A City Sleeps

The game is one that can be hard to play and hard to return to, but it's also hard to put down once you do.

A City Sleeps is a better experiment than it is a game for dedicated fans of rhythm games and shoot-'em-ups.

A City Sleeps plays more as an artsy passion project for the studio than as a fully realized title, something that becomes apparent as soon as you start to consider the story.

A City Sleeps feels more like an exercise on development than a proper product. The experience is enjoyable but its brief duration and lack of evolution when it comes to game mechanics are rather disappointing. Harmonix let us down this time.

I'm not one to complain about games being too short very often, but A City Sleeps doesn't allow itself enough breathing room to fully explore its own central concept.

As a shoot-'em-up, though, A City Sleeps feels half-baked. The foundation is solid, but since it only includes three levels, it has to ramp up its difficulty too quickly, and it becomes overwhelming and frustrating as a result. With a more measured approach to difficulty and more levels to give players time to acclimate to its mechanical quirks and control issues, A City Sleeps could be exceptional.

I’ve never been so bored with a shooter before.

A City Sleeps feels like a half-made game. Perhaps if they had a little more time or budget to add a few more Dreams, and even out the experience for players of all skill levels, it might have been something special.

A City Sleeps leans on hardcore difficulty to compensate for its lack of content, and its use of music, while interesting, is a source of frustration, especially as the difficulty increases. It's disappointing, because at its core, there are a lot of good ideas, but they never truly shine in the presence of the game's issues.