OLU is a Rhythm Based Rail Shooter – An XBOX Live Indie Game Review
Developer: Red Button Games
Genre: Music
Price: 240 Points
Countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States
Languages: English
Price: 240 Microsoft Points
Developer Summary:
Dive into this rhythm-based rail shooter and track down an artificial being born in an isolated network. As the music drives you and you will drive it. Feel the pulse as every action is represented through rhythm, visuals, and rumble feedback. Straddle the analog and digital worlds to prevent the artificial life-form from gaining control.
What we think:
The thing that most impresses me about the Xbox Live Indie blade is the ability of some developers to make a mash-up of two fundamentally different genres and still create something so satisfying. When I first read OLU described as a rhythm-based rail shooter, I could almost hear the big publishers shuffling in their seats. But so help me, it works.
In OLU, you take control of a hacker who is coasting through network after network in an attempt to track down an insidious AI that will do all in its power to thwart you. Security drone programs will strike back at you, and can be identified as either digital or analog. By switching between your digital and analog tool, you can select the weapon opposite the nature of the current wave of opponents to cause more damage. By locking multiple enemies in your sights at once, you increase the amount of points awarded, and you build towards a weapon burst from each of your hacking tools. One is capable of spraying out a large scale attack on several enemies at once, and the other allows you to lock enemies in place for a few precious seconds. The latter really comes in handy when you find yourself taking on dozens of enemies at once. You control a different interface tool in each of the games levels, and as you chain together attacks on enemies, I noticed that my “cursor” was gaining fortification. This is handy when you are confronted with larger enemies found later in the levels, but it also means you need to be really cautious early on.
The music is bass-heavy, and pulses with your assaults. Chaining enemies adds to the musical score as they wink out of existence to the ever-present beat. The graphics are austere, lending just enough to generate an atmosphere that conjured up what I imagined cyberspace looked like when I read Neuromancer years ago. You feel like you are afloat in giant tunnels of the information network, picking off waves of tiny attackers piecemeal, until suddenly you find yourself boxed in, and are confronted with one of the game’s epic-sized boss battles. The larger enemies were what impressed me most about the game’s design: they appear truly massive, and easily dwarf both the player and the smaller enemies, but you never lose the sense that they’re just as much a digital (or analog) creation as anything else in the game.
I didn’t find OLU to be incredibly difficult. The on-rails format kept the game from getting overly complex from a control perspective. However, this didn’t take away from the enjoyment. You’ll still be craning left and right to keep up with the sudden appearances of multiple combatants, and the end-of-level battles will keep you on your toes. When the screen fills up with digital and analogue minions, OLU becomes a tantalizing dance of light and sound.
Rating: 
[...] Olu is a rhythm-based rail shooter, using two weapons for the two types enemies: analog and digital. Just as a hacker straddles the boundary between the network and the real world, you must straddle between the two vectors to find a sentient program in the system. Olu will be available March 3rd, 2010 on the Xbox LIVE Indie Games service. More info at danielfrandsen.com. Read XBLIGR’s 4-star review on OLU here. [...]
Wow, this game is a complete rip-off of Rez. Gameplay, graphics, style, storyline, and pretty much everything else is nearly identical to that of Rez. The only difference is a tacky and uninspired addition to the shooting system and poorly synced sound effects. Even the art for the avatar is a rip-off.