also timing issues present within the Android port of the game, where a rather perfectly timed tap is registered with an annoying delay, turning some of my "Perfect" notes into measly "Good"s. So I can also hypothesize that some blame is to be put on the game developers themselves as well, probably because from my experience most games ported from iOS into Android are almost always badly implemented.

To solve the performance issue on my phone, I resorted to overclocking the CPU up to 1.2-1.4GHz, choosing the Performance CPU scaling governor, and/or closing every background activity and app that I can close. For my Transformer, however, overclocking the CPU doesn't seem to have any effect, nor does closing a couple of background applications. The only viable solutions I can think of are (1) just living with the game with bad lag and timing issues (I did get a couple of Million Masters with the tablet though), (2) Just play the game on my smoother phone (though thumb players will probably be a separate category for "competitions"), or (3) steal an iPad off an unfortunately picked friend who plays the game.

I also do hope that the game will offer its players the ability to import their own songs and use them in the game, though the iOS roots of the game will most likely prevent that from doing so, if the developers decide to make the iOS and Android versions of the game completely similar to each other in respect to features. It's the same thing that keeps "osu! for iOS" an unstable hack job for jailbroken iOS devices.

Why I suddenly want an iPod Nano

For some reason, the 6th Generation iPod Nano is currently on my wish list. That's weird, because I usually do not like Apple products, and mostly I just hate them. But the latest generation of the iPod Nano (as of this time of writing) has fulfilled one of my wishes: To make the conventional timekeeping watch do more than just tell me the time. I've tried that with a few sports watches, you know, the ones that come with timers, countdowns, barometers, a compass, and even altimeters. But I'm not trekking mountains or anything to use an altimeter, nor directionally-challenged to use a compass, or even too obsessed with the weather to use a barometer. Also, those watches are bulky.

And I am also in need of a more convenient portable sound system. Right now I roam around with my preferred pair of earphones connected to a Bluetooth headset hung around my neck, like a pendant on a necklace, while that Bluetooth headset is, in turn, paired and connected with my phone. I like this headset because it allows me to change songs whenever I don't like the one that's currently playing, since I play all my songs and just shuffle them around. Also, if someone is calling, I don't have to pull out my phone to answer it, I can just press the Answer button on the headset to answer the call, then I'll initialize the customary "Hold up I'm talking on my Bluetooth headset" pose (which is putting your index finger on the earpiece and bowing your head a little) so that I don't look like I'm talking to myself or to a random person in front of me (an unfortunate side effect of Bluetooth headsets).

Anyway, I'm here to ramble about the 6th generation iPod Nano, not my Bluetooth headset. And since I'm lazy, I'm just gonna post the things I like and do not like about the device in question in a list form.

What I like

• The watch form factor. The iPod Nano isn't actually designed to be worn as a watch, however, some guy probably looked at it and thought, "Hey, I can probably put a strap on this and wear it around my wrist".
• Low-profile. The iPod Nano is tiny, and I like that because I don't really like having big devices strapped on me (my phone is an exception).
• The plethora of other features on the phone. Like the pedometer and timers, which will probably be useful when I start running, and the FM radio plus other stuff.

What I don't like

• iTunes lock. This is given for all iPods and iDevices, especially those which are new. New iDevices do not allow the user to interface with their computer(s) with something other than iTunes which is a damn shame because (1) I do not want to boot into Windows just to manage my music, and (2) I hate iTunes, it's clunky and slow as hell.
• No Bluetooth. I would've liked the iPod Nano more if it had the capability to connect to a Bluetooth headset, because I think having a wire run up from my wrist looks kind of weird in general.
• No video playback. It would've been nice if the iPod Nano had video playback capabilities, but no, it didn't.
• Non-expandable storage. 16GB of storage might seem enough at first but I might need even more when the time comes. Sadly, I won't be able to buy a larger SD card when I need to because Apple doesn't use them.
• No GPS/Navigation support. Having a watch tell me where I am would be very awesome, not to mention convenient.

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Right now though, I'm sensing that Apple is about to release a new generation of iPods again, particularly the iPods that aren't the iPod Touch (stop fucking calling it an iTouch for fuck's sake). So I'm thinking of buying the 6th generation iPod right now instead of waiting for the 7th because I am certain that the 7th isn't really much different from the previous one, I just heard rumors that the new one is much like the 6th but with a camera (of all things!), but I don't believe in rumors, the entirety of religion is built on that shit. Also, I think that if the 7th generation iPod Nano did come, it's gonna take a while for it to be sold in the Philippines (because this country is slow on everything), and if it does get sold the accessories for it, especially the watch strap, is also going to take a while for it to reach the country.

Still, I'm in a bit on a financial lockdown right now, and I'm just doing my part in being frugal and saving up money so that I can buy one myself. If you happen to know and see me personally though, you can try and donate to my worthy cause. :)