When comparing Onward vs Audioshield, the Slant community recommends Audioshield for most people. In the question“What are the best HTC Vive games?” Audioshield is ranked 30th while Onward is ranked 35th. The most important reason people chose Audioshield is:
You use your own music for the game in order to create the rhythm and difficulty of the gameplay. This means an infinite amount of stages to play on being that each is different due to the rhythm of a song.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Fluid movement
Unlike a lot of Vive games that rely on teleportation, Onward has fluid locomotion using the gamepad. This makes the gameplay a lot more realistic, especially given it's a multiplayer military sim.
Pro Very realistic military sim
Everything from the sounds, how you reload and fire your weapon to the graphic for the map all come together to create a highly realistic and immersive military simulation. It's like ARMA in VR.
Pro Great communication
The built-in mic on the Vive makes team communication a key component of this game. It's also very realistic as it's just how a military squad would communicate over radio.
Pro Ability to use your own music
You use your own music for the game in order to create the rhythm and difficulty of the gameplay. This means an infinite amount of stages to play on being that each is different due to the rhythm of a song.
Pro Users will work up a sweat
Especially with fast paced songs, you move a lot and quickly so you can work up a sweat quite easily. Much like boxing where you keep your hands up at all times, your hands will never dip below your waist for this game, while that may not sound too difficult, in all actuality keeping ones arms and hands up for extended periods of time can be quite exhausting, usually pretty quickly. Being that you will be constantly swinging your arms while keeping them up, this adds to the exertion you will experience. While it may not be the point of the game, it will allow for quite a workout.
Pro Works with Soundcloud
On top of being able to use your own local music there is built in support for Soundcloud, which makes for an easy built in way to select tracks online.
Pro Detailed leaderboards
Each and every song played in the game by its users will have a leaderboard listing for that song. Even if no one else ever uses that song. This makes for an insurmountable amount of tracks to play and compete in, making for an endless experience for those interested in competing on the leaderboards.
Cons
Con Music and orbs only have a slight connection
The game has a hard time actually detecting relevant rhythms in most songs. So you cannot hits orbs in synchrony with the base of a song, which detracts from being considered any type of rhythm based gameplay.
Con Unclear menu system
Things such as song difficulty or types of shields are not explained in the menus, leaving the player guessing as to what they do. This makes for an experience where you just need to learn as you play to eventually figure it out.