[SuperWes]

My impressions from here:

Elite Beat Agents
Nintendo DS

This was a damn good game - maybe not great when looked at by music game standards, but taken purely as a videogame it was superb. How does something fail at being a music game yet succeed at being a videogame? Simple. By having a terrible track selection but compelling enough interaction to keep you interested in pushing forward regardless. Songs like Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi" and Ashlee Simpson's "La La" are pretty representative of how bad the track selection gets, but songs like Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat" and Chicago's "You're the Inspiration" sort of make up for it.

Structurally, Elite Beat Agents is probably closer to Parappa the Rapper than anything else. You're given a short introductory story, and are then asked to tap a series of touch-screen prompts to the beat until finally being rewarded with a scene showing success or failure. No real innovation there, but what really makes it work is the same thing that makes Parappa work: You genuinely care about the characters.

It's a subtle thing that's in no way tied to the music game genre, but somehow - perhaps because of the art style and sense of humor that each of these stories contains - it's really easy to identify with these absurd one-dimensional characters that are put into absurd situations. There's a definite sense of accomplishment that comes with completing each mission and knowing that you've, say, helped a car manufacturer's son use his innate Ninja skills to retrieve their company's stolen prototype plans from their competitor. It's the situations that make it interesting, the music that makes it emotional, and the resolutions that make it satisfying.

Overall it's a very impressive game and I'd recommend it to just about anyone.
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[SuperWes]

You guys ever played Donkey Konga 2 US? Elite Beat Agents has the best soundtrack in the history of gaming compared to that.

-Wes
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