Rhythm Heaven is easy to learn, but apparently really difficult to master for those not rhythmically inclined (such as myself).
cmfl3x and I have discussed a few times whether to start writing bigger articles about DS games, even though this has been primarily a 360 related gaming blog. But I guess with me also including PC gaming here and there, and both of us traveling more often as of late, we’ve definitely been spending more time playing our DS’s than our 360s! So this is the inaugural entry on the blog for a DS title, and a fitting one to start. Read on for my impressions of this quirky music title as someone who has almost no music ability.
I like music games – especially quirky ones like Parappa the Rapper, Osu Tatakae Ouendan, Elite Beat Agents, etc. I also love mini-games like the WarioWare titles on the GBA, DS, and Wii. If you’ve played any of the titles I’ve just mentioned, you probably have a good idea of what Rhythm Heaven is about as it’s a collection of quirky mini-games based on rhythm & music. This DS iteration is actually the sequel to the Japan only title on the Game Boy Advance, making complete use of the DS’s touch screen. It was released at the launch of the DSi, but is perfectly playable on the regular DS.
The controls for Rhythm Heaven are easy – you turn the DS on its side, and the game is completely played with the stylus. The touch screen is blank, so you can literally touch anywhere on the screen to play the game. There are five main input commands to the game: a light and quick tap, a normal tap, a held tap, keeping the stylus on the screen and removing it, and a flick move where you quickly flick the stylus up across the touchpad. Each of the minigames utilizes the stylus through any combination of these inputs.
The minigames themselves are quite a hoot. My wife was watching me play the Glee Club minigame, and she was laughing like crazy as I played it. Basically, in this mini-game, you are in a glee club with two other members and the teacher has you singing.There are two controls to this minigame that revolve around keeping the stylus on the screen. With the stylus on the screen, your character is quiet, but when you remove the stylus from the screen you sing (and won’t shut up until you put the stylus back on the screen). Also, if you keep the stylus on the screen but flick up and release, you belt out a high and loud note.
While the controls are easy, the game itself is not so much if you have a poor sense of rhythm like myself. I’ve played through about the first ten or so mini-games, and it seems like there’s dozens more. Some are pretty straightforward that I’ve gotten through on the first try, but others have me replaying over and over. The first set of mini-games I was able to pass pretty easily, but the second set started giving me a lot of problems.
One of the minigames in the first set is Glee Club, a minigame where your character is the highest pitch of the three and the objective of the minigame is to get through a song. The teacher may have you each sing on your own, or together. A pattern may emerge where each of the other members does something and then you need to follow like Simon Says. Say you’re the ‘Mi’ in Do Re Mi. The pattern may go Do…Re…then you have to remove the stylus from the screen so you start singing ‘Mi’. But the hard part is removing the stylus from the screen at the right time and then putting the stylus back on the screen at the right time to be part of the rhythm. Mistime it, and the other two singers will give you looks (which had my wife totally cracking up). Or a pattern may go ‘Do Do…Re Re…’ and then you need to do ‘Mi Mi’ along to the beat before the teacher goes “Together now” and then you flick your stylus so all three scream in unison. This was one of the easier ones, and didn’t give me too much of a problem.
The second set of minigames had me stuck for a while. I had some trouble with the table tennis one but replayed it so many times (I liked the song) that I pretty much mastered it and got a medal. Apparently if you score well enough in any mini-game, you can unlock a medal and you use medals to buy extras. In table tennis, you hit back and forth with another player according to the beat of a song – so there’s regular hits, fast hits, and slow lob hits that are all performed with a flicking motion on the screen. Flick too early or too late, and you hit the ball out.
I also had a lot of trouble with a space invaders like mini-game where 4-8 space invaders appear on the screen at a time according to a specific rhythm, and the only way to defeat them is to tap them according to the same rhythm. With 4, I had no problem but when it got to more I found myself struggling a lot. Fortunately, if you’re stuck and lose on a particular mini-game several times, you are given the option to skip it. Unfortunately, after every four set of mini-games, there’s a “mix” of those four mini-games that you cannot skip past. In this “mix”, it throws together scenes from all of the past four mini games and you basically have to beat them all to get by.
I’m not going to lie – as one lacking in rhythm, this game is hard. It’s basically a Simon Says game completely based on rhythm. In fact, I hear that it’s possible to play through the mini-games without even looking at the screen if you listen to the beat and the audio clues. But the mini-games themselves are so cute and amusing that I can’t help but slam my head into them over and over. For some, Rhythm Heaven could perhaps be too challenging, but if you have any sense of rhythm, you’ll most likely enjoy this quirky title a lot.
