"Burning Sands" from Beat Saber on the PlayStation 4, Windows, Oculus Quest 2/Meta Quest 2 (2018)
Composer: Boom Kitty
Album: Beat Saber (Original Game Soundtrack),Vol. III
Label: Beat Games
Publisher: Beat Games
Developer: Beat Games
Beat Saber is a strange beast on top of a rhythm game and trying to write about one particular song can become complicated when you take into account the difficulty level that is being played. On its own "Burning Sands" is a fun song on its own, but playing it in Beat Saber does add a certain level of involvement that I don't feel when listening to the song (similar to the songs in Ragnarock, and probably other rhythm games now that I think about it). Currently, I have progressed skill-wise in Beat Saber to play "Burning Sands" on Expert level difficulty, which I have found is still fun to play and enjoy the song at the same time. This is very important because I have found that the mapping of the beat blocks can emphasize different parts of the song depending on the difficulty and a song that has overly difficult or oddly place beat blocks, even on easier difficulties can taint the song; such was the case with "Burning Sands."
On the Easy and Normal difficulty settings, this was just another techno-esque dance club song that I would play just to clear it on a difficulty setting and to say that I had. Once I played it in multiplayer on Expert though (because songs don't stop in multiplayer like they do in single-player if you miss too many beat blocks) the song really clicked for me. I enjoyed how the beat blocks accompanied the song and how the sound of the beat blocks being swiped both matched the music and acted as an additional accompaniment in different sections.
Like a lot of the songs that I have played and completed on Expert in single-player, I have found that I sometimes just have to turn my brain off and just react while slicing through the beat blocks. If I end up focusing too much on a particular block, as this song has an average of 4.26 notes per second, then you can quickly get lost, miss beat blocks left and right, and quickly lose the stage. Normally I can consistently make it to the two-minute mark, and that is where the difficulty ramps up and I just have to react, otherwise, I end up missing too many beat blocks to continue. What is crazy too is that this section only lasts 30 seconds (or 127.8ish beats) but in-game it feels like more than only 13% of the song. The payoff though is that from 2:30 to 3:00 there is a little bit of a respite but the music has built up to something out of a climactic chase sequence from The (only good) Mummy, and then goes back to the crazy left-arm-under-cut thing that apparently only happens on Expert; I haven't come across that particular move in other songs and it definitely adds to the uniqueness of this song. But then the section at 2:37 in the song (and about 2:45 in my video) comes at you pretty quickly and can knock you out of the game/song just as quickly too.
It's just a really fun song to play, especially on Expert once I was able to get some of the moves down, and I am a bit terrified after watching some of what the Expert+ difficulty stage looks like. Yeesh.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Days Move Along
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