This week has been awesome. Why? I finally beat Patapon 2. I will do a review shortly but let me just say in my opinion this is one of the greatest games I have ever played. Probably within the top All-Time games in my list. I also beat Build-A-Lot which is alright and very much a time management game. Expect a review for that this weekend. However the big news this week was Nintendo dropping the price on the Wii and releasing the dates for their holiday line up. This year is kind of weak in my opinion, there are only two games I am interested in for the Wii: A Boy and His Blob and New Super Mario Bros. On the DS there is Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks but that is really about it. The Wife will be happy to know that they costs might be a little lower for a while though I haven’t had time to play so I am pretty much not buying at the moment. Here is the list of what I have been playing:
Patapon 2 (PSP)- This game is amazing and I highly recommend it to anyone who owns a PSP. I honestly will probably keep this thing around and play it randomly to stregthen my little guys. I will write more on it soon.
Build-a-lot (iTouch)- This was a fun game that was very addicting which is often my problem with time management games. I play it and nothing else when I have a quick bit of time until I finish it. Well it is finished now.
Defender Chronicles (iTouch)- A fun tower defense style game. I have kind of decided to start focusing on the second hero now and I think it might be easier with her.
I Dig It (iTouch)- This game was surprisingly fun. It was better to me than California Gold Rush as you just tried to dig lower and lower. It is very unforgiving because if you are even close to the end, you have to come up so you don’t die underground. Even if you have been playing for two hours it is extremely frustrating when all the sudden you are done. Pick it up if you get it cheap, I need to play it more.
I am getting settled in here. Now I have to figure out what my new games are going to be with a few of the mainstays being gone. Any recommendations, feel free to post!
The two Patapon games were a huge factor in my decision to finally buy a PSP. I really want to play the second one but I decided that I needed to play the first one so I had some perspective when I got to the second one. I am very glad I did because I found it to be a very enjoyable experience.
Patapon at its core is a rhythm game where you have to play drums in certain orders with certain rhythms to make your little eyeball characters do different things and win different battles. You eventually get 5 songs (Attack, forward march, run away, power up, and defend) along with the miracle one. Getting 10 in a row will get you FEVER! mode which makes you quite a bit stronger. You then have to maintain the rhythm to keep the Fever going.
Here is a hunt, this is hard to do in clear weather!
The story is just a bit silly you are trying to see IT. I am not going to tell you what IT is but you have to fight through legions of bad guys to get there. Every so often there are big bosses that you have to fight which you receive a new song or the memory of a new Patapon that you can then create. You can then go back and fight the bosses again (though they get slightly harder each time) for much stronger weapons and materials to create greate Rarepons whcih are stronger Patapons in different colors. You can also redo missions for hunting missions to grind your team up.
The sound of the game is wonderful. There is a flashing screen but it is impossible to do well at this game in my opinion without the sound playing. It seems like the music would get old with the same rhythms, but for me it didn’t. The visuals are simple, but really seem to work for the style of the game. The difficulty is slightly high and it seems kind of a little too often I had to go back and grind my team up a little by fighting as many bosses as I could and getting cash from the hunting levels. That was definitely a downside in my opinion, it would have been nice to have it a bit more scalable.
Here a boss battle! Watch out!
Overall, I really enjoyed this game. I am looking forward to playing the sequel but I promise I won’t review it for a month so we don’t get sick of the series. I would recommend anyone with a PSP to play this game. It will be one of the classics of the system. However there are a few things that need to be refined like the difficulty level and I would like to see a bit more customization of my army. It would be nice to upgrade Patapons without killing and creating a new one. Give it a shot and you will probably be addicted.
Who should play:
Anyone with a PSP and a remote interest in a rhythm game.
Who should pass:
Someone completely without rhythm because this will expose you.
Overall: 9.0/10