DS

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

January 2, 2007

DS / Reviews / by Ben Jacobs Make a comment! / Tweet it!

The recent Metroidvania phase of the [i]Castlevania[/i] series has been a fruitful one. The Gameboy and DS iterations have been especially notable. [i]Dawn of Sorrow[/i] on the DS was good enough to evoke murmurs of “Better than [i]Symphony of the Night[/i]”, so you can understand my excitement over another DS iteration. Unfortunately, even though there are some new ideas and a much more varied set of areas to romp around in, [i]Portrait of Ruin[/i] comes up short.

Short really is the key word In [i]PoR[/i]. Faster than you can say “Vampire Killer”, you’ve already beaten the game. Its length is truly a mystery to me, since the game sports more areas and considerably more footroom than any [i]Castlevania[/i] game yet. Through the use of magical portraits, you are transported to areas far outside of the confines of Dracula’s Castle. These areas are great and all, but you breeze through them so quickly it hardly makes a dent. Some people might like shorter games, and this one can be beaten in under 10 hours, easily, but I would’ve liked a little more meat.

Perhaps the length wouldn’t be such an issue if the environments did not repeat themselves. About halfway through the game, you will encounter a new set of portraits to enter. But, to your surprise, they look exactly like areas you’ve already been to! The layout, palettes, items and enemies are different, but the smell of rushed deadlines hangs heavy over the endgame.

While freshness may be an issue for the areas, there are some really interesting ideas implemented in [i]Portrait[/i]. The two-person setup has been done before, but it works exceptionally well, especially on hard mode. The normal mode is exceptionally easy, beatable without much use of your team tactics, or really even having your partner following you, but subsequent playthroughs will really test what you’re made of. Two characters means two sets of equipment which means a lot more drops. The [i]Dawn of Sorrow[/i] card is played again, but this time, instead of collecting souls, most enemies will drop a new sub-item for Jonathon, a new spell for Charlotte, or both. It’s a neat system, that controls as tightly as any game in the series.

Multiplayer may be why many people were especially excited for [i]Portrait[/i]. You get it all, really. You get both local wireless and wi-fi. While the co-op mode might be very limited, it is interesting for a little while. The shop-mode lacks customization, as you can’t set prices, but it is fun to let your friends browse through all the junk you’ve decided to let them see and hook up some items they couldn’t regularly get. Don’t expect the world from the multiplayer and you’ll be satisfied.

I like to let my paragraphs run into each other like this, with common themes. Ya like that? Satisfied. That is probably what you won’t be after playing [i]Portrait of Ruin[/i]. The areas end up as dull and repeatable, while the Castlevania staples like the music also become unsatisfying. It is too short, and once you’re done, you just want more. Unfortunately, even with multiple end-game play-modes, you’re going to need another course. Still, if you love Castlevania, Bon Apetit.

Final Fantasy III

December 6, 2006

DS / Reviews / by Chris Ingersoll Make a comment! / Tweet it!

I haven’t played a “proper” [i]Final Fantasy[/i] title in over ten years, since [i]Final Fantasy III[/i] (or VI, as we now know) on the SNES in 1994. I’ve hit [i]Crystal Chronicles[/i] on the GameCube and [i]Final Fantasy Tactics Advance[/i] on the GBA, even skirting other Square(-Enix) properties like [i]Chrono Cross[/i], but never a [i]Final Fantasy[/i] that wasn’t [i]I[/i], [i]IV[/i], or [i]VI[/i]. I’ve even somehow managed to avoid both the PS1 and GBA remakes of [i]FFII[/i] and [i]V[/i]. And, truthfully, I had no intention of picking up (the “real”) [i]FFIII[/i] on the DS…

…until I didn’t get a Wii on launch day. I bought [i]FFIII[/i] more or less as a consolation prize to myself — something (anything!) to distract me from not being able to play my copy of [i]Twilight Princess[/i], which was pre-ordered over a year ago and in my possession despite not having a system for it.

On the one hand, I’d say that I really missed this franchise. On the other hand, this game is not representative of what the series has become in recent years, as it is officially the last 8-bit title in the franchise, so what I’ve missed isn’t exactly what I’ve been missing, so to speak. But that’s a flamewar debate for another time.

In [i]Final Fantasy III[/i] for the DS, Square(-Enix) releases the last “Japanese” [i]FF[/i] title that had never made it to Western shores previously; their marketing campaign/sub-title for it is simply and appropriately “A Tale Untold.” Yes, the graphics have been substantially upgraded from the old sprites into the world of polygons, there are optional touch screen controls and a limited Wi-Fi/wireless functionality, and a few aspects of the original game have apparently been tweaked here and there (including more character development, from what I understand), but by and large, this is simply the prettiest “8-bit” game ever released. If your memories of that era’s games aren’t obscured by a fuzzy cloud of nostalgia, then you know that means one thing: this game doesn’t have a good deal of the features that we’ve come to take for granted in recent years.

Features like [b]save points[/b], for starters. In [i]FFIII[/i], you save on the World Map or not at all. Square-Enix has added a portable-friendly “quicksave” option when not in combat, but that’s not the same thing, and we all know it. If you fall to a boss at the end of a dungeon in [i]FFIII[/i], be prepared to make [i]the entire dive[/i] all over again. I’ll come back to that point later (and it will not be a happy memory when I do), but there are other “missing” features as well, like the now-traditional hand-holding walkthrough of the game’s mechanics; [i]FFIII[/i] [b]literally[/b] drops you into the story right at the very beginning without any explanation and expects you to know what to do, presumably from having at least skimmed through the manual (that’s why those things are printed, after all). Finally, there are no Phoenix Downs to be purchased anywhere in this game; you either find them all in chests or steal them from monsters, so use them wisely. Once you have access to Level 5 White Magic (and find the right spell shop), you can buy the Raise spell, but even then you’ll be operating under the old D&D-style “spells per level” MP system rather than the global pool of MP that you may be used to (although thankfully without the 9 spell/level cap that I remember from [i]FFI[/i]). There are other hallmarks of 8-bit RPG goodness/nightmares in the game as well, but those are the big three.

Outside of the hype of being “the last [i]FF[/i] to be released in the West,” the main selling point of [i]FFIII[/i] is its job system, which is the origin of the system of the same name (although obviously improved in functionality) in [i]FFV[/i] and other similar systems thereafter. There are twenty-three jobs available to you once you near completion of the game (plus I believe a twenty-fourth that can be unlocked). You can switch between them more or less at will or as needed, with a slight “adjustment” period that varies depending on the differences (and probably levels) of your current and new jobs, during which your stats and performance take a slight hit. Each job has its own strengths and weaknesses as well as restrictions on armor and weapons (and type[s]/levels of magic), plus a special command (or, rarely, two) and occasionally an automatic extra ability (like a Thief at the front of your party being able to pick locked doors or a Knight defending a near-death teammate like Cecil in [i]FFIV[/i]).

As mentioned, this remake for the DS features much-improved graphics on par with the original PlayStation or N64, including a pre-rendered opening montage when you start up the game that could have come straight from the latest PS2 titles. The music has also been updated, with [i]FF[/i] master composer Nobuo Uematsu taking his own score from NES-quality to nearly CD-quality (and a joy with headphones). Other concessions to the new format include the available stylus control (which is complete, but not documented as well as it probably should have been, especially where selecting multiple targets is concerned), scant use of the upper screen (mostly for a full map when on the World Map and displaying the bottom screen’s info while in sub-menus– although occasionally disembodied voices will address you from “up there,” which is cute), and a wireless/Wi-Fi e-mail system that is both fairly blatantly tacked on as almost an afterthought (the “space” character is on [b]a separate page[/b] from the alphabet characters, making typing even a simple sentence a royal pain) and unfortunately a [b]requirement[/b] if you want to unlock everything like a good obsessive fanboy (which I clearly am not, so screw that; besides, I finally got my Wii the day after I completed this game, so I have other things to do right now).

And yet for all the work that went into prettying the game up for its new console and concessions to modern RPG design like character development that was added to this title, one would think that Square-Enix might have perhaps corrected one or two other oversights (“mistakes”) that may be lurking in the code; the remake(s) of [i]FFI[/i],for instance, corrected the annoying “ineffective” attacks made against enemies that had been killed prior to that character’s actions, updating them to re-targeting a new enemy at random like every game since then. They added the ability for “guest” party members to occasionally (and randomly) help out in battle, so clearly they weren’t afraid to tweak the actual gameplay. So why is it, then, that there is (presumably) still a “point of no return” in the endgame that forces you to climb the final tower, sit through multiple (obviously unskippable) cut scenes of varying lengths, and pass… I’m searching for a value that wouldn’t be considered a spoiler… let’s go with “several” boss fights more or less in a row? If you fall [i]at any time, for any reason[/i] after this “point of no return”, you have to go through [b]all of that[/b] all over again, starting at the bottom of the tower (assuming that’s where you actually saved it last). There is [i]absolutely no chance[/i] for you to save your game once you reach that point! Even the original NES version of [i]FFI[/i] allowed you to cast “Exit” right up until the moment you started your encounter with the final boss, saving the fact that you’ve opened X chests, gained Y levels, and beaten Z bosses along the way — I know, because I used to do so after getting the Masamune every time. That kind of endgame marathon would (should?) have been inexcusable sixteen years ago and it’s doubly so today, remake or not. Making this potentially even more irritating is that your party might be perfectly capable of handling each and every task on that list — except defeating the final boss. This in turn causes you to just assume your failure was “bad luck” (after all, you took care of those other guys easily enough, right?) and not because you’re under-powered and need to grind some more, which is most likely the real case. My party was Level 50 (52-3 by the time they reached the final boss) and simply could not get the job done; after the third failure, I finally accepted that they simply weren’t strong enough and ground them up to level 60… at which point I believe they were [i]just barely[/i] strong enough (there was one point where the boss’s attacks had left two of my characters with <200HP; fortunately, I had a massive Curaja spell waiting to go off and heal everyone, but it was a close call; if a character actually falls in that fight, you're pretty much screwed in my experience). That outright [i]spike[/i] in enemy power level combined with the lack of the chance to save for a good [i]hour[/i] before you first discover it (never mind the elapsed time before you [i]accept[/i] it) creates an incredible amount of frustration that could have been avoided very easily but for some reason was not. Fortunately, the game itself is more than good enough to overlook what is effectively "required grinding" towards the end. This is [i]Final Fantasy[/i] as I remember it, before the days of pre-rendered amnesiacs with spiky hair and cut scenes that bore little resemblance to actual game play (not that those are necessarily bad things; to each his/her own). If you have fond memories of those early [i]FF[/i] titles as well, then [i]Final Fantasy III[/i] needs to be part of your collection -- although something tells me that it was before you even started reading this.

Elite Beat Agents

November 20, 2006

DS / Reviews / by Chris Ingersoll Make a comment! / Tweet it!

The popular rhythm/music genre has never really had a representative game on the various handhelds, as they often require their own specific wacky peripheral, whether it is maracas, bongos, a guitar, or a dance pad. Of course, the argument could be made that the Nintendo DS [b]is[/b] a wacky peripheral, so perhaps it was inevitable that the twin-screened device would receive some rhythm gaming before long. Sega actually dabbled in it a bit with its [i]Feel the Magic: XY/XX[/i] launch title, which featured a [i]Space Channel 5[/i]-style “repeat the pattern” minigame as one of the stages. However for most hardcore gamers it was Japanese import Osu! Tatake! Ouendan!, released by Nintendo earlier this year (and developed by the same team that gave Gitaroo-Man to the PS2… via Koei). That was really the first such title on the system. [i]Elite Beat Agents[/i] is the westernized version of that game.

The titular [i]Elite Beat Agents[/i] are (essentially) a team of male cheerleaders that motivate people to get through extremely tough spots in their lives via the power of music and dance. The situations you will encounter in the game range from helping a babysitter handle three rowdy children while trying to convince her football-obsessed boyfriend to go steady to assisting a washed-up baseball player in repelling an attack from a bizarre lava golem at an amusement park — and then there’s the final stage in which your dance moves just might save the world from a music-hating alien invasion. There are sixteen stages in the single-player game, plus three additional stages that are unlocked as you accumulate points and ranks, for nineteen stages/songs total. Each scenario is colorfully presented in a comic book style prior to the gameplay, and each completed segment of the song yields a development in the plot that will be either good or bad depending on how you performed; if you clear all the branches successfully, you will see a better ending than if you merely survive the song before the game gives you your final score and grade (along with other statistics, like longest combo).

There are three specific actions you need to master in order to show off your awesome moves. The first is the basic tap: you use the stylus to hit a numbered button on the screen when the ring closing around it reaches its edge. The second is the phrase bar, which starts like a basic tap but has a long path connected to it: you must keep your stylus on the screen and drag it along the path as the on-screen ball rolls along it. Some phrase bars u-turn back the way they came once you reach the end (indicated by an arrow), and later on they oscillate back and forth several times before finishing. Finally, there are spin targets: you have to circle your stylus around the screen often and fast enough to fill up the meter glowing behind the target before the ring closing around it reaches the center; if you fill the meter with time to spare, extra spins earn you bonus points. These three targets are usually grouped in like-colored “beats”, and if you manage to hit every target in a beat with good timing, you’ll get an additional bonus to your always-decreasing life meter — and if you nail all targets with perfect timing, you score an “elite beat” which brings an even bigger life-boosting bonus. Meanwhile, every target you hit sequentially increases your combo score, which in turn yields higher and higher points. Every target you miss, however, resets your combo to zero and causes your life bar to take a major hit; obviously, when your life bar is empty, you lose the stage — and get to witness the results of your failure. You’ll also get the option to review the last five seconds of gameplay to see if you can figure out what went wrong, which is a useful feature.

The songs themselves cover as wide a range as the stories that accompany them. Classics like the Jackson 5’s “ABC” and The Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” stand alongside rhythm-genre mainstays like The Village People’s “YMCA” and David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”, along with more recent titles like Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” and Good Charlotte’s “The Anthem”. While all nineteen songs in the game are covers, many are very good soundalikes (I thought that the cover of “Canned Heat” was actually being performed by Jamiroquai, for instance), and only a few fall flat. Many could even be considered improvements — I’ve never heard Ashley Simpson’s version of “La La,” but I don’t think it could possibly be as good as the cover in the game*. Also, the songs are nearly all full-length, with only a couple being abbreviated to “radio edit” length; only one stops abruptly about 2/3rds through, but that’s part of the story associated with it. Even if you can’t stand the original tunes, the simple but engrossing gameplay [i]will[/i] keep you replaying levels often enough that you will have these songs stuck in your head for a while. Well… the engrossing gameplay, combined with the at-times brutal difficulty.

When you first start up [i]EBA[/i], you have two choices of difficulty: Breezin’ (easy) and Cruisin’ (normal); completing Cruisin’ earns you access to Sweatin’ (hard), and completing that level gives you the right to access Hard ROCK!(called “Insane” on the Japanese original — that’s a fair warning). But even on Breezin’, the last few stages are incredibly challenging, with whip-fast beats arranged in tricky (and sometimes lengthy) patterns piling on top of you, putting both your rhythm and your reflexes to the test. If you don’t own a DS Lite, I recommend picking up a larger stylus before you play [i]EBA[/i], as you will appreciate being able to keep your hand from covering up part of the screen and possibly hiding crucial targets from you until it’s too late; the game is hard enough without having to overcome physical obstacles [i]outside[/i] the software. Oh, and you may occasionally need to remember to blink and/or breathe, as things tend to get intense.

Outside of single-player mode, there are a couple of other options. Multiplayer can be done either cooperatively, competitively, or on teams; single-card play only features a sampling of songs, but multi-card play allows all players to access any song unlocked by the host system. You can also play Vs. mode against ghosts of your saved runs; you can save one replay per song, and whatever difficulty that replay was saved at will be the performance you play in Vs. The multiplayer stages themselves have their own unique scenarios, usually a head-to-head competition, even though they use the same songs as the single-player mode. Other options include the ability to watch your saved replays and send them to other players, a record of your high scores per level, and your current ranking (which includes how many points you need to reach the next rank). There is no online component to [i]EBA[/i], however, nor is the microphone used for anything (which is fine by me — the less I have to blow and/or shout into my DS in public, the better), but neither capability is missed much (lag while playing online could be devastating).

Overall, [i]Elite Beat Agents[/i] is a title that anyone can play and just about everyone will enjoy. Simple gameplay, catchy tunes, and a great sense of humor all combine to make this title nearly perfect, with only the sheer difficulty bringing it down at times, but even then the frustration generated is more of a “one more try” and less of a “screw this”. [i]EBA[/i] may very well be the best DS title of the year and is easily among the best ever on the system.

*[size=9]Before I submitted this review, I looked up the video on YouTube and started playing it. I was right.[/size]

Contact

November 14, 2006

DS / Reviews / by Chris Ingersoll Make a comment! / Tweet it!

The DS has experienced a recent surge in RPGs of late, the last handheld genre to really make an impact on the two-screened system. There have been a ton of RPGs playable on the DS via the system’s GBA compatibility but not too many that it could call its own until the last couple of months — and fewer still that were considered “must-own” titles. That is with the possible exception of [i]Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time[/i]. [i]Contact[/i], developed by Grasshopper ([i]Killer 7[/i]) and published by Atlus ([i]Trauma Center: Under the Knife[/i] and tons of other hard-to-find cult favorites) could have been the first third-party “must-own” DS RPG, even after a lengthy delay.

Unfortunately, it looks like Square-Enix’s [i]Final Fantasy III[/i] will ultimately earn that honor, as [i]Contact[/i]’s unique features make it a hard game to love.

For starters, you (the player) don’t even have a well-defined role in [i]Contact[/i]. Unlike more traditional RPGs, you do not assume the persona of a character in the game, but rather that of someone who has a DS and can interact with the world you see through those two screens — a stretch, I know. This is a step further outside the box than even the Namco(/Bandai)’s [i]Baten Kaitos[/i] titles for GCN, and one that unfortunately takes you [i]too far[/i] out of the game’s narrative. Further complicating the matter is that the Professor with whom you “made [i]Contact[/i]” doesn’t want you to reveal yourself to the young boy (default name Terry) that he has inadvertently conscripted into service for reasons that he will not explain until after the closing credits roll.

Terry, then, is theoretically the main character of the game… except he’s not. The main plot centers around the Professor, who never leaves his lab/ship, and a group of musicians(-slash-interstellar terrorists?) referred to as the CosmoNOTs. The storyline is theoretically bizarre and off-the-wall but in practice just seems slapdash and poorly-explained. The fact that I was effectively a third-party observer to it instead of an active participant didn’t help matters either.

So where does that leave Terry? As a tool, more or less, of both the Professor and you; he never talks, he never makes decisions, and he never exhibits any sort of personality until the latter portion of the game, when he starts to behave strangely. While you technically control Terry via the various DS interfaces, in reality you are very much a spectator watching the game nearly play itself, with only the Professor occasionally directing any comments towards you personally from the upper screen.

It all combines to create the unfortunate paradox of an RPG [i]without the role-playing aspect[/i]. Without personal involvement in the story, all that is left to the gamers is the nuts and bolts of the game itself and a vague disinterest in what is actually going on. Sadly, [i]Contact[/i]’s “nuts and bolts” aren’t much to write home about, just like many RPGs (would anyone play a [i]Final Fantasy[/i] title without the narrative?). You don’t even directly control Terry in combat; you switch him to Battle Mode, and then he swings when he damn well feels like it, all the while moving slow enough for you to be unable to avoid the enemies’ counterattacks and to take some pretty hard hits. You will eventually learn to handle the imprecise combat, but there are still more problems waiting for you.

The [url=http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ds/Contact/8-2-06/boxart.jpg]back of [i]Contact[/i]’s box[/url] makes some hilarious claims, including “Things you will NOT find in [i]Contact[/i]: A dull moment.” On paper, this sounds like a teaser for a seat-of-your pants thrill ride. In reality, someone needs a dictionary. [i]Contact[/i] is potentially [b]full[/b] of dull moments, thanks to employing a stat-leveling system rather than a more global-leveling system. It moves along quickly at first, but once you reach level 10 in a stat/skill, things begin to [b]crawl[/b], as the experience needed to advance to the next level seemingly becomes exponential; combine that with approximately two dozen trainable stats/skills (ten of which have rewards of new techniques), and you begin to see where the dullness seeps in. If you want to improve your abilities, your only choice is to grind like crazy. By the time I finished, I had given up on ever finding out what powerful abilities were lying in wait for those with the patience to grind past level 42 (which I only achieved with weapon skills — gaining me a mere three techniques of I think eight available), because it was just taking too damned long. This is especially true for the three “vocational” skills of fishing, cooking, and thievery, which cannot be effectively trained via combat like everything else.

Even more frustrating, however, is the “costume” system. Like other RPGs, [i]Contact[/i] features a sort of job-swapping system that features seven costumes that you must find (all but two are essential to complete the game, and those two are a huge help), using the unique skills of each to get past obstacles and enemies. Here’s the first catch: you can’t use a costume’s skills if you aren’t wearing it; if you need to pick a lock, for example, you had best be wearing the Shadow Thief costume because Terry doesn’t actually learn those skills like he would in other games. The second catch is probably even more backbreaking: you can only change costumes in your room on the Professor’s ship, forcing you to re-fight your way through screen upon screen of respawning enemies every time you think (or worse, discover) that you need a different skill. There are no shortcuts in the dungeons (ok, one has a shortcut… out of the approximately ten islands you ultimately visit), although you will at least eventually gain the ability to warp back to the ship (a one-way trip) at a moment’s notice via [i]Contact[/i]’s final distinguishing feature, decals.

Decals come in two varieties: “? Decals” and “Trick Decals”. “? Decals” are random pick-ups that Terry finds along the way that can lightly goose some of his stats; there are several types of these decals, and Terry can wear four of them at any given time, although the effects bestowed by them are generally minor. “Trick Decals”, on the other hand, are something the Professor invented for you (meaning the player holding the DS) to use to help Terry out. There are eight of these total, with the last one being hidden (I stopped caring and didn’t even look for it); each has a specific effect, although one of them is just a glorified plot device that’s only useable once you defeat a boss and find one of the Professor’s power cells. You can only use these once before they need to be recharged by revisiting the Professor (and thus effectively restarting the entire stage).

Everything else about [i]Contact[/i] is basically true for most other action-ish RPGs, so I won’t go into boring details there other than pointing out one final annoyance: someone thought it would be a good idea to force you to buy/sell items [i]one at a time[/i]. Having played the original [i]Final Fantasy[/i] and other RPGs of that era, I can assure you that it wasn’t a good idea 20 years ago, and Grasshopper didn’t even have the excuse of limited technology.

With all that bile out of the way, [i]Contact[/i] does have its merits that save it from “Don’t Bother” status. The graphics are an odd blend, with the Professor and his upper-screen environment being reminiscent of titles like [i]Earthbound[/i] and Terry’s touch-screen world more closely resembling something like [i]Golden Sun[/i]. It’s an interesting mix, and somewhat strange when an inhabitant from one world momentarily steps into the other (Terry chats with the Professor, while the Professor’s pet can be “summoned” to help you out using a Trick Decal); there’s also a couple of levels in a later dungeon that see Terry actually enter 8-bit video games, even if only briefly. The BGM and sound effects are above-average for a handheld and generally never become obnoxious. There’s also a limited WiFi function that lets you exchange data with other players; I have not yet utilized this function, but apparently it’s a good way to find rare items.

[i]Contact[/i]’s greatest strength, ultimately, is also its greatest weakness: it’s just too different for its own good. There’s a lot of outside-the-box thinking and clearly Grasshopper enjoys taking unconventional paths (as with [i]Killer 7[/i]), but I just felt no personal interest in the game, its characters, or its story, which made me wonder why I was even bothering to play the game in the first place, especially once the combat and training mechanics started to wear out their welcome. Give it a rent, and if you want, you can probably blow through it in about 15 hours just to give it as much of a chance as it deserves, but this is definitely not a “must-own” title for the DS.

Elite Beat Agents

November 6, 2006

DS / Reviews / by Jason Dobson Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Ridiculous. Infectious. Simplistic. Just plain fun. Saddling Elite Beat Agents for the Nintendo DS with any one description is difficult, as the game marries absurd comedy, entertaining music, and classic rhythm mechanics in a way that is both new and altogether different from anything else available for the platform.

As a genre, rhythm games are stereotyped as not taxing the stage on which they are played, opting to instead test the skills of the player with increasingly difficult music-based challenges. A well made rhythm title will challenge a player along a manageable but steadily rising difficulty curve, allowing for fun to be had regardless of a person’s skill level. In this, and many other ways, Elite Beat Agents succeeds, and will no doubt have even those who are not particularly inclined to rhythm games tapping the screen to the beat of its wide variety of musical tracks.

Released in Japan over a year ago as Osu! Tatake! Oendan!, the rhythm game featured an impressive collection of Japanese pop tracks set against a backdrop of ludicrous comic book-style storyboards. The game quickly became a favorite among import enthusiasts, though its exceedingly Japanese content seemed to make it ill fated to remain out of reach of players unwilling to brave the import market.

Thankfully Nintendo stepped into rescue the game from its relative obscurity outside of its native country, and in doing so worked with developer iNiS to transform the game as part of one of the most ambitious localization projects ever seen. While the gameplay has remained largely identical, the rest of the game, from the various stages to their associated musical tracks, have all been completely remade to suit Western audiences. An act of blasphemy for purists, no doubt, though those who care enough to complain about this probably have the Japanese original anyway. Elite Beat Agents is essentially a sequel to an already wonderful game, complete with new music, story, and graphics, to make for a crazy, screen tapping good time.

As said, Elite Beat Agents’ gameplay is simple, deceptively so in fact. There are only three specific types of on screen activity that you will ever encounter, each requiring you to tap, scratch, or drag the stylus on the screen to the beat of the music. Do this in time, and you’ll gain points and continue. Fail too many times and the game will end. It’s really that simple, but don’t mistake simple for easy. While the gameplay is far from complicated, Elite Beat Agents – even on the easiest setting – can be intimidating, throwing several elements at you at once in a seemingly nonstop barrage of on screen iconography. However, like any good rhythm game, even when you die, the game has a sort of hypnotic charm about it that makes you want to try just one more time.

Assisting Elite Beat Agents’ charm are the various stories that accompany each musical track, each of which are told through animated comic book style panels that tell tales that range from bizarre and almost touching. Each story centers around squads of dancing agents who are called upon by those in need to dance and somehow magically save the day in several insane yet endearing scenarios. Examples include helping a girl juggle babysitting and wooing the boy of her dreams, to making a Hollywood blockbuster, to even stemming the tide of an anti-music alien invasion.

Each story is set to a particular licensed musical number, and how you play determines the course that each one takes. Play well and things remain happy, but mess up too often and the story will take a turn for the worse.

As said, a sign of a good rhythm game is its accessibility to all players, and certainly there is something for anyone and everyone to love here. Newcomers may never graduate to the higher difficulty settings, and that’s okay. Die hard screen tappers will obviously breeze through the the lower difficulty settings, but later levels will challenge even the most crazed rhythm masters. Elite Beat Agents even ups the ante with single and multicard mulitplayer modes and unlockable versus stages to add more replay value to this otherwise must own title. Make no mistake, this is a game that belongs in every Nintendo DS owner’s library, and is one of the most fun titles for the platform. Plus, given the considerable effort that was put into bringing this game to players outside of Japan, it deserves all the attention it can get. Agents are go!

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