Elite Beat Agents Impressions

Get your groove on with Elite Beat Agents.  If you are a fan of rhythm music games, then this one is for you.  For more info, look in the newest issue of Nintendo Power.

Elite Beat Agents‘ structure remains the same as its original, Japanese forebear: vibrant, comic book-styled stories segueway into music- and dance-infused “rescues” of people having bad days. In Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, the rescuers were male cheerleaders dispatched by a gruff, uniformed director. For the English reimagining of a game that admittedly was very “Japanese” in both style and culturual references, EBA has ditched the hachimaki-wearing, trenchcoated heroes in favor of black-suit-wearing disco dudes also dispatched by a military-looking commander, resulting in something that feels like Village People meets the Blues Brothers by way of Men in Black. Yes, all of those.

Actually, the game oozes such style, personality, and humor, EBA may cause many who play it to think of lots of pop culture gems. Yet threading the over-the-top presentation is energetic, fast-paced rock, except with English hits instead of the Japanese pop rock that flavored OTO. The demo we played featured classic rockers Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” (1971) and Kiwi rockers Steriogram’s “Walkie Talkie Man” (2004), indicating we should expect a broad spectrum of decades-spanning guitar rock. We couldn’t tell if the songs had been redone by sound-alikes, as OTO did, but there’s so much going on in-game this is likely to be a non-issue.

Each mission in EBA begins introducing a character by name and age, and then their current crisis plays out in subtly animated comic book panels that pop up one at a time. In one mission, a pug falls asleep on a pickup truck and begins a heroic cross-country journey to get back home. In another story, a teenage girl about to ask her football jock boyfriend to go steady is abruptly saddled with babysitting her out-of-control little siblings. Just when these characters feel there’s nothing they can do to achieve their goal, they let out a scream for help, and the Elite Beat Agents instantly transport to the little disaster, equipped with microphones and dance moves to usher those in need to happiness and success, all to the beat of pounding rock. Make no mistake: the achievements made by these hapless victims are often remarkably cheesy or over-the-top, eliciting laughter in part by the scenario and in part by the perfectly styled hand drawn art.

While gamers never directly control either victims or heroes in this game, they do tap and drag their styluses upon concentric circles, rolling balls, and spinning discs. The circles make up the majority of gameplay– they pop up on the touch screen with a number they’re to be tapped in, and the timing of their tapping is not only in synch with the song playing, but also a concentric circle outline that shrinks around each tap-able circle. When the shrinking and static circles’ outlines match up, they can disappear with a tap. The timing of the tap is crucial: 50 points if “kind of” on the beat, 100 points if very close, 300 if perfectly on the beat.

The rolling balls can roll along straight or curvy paths. The player must merely keep the stylus on top of the ball as it rolls along its path, and sometimes the ball will retrace its path several times before disappearing. Finally, every stage usually ends with a very frantic disc spin: a large circular disc fills up the bottom screen and must be spun by dragging the stylus in circles over the disc. The more circles drawn with the stylus, and the faster they’re made, a power meter fills up on both sides of the disc. Powering the disc spin to the max gives, naturally, the best points.

All of these rhythmic antics move along each story’s chapters, which play out on the top screen in line with the success or failure of the player’s tapping and dragging. Most stage’s stories are split into three or four chapters, and playing well or poorly ensures an often hilarious consequence for the distressed party. Completing a majority (or all) of the segments on the positive side results in a happy ending and, sometimes, a new stage to play. Even though playing EBA is closely tied to the beat of its background music, and the circles often pop up in patterns that repeat throughout the songs, so much is going on that several practice runs may be needed. Fortunately, as implied above, something funny is sure to happen if you either win or lose, so it’s always a happy, fun experience all-around.

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