Dancin' Machine (Elite Beat Agents (DS))

Member Name: DudeGlove

Product:	Elite Beat Agents (DS)
Date:	24/11/08 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superbly addictive

Disadvantages: Opposable thumbs required

Whatever the problem: be it trying to make it big as an actress, get a pregnant woman to hospital on time, fending off a zombie attack or simply asking your boyfriend to go steady - the Elite Beat Agents are there to help. The head of EBA, a retired army commander capable of seeing every event in the world on some gigantic screen somewhere, dispatches three of his best black-suited agents to solve issues through dance. Such a brilliantly ludicrous setup hooks you from the very beginning.

EBA is a rhythm action game, much in the same vein as Dancing Stage Euromix, Parappa the Rapper and Guitar Hero, which fully incorporates the touch screen feature of the DS. EBA is actually a follow on from the Japanese original Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! (literally Hey! Fight! Cheer Squad!) that had the exact same game mechanics but the agents were some sort of weird male troupe of burly fascist cheerleaders. Using the stylus (the little plastic pen thing) provided, certain markers will appear on the screen in time with the music. Your objective as the newest recruit in the EBA is to hit these markers that follow the music, usually with the melody or the lyrics sung during the mission, so as to bolster the efforts of whoever is in trouble and thus save the day.

Markers come in three flavours: your basic hit marker which you tap once with the stylus; a phrase marker that you tap and hold at the beginning of a line and then drag across the screen to its end (much like holding down a step in Dancing Stage or a string in Guitar Hero); and a spin marker whereby you spin a wheel around rapidly with the stylus to fill up a bar before the time runs out. Keep in time and hit the markers without missing and your score will multiply. Miss the markers and not only will your multiplier be lost, but your dance-o-meter will also drop. If it drops too low, you will fail the mission and Commander Kahn will not be happy.

Each "mission" begins with a brilliantly drawn short cartoon-strip style preamble. Take for instance one particular stage: two socialite girls, who bear a striking resemblance to Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, get stranded on a desert island after their cruise liner crashes. They both scream for help, which Commander Kahn hears from afar. Agents are immediately dispatched on a banana boat. Through the agents' dance moves, the girls tame the local wildlife into cooking the girls' dinner and building them a sauna. At the end the girls manage to get a plane off the island. All of this is accompanied by "Material Girl" by Madonna.

Well, not really by Madonna. None of the songs are by the actual artists - they're all covers that have been dancified a bit to be more beat-friendly. Such hits like Y.M.C.A., Canned Heat by Jamiroquai, A.B.C by Michael Jackson and September by Earth, Wind and Fire reveal themselves as you play through, although the situations that accompany them are often really rather strange. Let's Dance by David Bowie is the theme to an out-of-luck oil baron trying to dig for oil, while Avril Lavigne's Sk8r Boi accompanies the afore-said rush to the hospital. One does wonder if they could've chosen slightly more relevant tracks, but given the absurd nature of the game you would be just as dumb to question such a minor detail.

Once you work through normal mode, hard opens up. This mode has all the same songs - there are only nineteen in total - but lots more hit markers that come thick and fast. More markers mean more points, and more points means your rank as an agent increases. Get your rank up high enough and a couple of bonus stages are your reward.

That's basically it. There are one or two minor niggles with what is largely a truly splendid title. On hard mode, indeed on all modes, the markers on some particular sections of songs do not follow in time with the lyrics or melody. The best way to describe this is that they are "in-between" - like some sort of beat harmony, which can lead to slight confusion and ultimately failing the mission. The other annoyance is more because of you, the player. It would be helpful if we could see through our own hand as some hit markers will, if we presume one is right handed, often appear on the left side of the screen, only to be continued on the right side, conveniently hidden under your palm. Failure is inevitable, regardless of how much musical background you have. In fact, it will take several attempts to memorize the more difficult beat locations. This can be of some frustration, but it never feels as though you're being cheated out of succeeding. Thinking about it, nearly every rhythm action game I have played has been exactly the same. You will barely notice the screen on the hardest setting of Guitar Hero II, as you will have worked so hard on training your fingers to be on the right place at the right time.

In terms of the technical bits, the miniature DS speakers do a reasonable job of blaring the music, though it is far better to plug in headphones to appreciate the surround sound. For true enjoyment, do as I do and plug it into your computer speakers.

In addition there are a couple of multiplayer modes through the DS Wi-Fi system. Up to three players can compete against each other in a wireless match on any of the songs, which is great fun as a competitive aspect is added in whereby one person doing well on a song affects the other players by making their hit markers appear tiny and cause their screens to shake. Failing that, you can broadcast your replay data of the 400 or so perfect run of beats on the last track of the game to your friends, or even let someone download a short demo to their own DS if they don't own a copy. However, it is predominantly a single player game and in terms of multiplayer fun, it loses out to the Dancing Stage machines.

Elite Beat Agents is both a worthy addition to the narrow niche of rhythm action games, and a spectacular demonstration of what the DS is capable of.

Summary: Get your groove on