Elite Beat Agents is awesome. I told myself I wouldn’t like it. I whined “Ashlee Simpson” and “Avril Lavigne” and “The Village People.” I told myself that I would import Ouendan with my next fifty bucks and feel higher and mightier than these dumb Americans.
When the track list came out, I listed a bunch of songs I’d much rather have on it from bands like Cibo Matto and Cake.
I resisted EBA as much as I could, knowing full well that I’d end up buying it.
Instead, it was dropped in my lap as an early present just a few days ago. And it was great. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing about it, right?
It is. I breezed through the two-star difficulty, only getting stuck on the last song, which is “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” I’m on three-star now, getting my butt kicked left and right.
I’m about to get all emo and admit to shedding a few tears to “You’re the Inspiration.” After helping people through rather silly situations in rather silly ways, suddenly the game sticks you with a far more mature scenario, and handles it really well. I was having a crappy day anyway, that stage just pushed me off the edge.
And the fact that the animations were changed for this (they’re actually subtly changed every level) attests to the care that was put into the game. It’s no rush job, no simple localization. It is its own game, despite being a derivative work.
But, how does it play? I’d never played Ouendan, and maybe you haven’t either. The good thing is, it’s intuitive enough to pass as a good rhythm game, and hard enough to keep you going. It’s sort of like DDR for your stylus.
Most rhythm games have a real-world act that they simplify and allow the player to experince. DDR is dancing, Beatmania is operating a sampler and light DJing duty, Daigasso is playing instruments through the DS, Guitar Hero is playing a guitar, ParaParaParadise is doing parapara, and Ouendan is cheerleading.
(Rhythm Tengoku is the only thing I can think of that doesn’t fit this paradigm. Instead of doing something rhythmic, it is about finding the rhythm in everyday life and using it.)
The fact that Ouendan is about being a cheerleader is probably why the game was changed so drastically for the western world. Here, no male kid wants to be a cheerleader (or so popular opinion goes), so they make the characters badass dancers in snazzy suits. Give one dude an afro, give them all cool glasses, give them badges and call them Agents. I think the Ouendan outfits looked cooler. (as history shows, my opinion never counts)
Anyway, cheerleading is still the basic concept here. You’re going to be pulling off intricate, synchronized movements by tapping and dragging the stylus on spots that appear on the touchscreen. Those spots are roughly related to what your character does on the screen. It’s like dancing, but more showy and uplifting. When you’re on, you help people do things like reclaim lost fortunes and move clouds.
It’s still cheerleading.
I said earlier that the actions are intuitive enough, because it’s pretty easy to tell what order you should hit them in. Lines guide your eyes to the next circle. Numbers help you get the order right.
But, when things start getting tougher, it can be pretty frustrating. Your eye is no longer watching those circles shrink, it’s waiting for the beats and estimating when you should poke it. It’s not looking at the numbers, it’s looking for lines, and if the beats are too close together and there’s too many, you can get off, which is death in more advanced songs.
The game does, however, do a great job of making sure that beats are spaced on the screen in relation their spacing in the music. It does everything it can to make the process predictable, and the game is really enjoyable for it. But, the first few times through “Canned Heat” on Sweatin’ difficulty is going to kick your ass. Until you learn that some of those beats actually come on funky disco upbeats.
Incidentally, “Canned Heat” (that’s Jamiroquai) is my favorite song in the whole game. You know. Nothin’ left for me to do but dance! Canned heat in my heels tonight bay-bee. That’s the one.
The songs will rock you, no matter how much you detest them. I bobbed my head to “Sk8er Boy,” I did. I AM NOT ASHAMED. Not that much, anyway. I was also helping a taxi driver take a pregnant woman to the hospital at the time, which makes it much, much cooler.
But, another complaint I have about the game starts there. I’m busy paying attention to the touchscreen, while there are cool things happening up above. I wish I could watch them, but I can’t. I’m glad for the segments where I just have to watch.
November is a pretty good month for the DS. You people can have your Wiis. T.T
_______
Fun fact: My DS has spent more time plugged into a stereo than any videogame device I own. Daigasso, Rhythm Tengoku, Electroplankton, not to mention homebrew stuff (Nitrotracker, Moonshell, soon Soundcells).
