Having now played this, I'll admit there is a lot of fun to be had in tapping and sliding a stylus on a screen to the beat of music, but someone really needs to sit down with the Japanese and talk about what it means to suddenly have the tone of a game hit a hairpin turn and start plunging into a complete shift in tone.
Here's the set-up: there's a (possibly) top secret agency that deploys agents around the world to anybody who needs help, and solve the world's problems through their dance moves. The better they dance, the better things turn out for whoever needs help.
It's Japan, what do you expect?
The game play consists of three times of actions:
1) Taps, which are done by tapping the stylus on a circle at just the right moment that another circle closes around it.
2) Slides, in which a ball rolls along a path and you keep the stylus on it the whole time, but be careful because it might reverse direction and go back the other way.
3) Spins, in which you just spin the stylus around the screen to turn a wheel.
Now, keep in mind you're doing this to music, so you might be on the beat or the lyrics to songs such as September by Earth, Wind, and Fire, or perhaps Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavine.
There are cute little stories to accompany each song, with plotlines ranging from your agents helping out a teenage girl trying to babysit three terrible toddlers while trying to tell her football player friend she wants to go steady with him, helping a small dog find his way back home after he falls asleep in the back of a truck, or helping a taxi driver get a pregnant woman to the hospital without being caught by the police for speeding.
Some of the stages left me wondering if I was really doing the world a favor by helping the people. There's also a rather interesting stage where you help two blond rich girls survive on a deserted island.
There's an episode where you help a Texas oil baron regain his wealth after his old well dries up, and another where you help a weather girl change the weather patterns around her city so she can go on a picnic with her son.
Of course, this being Japan, things get rather strange after a while (no, they haven't already), and at one point you play a pink-haired nurse representing an athlete's immune system as you battle a virus inside his body. You can also help out a baseball player regain his confidence to rejoin the major leagues by saving some children (including his number one fan) from a giant fire-breathing golem in an amusement park. And then there's the epic two-part finale, where the Elite Beat Agents help the population of the planet battle aliens who hate music.
And I will say, that if I ever thought the world could only be saved with the power of music, I'd like to think it would be to Jumpin Jack Flash.
But then there's the stage set to You're The Inspiration by Chicago. Things start out simple enough, with a little girl's father going on a trip right before Christmas, leading me to think that the story is going to be my helping him get home in a story that's been done to death by every holiday family-friendly movie I can think of.
However, the timeline then jumps six months and hey, remember that father? Yeah, he died. On Christmas. Your job is to help the little girl and her mother clean the house, bake a birthday cake, and do enough to convince her dead father's ghost to come back and drop off the Christmas present he promised his daughter.
That's right, you're working to actually raise the dead.
Now, I played through the harder difficulty, which unlocked an even harder difficulty, but I'm really not seeing why I would play through the same songs again. Sure, eventually when I earn enough points I can unlock some new songs and storylines, but what happens when I finish that difficulty? What's waiting then?
...unlockable female agents? Well, okay, that's pretty neat, but again, I've now played through the songs twice already, why would I want to go through them for a third t-
...okay, the game knows its target demographic. Well played, Elite Beat Agents. Well played.
...where was I? Oh, right. Anyway, the game is a lot of fun, if short, but considering it was an early release for the Nintendo DS, I'm willing to cut it a little slack. The music is pretty good, even considering that they had to have third parties re-record every song. Seriously, they got me to like a Hoobastank song before I realized it was Hoobastank. That's pretty impressive.
If you have a DS (or can get an emulator, not that I'd ever advocate the downloading of illegal ROMs), I recommend giving it a try. The humor is funny, the tearjerker moments are actually pretty sad, and as I said, there really is nothing quite like defeating evil aliens through the power of rock and roll.
No comments:
Post a Comment