Rockstar it seems have a lot of tricks up their sleeves and now with the release of Beaterator it seems that they are about to show us what else they can do, by teaming up with music mogul Timbaland for this beat generating title.

 

Beaterator is more like an app for your iPhone than a game and if looked at like that this it is a truly great title for budding and even bored musicians on the move. Beaterator is split into three main areas, each one is simple to use and has varying degrees of depth. The Live Play will be your first port of call, here you have Timbaland in the middle and a sound bank in each corner which can slide across to four more. Each sound bank is designated a group of loops like drums, vocals, lead, synth and ambience, each bank holds four loops and are designated to the face buttons, all you have to do is press the one you want and the sound will loop for you, then move to the next sound bank and repeat. This lets you make some pretty cool beats on the fly with little input. If you can't find the sound you are looking for then you can alter the sound banks on offer with even more loops.

 

The Studio Session mode is a more structured version of Live, here you can queue loops and also start to save and get more hands on with your tracks like panning and volume. It’s here that Beaterator starts to show its true colours as an electric 8 track recording studio. The third main part of Beaterator is the Song Crafter mode. This mode shows each loop on your track as a coloured bar allowing you to play through your song and then audit as you see fit, vocals come in to early? cut them out, lacking an OMG moment? then drop a beat and then build it up again, it is really, really easy.

 

 

There are absolutely loads of loops available, sadly the description of each is a little thin so it is up to you to find out if Drum 3 or Drum 7 goes better with vocal 10. The sounds have been sensibly grouped into genres to make it easier to find a desired sound like UK Garage, Pop, Hop Hop and Drum & Bass. The level of customization in these modes is very deep so if you’re not happy with what's on offer go onto the drum section to practice and create your own loop from scratch. There is also an Effects Editor that allows you to change how almost anything sounds plus a voice recorder when you attach a mic.

 

If there is a game you could compare this to then it has to be one that came out quite a while ago called MTV Music Generator on the PS2, this is very similar which isn't a bad thing as I loved it way back then.

 

What Beaterator offers over many other titles is the genius ability to upload your tracks to the Beaterator internet site, plus convert tunes to wav files and have it on your PSP music folder, from there it can go to other players if you know how to convert. This is perfect as it allows you to share with others your masterpiece, plus, being an avid drummer, let's me make some crazy beats and compose my own music.

 

Since putting in the UMD this has never come out, in fact it has given me an all new reason to carry the little black box around other than use it for remote play to watch films. This is the perfect portable 8 track that, whilst limited, is a great well executed idea.