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We Are a Part of the Rhythm Nation: Rhythm Heaven By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman If you’ve ever gone through the archives of the site, you’ll notice that I claim to not like a small number of video game genres. Though it’s been found that I actually do like racing games and am somewhat of a fan of first person perspective games, I still pretty much abhor mini-game collections. I don’t have anything against mini-games themselves, as Super Mario RPG is one of my favorite RPGs because of its cleverly interesting mini-games. I just feel that jamming a myriad of “half games” onto a cartridge or disc with little cohesion would be like me turning this site into a true blog site in which I just share raw ideas, it just feels kind directionless. Recently, I took a chance and got Rhythm Heaven for the Nintendo DS and I must say that I’m very pleasantly surprised. Some may consider this game a rhythm game; however, I find it more like a mini-game collection based on music. Rhythm Heaven is less like the standard rhythm games we’ve come to know such as: Guitar Hero, the Bemani series, Rock Band, or Taiko Drum Master; instead of doing a single type of action (ie: strumming a toy guitar) to various tracks, you’ll be doing a different rhythm based task with each new song you play. For example, you’ll have to: sing in time with a barbershop group, fill robots with fuel on the 4 count, stomp and lift beets to the beat, and do other fun and semi-surreal rhythm based challenges.
The gameplay in Rhythm Heaven is very simple. You’re introduced to the current mini-game in the form of a tutorial/primer, once you prove that you understand the basics of the mini-game you’re thrown right into the actual level. Do well enough to pass a song and you unlock another song with another cute task, but make too many errors during a track and you’re playing that old song again. The songs have 3 levels of passing being (from worst to best): OK, Superb, and Perfect which adds a great deal to the game’s replay value. The game’s tight unlock system is both good and bad at the same time, as being able to unlock one new song at a time does stretch out the length of this game. However, it does get somewhat discouraging when you first start playing and get stuck on any given song, since you’re almost forced to buckle down and beat it with near no other songs to play.
Every 5th song you unlock is the remix track. The remix tracks are very fun and even make some of the worse songs in the game bearable. They’re basically a recap of all the various tasks you did (since your last remix or start of the game in the case of remix 1) set to a very well produced piece of music. While all the songs in Rhythm Heaven are very well produced, the remixes feel like they have a bit extra going on with them. They’re almost like musical boss fights in a way. Let me put it this way, I’ll hum the regular mini-games’ songs in my office or my car, they’re catchy and all; however, the remixes are the type of songs I’d actually play off of a CD or seek the mp3s for and play out loud. The controls for this game work beautifully. Everything is stylus based and very well polished. I have heard a few other critics mentioning that some of the touch screen actions are off such as the flick. I must say, any trouble I’ve experienced with the game have always been my fault (for example: not flicking fast enough or at a weird angle). The stylus controls are pretty simplistic as well, you’re basically doing one of 3 actions: flicking (making a quick upwards stroke), tapping (poking the touch screen in time), and holding (pushing the stylus onto the screen and lifting it to the beat).
Graphically, the game isn’t bringing the DS’ processor to its knees or anything, but that doesn’t mean that the game is hideous either. In fact, the artistic style of the game and the overall design of each mini-game proves that you don’t need to be at the cutting edge of the graphics spectrum to look good. The game’s art is all done in a similar styling to the Wario Ware games, a sort of impressionism over realism approach. While you can tell what everything is supposed to be in the game, your brain knows that sometimes things don’t normally look like that when you do see them (but it doesn’t really care for some reason). I really like this type of design in games and I wish it were used a lot more, though I couldn’t imagine a Picasso-esque GTA. Well, I can and that actually might be kind of cool in its own way.
As I mentioned before the music makes this game and that’s the way it should be considering this is a rhythm based game. Another good thing about this game being more a mini-game collection is the fact that the soundtrack is incredibly broad. No longer are you forced to just hear mostly electronica or rock ala Beatmania or Guitar Hero/Rockband, but you actually get a huge range of music genres in this game. You’ll be playing songs in the style of: 1950’s doo-wop, barbershop, ska, latin/samba, military, techno, pop, metal, etc. The soundtrack really has something for everyone (unless you’re dead or just hate music, in which case you should be dead). The songs are never really cheap sounding, unless you want to count the popstar song. However, that’s more because the song was translated to English from Japanese with no change to the arrangement (so the vocals sound really forced). Aside from that, the music is pretty much top notch all around. I’m seriously going to recommend this to anyone with a Nintendo DS. There’s no caveat here this time (well, unless you’re deaf as I know one reader is. And I only say that because it’s hard to use the screen to gauge timing). Even if you’re not musically inclined or lack the ability to count to 4 without some weird break, I really think you’ll like this game. Yes, you’ll probably get stuck on it more often than someone who is musically inclined, but you still can beat the game (and you’ll probably have a lot of fun doing it too). If you’ve got a good ear for music or good natural rhythm, it’s pretty much a given that you’re going to love this game. If you want a fun little mini-game collection that’s done in the Wario Ware style, but you demand a bit more “meatiness” this might also be worthwhile for you to pick up. I’d also suggest this game if you’re a fan of Beyonce, since she does star in a commercial for this game and you know that little bit of hotness can’t do any wrong. Whatever your bag is, I strongly suggest you check this one out.
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