0verhyped

Are we sure this title is an accurate translation? Maybe paradise is Japanese for torturous hell.

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Seeing as we’re in a new year and possibly a new gaming generation, I figured now is a good time to look back on what games from the last few years really defied my expectations. Either because they went above and beyond what I was expecting of them or because they were horrible letdowns that made me feel stupid for buying them. Today’s disappointment is the brutally unforgiving Rhythm Heaven, a deceptively cute title that’s more like a condescending music teacher than a fun rhythm game.

So looking back, my last four posts have all been Western RPG’s. It was starting to sound like I never played anything else. Maybe games like that just happen to create certain expectations what with them promising whole worlds to roam around in. Arcade style games usually only promise something simple. But that doesn’t mean they can’t fuck up royal too, like Rhythm Heaven here.

Now this seemed like just the kind of game I would really like. I liked the crude and cutesy art style. I like rhythm games. I like my DS. Rhythm Heaven looked like a music focused WarioWare type game. I don’t think my expectations were that far off base. In fact, I guess that is the kind of experience Rhythm Heaven was shooting for, but I didn’t enjoy it. I hated it. Like, almost instantly. I mean, like two minigames I was already regretting my purchase.

So what’s the problem? Well, a lot of things. The first problem is Rhythm Heaven is completely unforgiving. You think a simple rhythm game with cute little characters would be at least somewhat lenient. But not Rhythm Heaven! You have to be fucking PERFECT! You can’t be off by so much as a millionth of a second. I’m not a musician, but I have been playing drums for three years now, so I thought I had fairly decent rhythm. Guess not. It’s made all the worse that pretty much every character in the game scowls at you every time you make a mistake.

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This is you.
This is everyone not liking you.
Any questions?

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This leads to the next problem, the controls. Despite expecting mechanical precision, the people making this game went with some fairly loose touch screen controls. Tapping things works okay, but there’s also a lot of swiping and flicking which doesn’t always work too well. Sometimes I couldn’t figure out if I was missing the timing or messing up the flicks. You know how I’ve complained about the Rock Band games being picky assholes? Yeah, well this was infinitely worse. Rock Band is like an easygoing laid back uncle compared to Rhythm Heaven.

The other annoying thing about the controls is they really don’t make much sense. In things like Rock Band you play look-alike instruments to popular music and in Elite Beat Agent you tap circles and spin a big wheel with swirls to imitate dancing along with the music. They might be a far cry from actual musical skills but it’s close enough that you get a feel for what you’re doing. Rhythm Heaven? A lot of the minigames controls seem pretty arbitrary. Take the singing game pictured above. You hold down on the screen to be quiet, let off it to sing and flick to yell really loud. You know the DS has a microphone on it, maybe that minigame should have been using it instead.

And that leads me to the next problem, the minigames themselves don’t really make sense. Typically the appeal of minigames is their short and easy to understand. The minigames in Rhythm Heaven are short, but they’re not easy to understand. In fact, every single one of them comes with tutorials and not very good ones either. After a while I just stopped using the tutorials because it seemed like no matter what I did I always ended up with a shitty score. I’m taking pictures of cars? I’m shaking a lizard’s tail? I’m a doo wopping moai?

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Not making any of those up by the way.

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You know this stuff would probably be pretty fun if I didn’t have to fucking practice it fifteen fucking times to get a score of “slightly above crap”. If Rhythm Heaven wanted to be a teaching aide it should have included more clear and consistent activities. Trained musicians use sheet music so a little guidance would be useful. Even Elite Beat Agent has shrinking circles that help establish visuals cues for when you need to tap. A lot of the gaming elements are also really annoying. You can’t get a “PERFECT” score unless a minigame is randomly selected to be eligible to be perfected, and only then is it possible to earn a perfect score. Where the fuck is the logic behind that? And I need perfect and near perfect performances to unlock a lot of things? Fuck!

If it didn’t want to be a learning aide it should have lightened the fuck up. Ease up on the timing and stop forcing me to fail a minigame three times before I’m allowed to move onto another one and maybe simplify the controls where I don’t need a god damn tutorial every time I try a new minigame. You know I’ve read both this game’s predecessor and its successor use simple button prompts, so maybe this was just a misfire, but damn… did this fucking game piss me off something fierce.