Hey guys!
This is another review from moi!
I want you guys to check it out before I submit it to my website. Let me know if you spot any grammatical errors or I forgot to mention something about the game.
ENJOY!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It all started when Nintendo released “Ossu! Takakae! Ouendan!” a rhythm based game for the Nintendo DS in Japan. The game was developed by iNiS; well known for the cult hit PS2 title “Guitaroo man”. Ouendan was about a group of Japanese male cheerleaders that would go around the city and cheer on those in dire need of motivation. It featured music by some of the most popular J-rock bands set to some funny, surreal and even touching stories.
The game wasn’t able to join the million selling DS game club, but word about the game spread like wildfire across the globe. Fans couldn’t get enough of the insanely addicting gameplay and the infectious energy and soul the game had to offer. This turned Ouendan into one of the biggest import hits ever. Nintendo took notice of this and realized that the game was just too good to leave it Japan only, so they sat down with iNiS and began talks about bringing the game to the US.
In May of 2006, dreams finally came true when during their annual pre-E3 press conference they made the announcement. Ouendan was going to see release in the US...but under a whole new name, motif, songs and set of graphics.
From that day on, the US release of Ouendan would be known as “The Elite Beat Agents”.
The game
“Elite Beat Agents” tells the story of a secret government organization of the same name (inspired by, according to the words of its creator at iNiS, the Men in Black, the Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters) who go out and help citizens in need through the power of music, cheer and dance. Their grooving beats fill the people with the energy they need to accomplish their hopes and dreams or solve the problems that constantly plague their existence. Whether it be a baby sitter trying to take care of misbehaving children, a puppy trying to return home or a former baseball star fighting against a giant fire golem, no mission is too big, too small or even too messed up for the EBA!
“DON’T LET THEM DOWN!”
Review
As I stated at the beginning of this review, the game received a massive overhaul in the theme department. It’s the first thing you notice when you boot the game up, especially if you are an experienced Ouendan player. And quite frankly, it needed it.
While the original Ouendan was a fantastic game it was created with a Japanese audience in mind. The songs along with the stories and characters were heavily inspired by typical situations of everyday Japanese life (such as studying for the college entrance exams, becoming more than just a salary man and participating in a cultural festival) and even J-pop culture, anime humor and stereotypes. They were neat and all, but many of the jokes and influences would’ve flown over people’s heads in the US. Same with the songs. Again, they were very infectious and extremely catchy but the typical US audience barely listens to import music. So you can scream and shout all you want that they ruined Ouendan by Americanizing it, it was needed in order for it to fit well among other DS games in the US, whether you like it or not.
Now that I got the rant out of my system, does EBA succeed at presenting Ouendan to a brand new gaming audience? The answer is a hell yes with a side of BELIEVE IT! (Sorry, bad Naruto joke…).
The core of Ouendan, the gameplay, remained intact when moving it overseas. While the gameplay consists of the tried and true “hit the button to the beat” formula that has been used in music games since its invention way back in the mid 90s, it provides a lot of innovation and gaming conventions that many fans will not be able to resist.
First of all are the hit markers. These are buttons that are layered all over the touch screen. They consist of a constantly shrinking outer circle and a white inner circle. When the outer circle overlaps the inner circle you must touch it to the beat of the song using the stylus. Do it exactly on time and you score 300 points, do it slightly late and you receive 100 points, do it very late and you receive 50 points and finally, miss and you fail.
Then there’s the life meter (or the “Elite-O-Meter”). The life bar is full when you start the stage, but it will constantly deplete itself. In order to keep it from reaching the red zone you must correctly hit the buttons to the beat of the song. Miss and the bar will deplete itself very fast and its game over for you, the agents and the character you are trying to help.
Complementing the beat buttons are the phrase markers and the spin marker. The phrase marker has you following a ball across a trail. Fail to keep up with the ball and it will cost you your points and life bar. As the name states, the spin marker has you spinning a small disc as fast as humanly possible.
All of these gameplay elements are set in a pattern you must follow in order to successfully complete the stage. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, like any true blue music game EBA is easy to learn, very hard to master, even if the difficulty has been slightly toned down to satisfy the US masses.
This takes place strictly on the lower touch screen. The top screen shows your score and how the character you are cheering for is doing. If you are doing greatly, the character will be very motivated and extremely successful, if you are doing all right, the character will struggle a little bit and if you are either getting a low score or missing the beat the character will fail. Depending on your overall performance the ending will be altered to reflect the results of the song.
The game has you following several stories and characters that are laid out across a 3D globe. Once you select a stage you must complete that character’s story. When you successfully complete the song, you move onto the next one. Once you complete a set of songs, another is set is unlocked. You can complete these in the order of your choosing, but will progress in difficulty.
EBA offers up to 4 difficulty settings, 2 that must be unlocked by completing the earlier stages. Breezin’ is easy mode, Crusin’ is medium, Sweatin’ is hard mode and finally Hard Rock is expert mode. Each mode is represented by a different character (but are still accompanied by the same back up dancers). Despite their varying difficulty the modes still have you testing your rhythm and reflexes, giving EBA an addicting sense of fun and immense satisfaction when completed, something rarely seen in a game nowadays.
While the gameplay is what made Ouendan one of the most fun DS experiences yet it’s the characters and their stories that gave it its unforgettable charm. In fear of sounding like a broken record player, the story and its characters have been changed in order to make it more American friendly and while some of them lack the overall weirdness and surreal elements of the Japanese stories they still carry a grand sense of fun, quirkiness and most importantly heart. Trust me when I say that you will never forget some of these characters and will likely associate the songs to their stories after playing the game. While there have been music games that have featured a story (such as Sony’s “Parappa the rapper” series and Sega’s “Space channel 5”) this is one of the first times the music is closely tied to the story it tells. In other words, the story isn’t a background element, it is constantly changing according to your performance and what the song is trying to portray. It motivates you to do better so that the best outcome can be achieved.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a music game without songs and this is perhaps the most controversial part of Ouendan’s localization. Once again, the J-pop songs were very nice but they just wouldn’t fly well with the average consumer, so a revamp was vastly needed.
EBA’s soundtrack is an extremely hit or miss affair, featuring everything from 70’s funk (The Village people and earth Wind and Fire) and soul to early 00’s pop punk rock (Good Charlotte and Sum 41). The soundtrack does a good job of portraying a wide range of musical genres and artists but there will be many fans that will throw a fit over it. In my personal opinion I don’t mind the songs that much, but I do wish they had picked better songs rather than trying to please the mainstream audience. The game is already daring as it is, so having a weird and unexpected soundtrack wouldn’t have killed it. I would mention that the songs don’t usually relate to the character or the story they are featured at, but the original Ouendan featured love songs in stages about trying to defeat an alien robot invasion so this was expected.
One thing that makes EBA stand out greatly for me is that iNiS went above and beyond the call of duty when bringing over the successful Ouendan formula to the US. While they kept the core of the gameplay intact they made many welcomed improvements. For example, you can skip both the story segments and the intro of the song, which is a blessing for us Ouendan players who had to endure very long intros. They also made it so that you can save the replay and share it with other players, or play against it in the multiplayer mode. The stats screen at the end of the song has also seen a small revamp, featuring a more detailed score screen and overall performance. Not only that, you can now view a replay of the part where you failed in the song, allowing you to study what exactly you did wrong before trying again or giving up altogether. Single cart multiplayer as well as DS rumble pack support has also been added to the mix. And if that wasn’t enough, they added 3 new songs to the original 16-song count and made the final stage one extremely epic affair. And I haven’t even gotten to the small graphical touches sprinkled throughout!
Some of the extras included are the expected multiplayer mode. You can either play in co-op mode or in versus mode. As if the stories in the main game weren’t enough each of the songs in multiplayer feature a small story and characters, even if all of them consist of a competition between rivals. Again, quite impressive. Up to 4 players can join and while single cart gameplay is offered it is limited and owning a copy of the game will let you play all of the songs.
The one complain I have about the game is that Nintendo has decided to make this part of their “Touch generations” line of games. In case you didn’t know, “Touch generations” is a line of DS games created with a different gaming audience in mind (like Nintendogs, Brain age, Tetris and Clubhouse games). It consists of simple games that everyone can easily get into, young and old alike. So I don’t understand why they put a game like EBA in their lineup. Even if the difficulty has been toned down in order to make it accessible to veterans and newbies alike, the game still offer some really challenging and even extremely frustrating levels, something that does not fly well with the non gamers Nintendo is heavily advertising at.
But outside that small nit pick (which isn’t iNiS’s fault), EBA is an extremely satisfying and excellent entry in both the music genre and the overwhelming line up of DS games. Even if the game was changed in order to please a more mainstream set of gamers it still retains the amazing appeal that made Ouendan one of the biggest import hits in this generation of gaming yet.
GAMEPLAY SCORE: 9.5 out of 10
Graphics and sound
Sometimes we forget that how a game is presented (menu designs, icons, animation etc.) is an integral part of the graphics and in this area EBA truly shines, joining Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS2) and Twilight Princess (GC, Wii) as one of the most detailed and well presented games of 2006.
Character artwork is vibrant and full of life, even if, ironically, are animated in limited portions. The stories are presented via 2D, manga style comic panels. Each one does an excellent job or portraying the character’s plight. They are joined with absolutely energetic intros (some that take over the DS’s two screens) and hilarious story sequences in between song segments.
Perhaps the best-rendered part of the game are the agents themselves, which are modeled in 3D and are presented on the bottom screen. You have to remember that the DS isn’t considered to be a 3D powerhouse (even though some absolutely astounding 3D games have been released on the system, Final Fantasy III being an excellent example), so the models are rough, but are detailed and very well animated. What impressed me the most was how they animated them. The team behind Ouendan recycled a lot of the animation in all of the songs, but they went all out for EBA. Each song actually features the agents doing different types of dances, some actually ripped from real world performances (such as the iconic Y.M.C.A dance)! This adds a lot of character to a package that is brimming with personality.
Oh and in case you were wondering, yes, the game has a lot going on visually, with the top screen showing your animated progress, the hit markers and phrases and the dancing 3D agents on the touch screen. Those elements could be major distraction during gameplay, but unless you have severe ADD the game is still playable.
And of course, this being a music heavy game the sound quality should be of the highest quality, even if you are dealing with handheld technology. In that area EBA passes with flying colors. All of the songs are cover versions, meaning that they will not sound EXACTLY like the original ones (some were even remixed in order to make them beat happy), but comes very close. The overall quality is that of a small mid quality MP3, but then again, we are not dealing with CD based media here so considering what they had to work with they did a rock solid job.
Voice acting is limited to grunts, screams, chants and small lines here and there, with the tutorial stage showcasing the longest line spoken in the entire game. But they are good nonetheless.
So overall in the visual and audio department EBA comes out a winner and one of the finest examples of a media intense game done right on the DS.
GRAPHICS SCORE: 9 out of 10
SOUND SCORE: 9 out of 10
Final thoughts
All in all, The Elite Beat Agents have made one rock solid debut that has kept the original heart and soul of its predecessor, Ouendan, while re-inventing it to create a new franchise with lots of potential. I honestly don’t care if you are one of those hard core types that hates anything popular, if you are too musically challenged or don’t even bother much with Nintendo’s games. You owe yourself to at least borrow the game and give it a chance. You might end up hating it yourself, but you will likely never forget it!
Good things about EBA
- Tried and true, but very innovative, musical gameplay
- Unforgettable stories and characters
- Lots of bonus content and extras
- Many great additions to the Ouendan staple
- Extremely challenging
- Fun graphics and solid audio presentation
Bad things about EBA
- Can be too hard and frustrating at times
- An extremely hit or miss soundtrack
- Why is this in the touch generations line again?
Final score: 9 out of 10
Topic: Elite Beat Agents - Nintendo DS (Read 3751 times)
