Elite Beat Agents

Thursday, December 14, 2006 » gaming thought

Being somewhat of an Ouendan purist, I had all this pent-up, pre-release hatred for the Americanized Elite Beat Agents. However, all was forgiven when, during the "YMCA" stage, the agents actually did the YMCA.

But with that said... Let the post-release hating begin!!

All right, it's not really hatred as much as total lack of interest. Yes, tapping all those circles is still pretty fun, but what really keeps me interested in a music game is the soundtrack. Despite Ouendan's soundtrack including a bunch of Japanese bands I'd mostly never heard of, I'd keep going back to it I loved playing along with all the great songs. (I've since listened to the soundtrack in the car an embarrassing number of times.) EBA's soundtrack makes playing some of the levels almost like a chore, and there's definitely no desire to go back and try for a higher grade. (Plus there's no way Cher or Ashlee Simpson are getting anywhere near my iPod.)

I also noticed the difficulty seems to be way down compared to Ouendan. I was able to breeze through normal mode up until the last song without too many continues, whereas after the first three or four songs in Ouendan's normal mode, the game became a furious battle. Higher difficulty definitely would have added to the replay incentive, because the tracklist sure isn't doing its share.

EBA does have some nice new features due to it being v2 of a game, though. For instance, I definitely would have liked to be able to skip that 30-second intro to Ouendan's final stage during the countless times I had to replay it. And although I'll probably never use it, I'm sure the saveable replay option will be popular among the YouTube crowd.