Awful Audition, Hands on Audition: Portable

By Dan Zuccarelli . November 30, 2007 . 2:14pm

In my time as a game player I've only run into a few times where I felt like I was being ripped off (Bullet Witch and Double Dragon come to mind). But this time out, I can't shake the feeling of being on the wrong end of some sort of practical joke! When I was asked to take a look at the game, I figured it was right up my alley, what with me in love with rhythm games of all shapes and sizes. After playing the game, I'm suddenly worried that I must done something to anger Spencer to make him get back at me by sending me the game… otherwise I'm seriously missing something here.

 

Truth be told, I'm probably over-selling it… it's not like it's the devil incarnate or anything. But it fails rule number one when making a rhythm game… you don't need to follow any sort of rhythm to play it. So no matter what appeal it might've had is out the window since the game devolves into a combination of Simon Says and Whack-A-Mole.

 

 

Now I don't speak a lick of Korean, to be honest I can recognize the written language when I see it but that's about it. So when booting the game up I hit the net to get the skinny on the game, which turned out to be a good thing because for the first time dealing with an import I had no idea how to play the game. After 26 years of playing games, there's kind of a mental checklist you just start going through in your head when you play any game.. that's why we rarely need to look in the manuals. Ok, this attacks, this is action… this stick moves you, that one the camera…etc.

 

So even when the language it a total barrier you can usually get the framework down, even more so with a rhythm game since you know the jist of what you're supposed to be doing. But since this one doesn't conform to the one rule of rhythm games (game play based on rhythm) I was totally at a loss on how to play. Of course one visit to Wikipedia fixed all that, but then the game just got boring.

 

Here's the set up, you're in a dance off with another character. You're both given a series of buttons to hit (Up, Down, Left, Right, Triangle, Square, X, Circle) and you basically have 2 bars of music to input it all and then hit an "enter" button. The buttons can be pressed at any pace as long as it's done on time. So you're tapping like mad when the song is nice and slow, or vice versa. The music actually plays no part as to what you're doing, it just gives the characters something to dance along to. Later on they throw dummy commands at you where you need to hit the opposite direction of what it says. That's it.

 

I played and played, hoping something different would come up… but nothing. I did enjoy the music selection though. I have a limited exposure to asian pop music (almost completely reserved to the songs on the Ouendan soundtrack) so it's always fun to hear new tunes from the other side of the world. But other than that this game bored the pants off me.

 

Oh, and the graphics are terrible and the animation is clunky. And here I thought Rhythm n' Notes would be the worst rhythm game I'd play this year.

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