Review - Music Drive: Chase the Beat

Review – Music Drive: Chase the Beat

Posted on July 5, 2025 by Leo Faria One comment

I’m always eager to see what the local Brazilian gaming scene comes up with, and Music Drive: Chase the Beat had an elevator pitch that, at the very least, managed to pique my curiosity at first. Gameplay-wise, it looked like a throwback to vehicular combat games from the PS1 era, namely Driver, whilst featuring a properly Brazilian theme and setting. Namely, in this case, Brazilian ghetto culture, and Brazilian rap. Having always wanted to see more of my country’s local street culture being portrayed in games, but not in an exaggerated, Max Payne 3 way, I was eager to check it out. Sadly, I think the game was indeed better on paper.

If you’re delivering tapes, just drive towards these arrows.

I don’t want to say that Music Drive: Chase the Beat is terrible, but I guess its scope is just too small for such a premise. Sure, it has the retro looks and a pretty good Brazilian hip hop soundtrack, but when it comes to the latter, it just doesn’t fit so well with the gameplay. In essence, this game is an arcade non-racer, where you’re told to run down a street and complete either of these objectives: deliver tapes to your homies, or destroy enemies who have stolen other tapes from you.

In both cases, the gameplay is basically the same. You drive a car down a road, either evading or ramming through any other car you might find. You either ram through enemy cars, or wait for the person in the passenger seat to shoot them until the objective is complete. In the case of delivering items, the only difference is that you also have to pass through some pretty obvious checkpoints. You will still need to fend off against foes, collect extra cash, and try to survive, no matter the objective. And you’ll have to redo these missions over and over again.

I like that the game looks like Driver. But it just made me want to replay Driver at the end of the day.

You don’t earn enough money in each mission to directly move to the next one. You basically need to afford bigger and better cars, which feature more room to store tapes, which act like a minimum entry fee for you to enter a level. Don’t ask me the logic behind it, I’d have just stocked the tapes inside my glove compartment. Regardless, that basically sums the gameplay loop up. Keeping play (and replaying) these small levels until you can get a new car. Get a new car and access new levels. Occasionally spend some money as bribery to decrease your wanted level. Rinse and repeat. You’ll have basically seen everything this game has to offer in less than an hour.

You can either destroy enemies by ramming them over or just waiting for your passenger to drown them with bullets.

In theory, I should have liked this. Music Drive: Chase the Beat has some really good ideas in terms of setting and theming, and I even liked how it constantly reminded me of games like old-school Driver, but its execution ended up being a massive disappointment. Its gameplay loop was way too simplistic and uninteresting to justify having to play levels over and over again in order to unlock more content. I had fun with it for about twenty minutes or so before becoming bored and fed up with what little it had to offer.

Graphics: 7.0 Intentionally crappy-looking, and I actually somewhat liked the results. It reminds me of the original Driver game, released for PS1, whether it was intentional or not. I did not enjoy the sheer lack of visual variety, however.	Gameplay: 5.0 Nothing inherently wrong about the controls, but you barely do anything in the game. Not only that, but you need to constantly replay levels in order to afford better cars that will unlock you more levels.
Sound: 7.5 A wide assortment of Brazilian hip-hop tunes that, in a vaccuum, sound great. They are all great songs. Sadly, for a game literally called Music Drive, there’s no connection between the songs and the gameplay, or the game’s premise as a whole. They don’t even fit in with the hectic loop.	Fun Factor: 4.0 Some good ideas in terms of setting and theming, but way too simplistic and uninteresting of a gameplay loop to justify having to play levels over and over again in order to unlock more content.
Final Verdict: 5.5