Australian Gamer Review :: Elite Beat Agents

THE ONLY PLACE THAT WOULD EMPLOY BRETT

Elite Beat Agents

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I've never been so excited over a Nintendo DS game before. The Elite Beat Agents are a special government agency who helps people in need. And how do they help them? By dancing of course!

Players: 1-4 Players
Genre:
Release: 2007-05-03

Developer: iNiS
Distributor: Nintendo

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I've never been so excited over a Nintendo DS game before, I mean sure.. we've been playing those little addictive DS games that keep us entertained on the train to work or help us out when we're bored at lunch.. but this is it folks, this is Elite Beat Agents, a brand new style of gameplay to the rhythm and action genre which pushes the DS to it's full potential while keeping you at the edge of your seats� in other words, not just another pocket game.

Let's start with a little history, Nintendo released a game in Japan almost 2 years ago called Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! which instantly created a massive fan base and most importantly to Nintendo, a lot of sales. The game involved tapping and draggin objects on the touch screen to the beat of popular Japanese songs to save people in difficult situations, Nintendo quickly took noticed and wanted to introduce this unique dance game to the western world but there was one major problem, no American wanted to play a game with J-Pop as the main attraction (excluding J1n, he's weird). So Nintendo revamped the idea, threw in some government agents, new storylines, and most importantly.. music we've heard on the radio before. And my god ladies and gentlemen, it has worked.

So who are these guys? The Elite Beat Agents are a special government agency who helps people in need. And how do they help them? By dancing of course! The better you dance the more encouragement you give somebody to help end their tricky situation in a positive way.

As you turn on the game you'll be greeted with a message saying 'for maximum enjoyment please use headphones or turn the volume up to a suitable level'. Seeing this message for the first time sent tingles down my spine, and let's be honest, when have we ever seen this message displayed on a handheld before?

You start off the game with some basic training; Commander Kahn, who is the big wig around the EBA headquarters, will personally teach you how to play the game. As I quickly described above, you'll be boogying you're way through this game by tapping, dragging and spinning objects to the beat of the song.

Commander Kahn explains to you that circle objects appear on the screen so when they do, you wait for the outer ring to close in on the circle and that's your cue to tap it. You'll also have to perform some dragging moves, when you see a circle with a line going across the screen you'll have to tap the circle and follow it with your stylus to the other side indicated by another circle, there will also be times when you'll have to follow the circle all the way back again, this is indicated by a U Turn arrow. And finally, you have a spinner, a big blue and red circle will appear on the entire screen, this is when you go nuts and spin the circle as fast as you can to clear it.

By performing the right moves you'll keep your Elite-O-Meter up making the agents perform some awesome moves, but if you miss a few beats your meter will go down, keep screwing up and your metre will run out giving you a game over screen.

So this all sounds simple right? Sounds pretty basic and boring right? Oh you are so totally wrong. As easy and simple this game sounds it is certainly a challenge and is absolutely addictive. After training you're thrown into the single player where you chose your difficulty, each difficulty gives you a different agent to play. You'll start off with two, breezin' and cruizin', and if you're good enough you'll see the other half of difficulties which start getting insane.

When you enter the single player game, you'll be greeted with a globe that you're able to spin. As you spin it around you'll notice little icons on the maps with a big 'Help!' displayed above it, tapping these icons will open up a new mission for you to clear. Each mission starts off with an introduction of the situation cleverly shown to you in an awesome manga style environment. The art style in EBA is just amazing, and you'll soon quickly fall in love with it too.

Ok, to make this easier for both of us, I'll explain to you a mission to give you a clear idea of how this works.

The introduction starts off by showing a director having problems filming the perfect movie he wants, the producer confronts the director telling him if he doesn't make a movie that sells big time he'll be fired, the director is now not only sad because his previous efforts were just dissed, but he is now scared of losing his job. So what does he do? He does what every other person is going to do in the other missions, he's going to scream out 'HEEEEEEELP!' Commander Kahn picks up the single and sends his team out by saying 'Agents are�.. GO!' The music cranks, a guitar solo comes in, and the agents arrive in style (as always) as they count down 3� 2� 1� Go! As soon as they say go you better start getting them tapping done boy!

After you played your way through the first section which is usually the first 30 - 40 seconds of the song, you'll be shown the progress of how well the person is coping. If you nailed the first section you'll be shown something positive, like in our example, the director filming a perfect scene for a wedding when the bride just kisses the groom and the producer goes 'Alright!' finishing with a pin circle which means cleared! If you screwed the first section up, the guy playing the groom will forget his lines and the women will slap him causing the producer to say 'This is terrible!' followed by pink X indicating you failed the first section. There are about 3 - 5 sections in each song that you must try your best to clear. If you failed too many sections you will be given a bad grade. If you miss a few beats you will get a game over screen.

There are a total of 19 missions in the game, which also means there are 19 addictive tracks. So what are the tracks? I won't mention them all (as if that's going to stop you from look them up) but you'll be tapping your way through Freddie Mercury's I Was Born to Love You, Ashlee Simpson's La La, Good Charlotte's The Anthem, The Rolling Stones Jumpin' Jack Flash and the Jackson Five's ABC.

The sound quality that is packed into this game is absolutely amazing, let's just say I found it sounding better than my own iPod nano and my mobile play list. I definitely do recommend plugging your headphones or your PC speakers, just try to avoid using the DS speakers themselves, which sound kinda tinny. The presentation of the game is clean and simple, easy to just pick up and jump straight into it, which again is another reason I enjoyed this game tremendously.

Elite Beat Agents does not stop there, when I said it uses the DS to its full potential I really meant it. You can versus play co-op with up to four other players using one or multiple cartridges, although it's always better to have a friend with the game because you'll be able to play the entire track list, as opposed to the 8 given to you with the single cart option. Your friend thinks he is better than you at YMCA? Instead of questioning his sexuality just send him the ghost of your best performance of the song to prove him wrong. Do your friends want to try out the game? Send them a mission or the training session with DS download play so they can bugger off and let you play in peace.

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Final Verdict

No words can describe how awesome Elite Beat Agents is. It's seriously addictive, loads of fun, very enjoyable and hey.. nothing beats nailing a perfect score for your favourite song. You wouldn't think EBA is a handheld game, you would think it's a completely different and a better universe to the one you're living in right now. This is an absolute must-have for anyone who loves to jam and boogie on down because you will feel the magic in EBA. The moral of the story kids, when you're in trouble just yell 'HEEEEEEEELP!'

Pros
Fantastic manga style, the DS is the new (and better) iPod, plenty of catchy tracks, brilliant and clever missions, the learning curve is very easy on you, rewarding finishes, multiplayer (verses and co-op), DS download play and you'll be coming back every day for your daily dose of EBA.
Cons
You will fail songs, over and over again.. but who says that will stop you?