Patapon

The pretty, perky and popular PSP platformer LocoRoco was one hell of a surprise hit. Nobody could have anticipated that something so simple would be so well received. It was a solid budget title that fast became one of the "must owns" for Sony's somewhat underused handheld.

Why was it so popular? Almost certainly because it was attractive to all audiences. Youngsters would appreciate the pretty graphics and cheerful sounds, teenagers would appreciate the rather shocking difficulty of some levels, and adults would appreciate the incredibly simple controls.

All of this should be considered when you think about the game Patapon, the newest rhythm game from the same company.

If I told you right now that there was a game about walking talking eyeballs with a fetishistic love of percussion you'd probably knee me in the knackers and tell me to stay away from your family. But as I grip your leg, tears of pain flowing down my cheek, and breathlessly insist whilst showing you screenshots, you'd probably be intrigued. I know I was. I'm heavily into music and percussion (hey, you know what they say about us beatboxers) so it was a definite purchase for me.

The first thing that stands out about this game is a price. £20 for a brand new PSP doesn't happen very often, and since I got it for even less ($20, wouldn't you believe - that's £10 for the uninitiated. They were also selling full Rockband sets for $160 in the same store. Go figure) I was immediately a happy chap.

The second thing that stands out would have to be the graphics. The LocoRoco style 2D cell shaded graphics are back and looking finer than ever. Unlike LocoRoco the stages are entirely flat - the ground is a solid black line that you walk along, taking out enemies along the way. The various critters you run into look simple enough with most species having colour-swapped versions to represent different creatures. This is true even with the enemy army, the Zigatons - they're just red versions of the Patapons. The definite highlight of the visuals are the bosses - even though each boss has a pallette-swapped twin they still look individual, and are large and intimidating compared to your tiny army.

The story to the game is a bit naff to be honest. It basically doesn't exist, and probably would have been better if they'd just been open and said it doesn't exist. Instead you have to assume the position of a god (something I'm not new to at all) to guide your little race to Earthend to look at IT. Exactly what IT is you don't find out, and that's what's so frustrating about the story. It's literally "go from A to B" - they could have thought of something a little more imaginative!

The gameplay would strike most as being a bit silly. It's also easy to play but hard to explain, so bear with me on this! Basically you need to get your Patapons from the start of the level to the finish. You do this by pushing the square, circle, triangle, and X buttons to play a drum (represented by the noises they make - Pata, Pon, Chaka, and Dom respectively). You push four of them in rhythm (for example, Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon which is the walk command) then wait for four beats while the Patapon carry out the action and sing the beat back. Then you repeat. This might sound dull but it requires a surprising amount of concentration. You can also use commands to attack, defend, run away, and charge up your attack although to be honest you'll only use attack, run away, and walk for most of the game.

When you keep a good beat going for a certain amount of bars (building up a combo) you enter Fever mode where your army powers up and uses stronger attacks - for example, archers shoot three arrows instead of one. If you mess up your Fever resetts so you need to get a combo going again. On top of the main game there are a bunch of mini-games you can unlock, but they basically follow the same principle.

That's pretty much it.

You get an arsenal of weapons and you can create new Patapons depending on the units you've unlocked. You can assign units varying from knights on horseback to tall horn-playing guys who blast potent musical notes at the enemies. They can be upgraded by obtaining rare materials and Ka-Ching (the in game currency) from missions and bosses.

Sadly the audio in the game leaves a lot to be desired. The music for each level is pretty much the same, which is sad. The very few differences in the music will just confuse you, making certain levels harder to keep a beat to than others.

The game has a decent game length. I was playing for about 15 hours before I'd seen the ending, but I continued playing in order to upgrade my army as much as I could. However, there are several very annoying faults with the game. The single most annoying thing in any game would have to be the absence of pausing. When you're in the middle of a mission and someone needs to tell you something you need to keep on putting in commands or risk being defeated - and considering how some of the missions can take quite a while this is unacceptable. The equip system isn't very in-depth either - you pretty much push one button to optimize your army and that's it, no weapon upgrades or even any real armor other than helmets and shields.

To carry on with equipment flaws, you can't actually buy or sell equipment which I found very perplexing. More often than not you'll end up with more items than you can actually equip but not enough money to make more troops. The game is also incredibly repetitive and has the potential to get old fast.

The fact it's a rhythm game with battles in brings many problems too. Enemies do not have to follow a beat like you do, so often you'll find it literally impossible to defend or avoid attacks because you simply don't have time to input the command and wait for them to follow it. This sadly detracts from the strategy involved to play and renders many of the drum commands and extra features of the game worthless.

It's rather simple too, although the hard parts stand out like a sore thumb. There is one particular puzzle early in the game which, for people who aren't particularly observant, will frustrate and annoy. There are also a couple of battles which are stupidly challenging, although once you've powered up your units a bit you're pretty much untouchable.

All in all Patapon is a great game. However, it isn't the ground-breaking innovation it's made out to be. Never-the-less, it's a near essential purchase, and one that can be made without breaking the bank.