Beatmania US Review

With DJ Hero just recently coming out, I feel like it's time to go ahead and give credit where it's due. That's right, ladies and gents: it's time for me to finally review Beatmania.

GAMEPLAY - 7/10

Beatmania (US) is actually based on the 9th game in the popular and long running Beatmania IIDX arcade series, which is also a sort of reimagining of the original Beatmania series. The gameplay consists of buttons falling from the top of the screen to the bottom, with the player having to press the corresponding button as soon as it reaches the bottom. While the formula doesn't sound to different from any other music game out there, its real charm comes from the sheer difficulty and learning curve. While most games tend to make concessions towards introducing players to the game, then getting progressively harder, Beatmania starts you off at the bottom of the staircase, shows you the first two steps, then smashes the rest of them with a gigantic hammer, lights it on fire, then lines the rubble with nails dipped in poison and asks you to reach the top. Part of the challenge comes from the fact that the samples you're playing usually involve tapping rhythms and melody at the same time, while managing the turn table. This might not be that big of an issue, but it requires you to have at least 85% of the notes played correctly through the entire song, with your percentage becoming a life bar. Once you reach the upper threshold, any missed notes will slowly pull it down. Basically, this boils down to you possibly being great at a song and failing because of the last 5 seconds of the song if you don't know the ending, which can lead to a lot of frustration. If anyone out there is a fan of the previous (or later) releases, the US version is a perfect port in terms of gameplay, along with giving you a chance to get an official Beatmania controller.



GRAPHICS - 4/10

While the US music games tend to focus on creating unique interfaces, characters or customization, Beatmania focuses more on a minimal graphical style that makes it feel more like you're learning some bizarre language instead of playing a game. Most of the time, you'll be staring at a plain black background with white, blue, and red keys flying down screen. If you can peel your eyes away, there's a video playing on the side, but that's about it as far as in-game visuals are concerned. The music select screen is nice, but there's really not too much that sets up any sort of atmosphere other than music-game-in-corner-of-arcade, which doesn't really cut it for console music games anymore.

SOUND - 7/10

If you're one of those people that criticizes DJ Hero for not having enough trance/techno, the soundtrack here might float your boat a bit more. While there's still a bit of the traditional eurobeat stuff that plagues so many japanese music games, you also get some of the more original songs from the franchise (Bad Boy Bass? Yes plz). In addition to that, you get a few original songs along with the required American tracks, which includes a decent remix of Britney Spears' Toxic, Funkytown, etc. In total, you've got 58 songs, some exclusive to Beatmania, the others in IIDX, and a few more that are selectable in both modes once you unlock them.



OVERALL - 7/10

For anyone that's always loved Beatmania or is a huge fan of music games, this is well worth at least trying out, however the steep difficulty curve and song list might alienate some players. If you persevere and manage to pass some of those more tough songs and possibly even AA them, you'll get one of those rare moments where you might jump out of your chair or away from the TV in excitement. This is also probably one of the easiest way to score an affordable and decent Beatmania controller for long time fans, but it's a bit hard to locate copies of the game since it didn't sell too well in the US. While BM US is easily a must buy for Beatmania fans, people that are hardcore fans of American music games might want to approach this one with caution and everyone else might want to look at videos to see if it looks interesting before even trying it out.

Disgaea 1 Review

This is a expanded and revised version of a review I wrote on March 28th 2008, but did not publish on the Fanzine yet. Enjoy!

I have about 1 chapter of Disgaea left to play, but I have seen enough to write a fair review

Story: An interesting, clever, and at times hilarious story keeps you entertained every step of the way. The cast of characters that you meet along the way range from a bratty and arrogant Prince(Laharl), a not so loyal vassal(Etna), a love obsessed Angel trainee/assassin(Flonne), a space Super-Hero with a stereotypically “Heroic” voice( Gordon), and many other interesting characters.


Gameplay: While it isn’t quite as refined as the battle system in Makai Kingdom, the gameplay is still superb. The game is easy to pick up and learn, with enough meat to keep you busy and entertained for a long time. The Dark Council system is interesting, but can be rather frustrating at times. There is a huge number of classes and sub-classes available to use and unlock, although most of the best ones take seemingly forever to get.


Sound: Solid sound effects, voice acting, and a nice soundtrack. Not bad at all.



Graphics: They aren’t that fancy, but they fit the games style perfectly fine. No complaints from me.



Overall: A must for any and all Strategy/RPG fans. Give it a try if you never did before. With many secret stages,multiple endings, and unlockable classes, there is much to keep you playing through numerous times. BUY IT!

Castlevania: Curse Of Darkness Review

This was originally written on Wednesday 27 Feb 2008 at 5:39 pm, but unpublished on the Fanzine until now. Hope you enjoy! Oh, and i’m back to updating finally! Expect more reviews and articles to come in the near future!

Alright, so I finally started playing the game for the first time earlier today. As you may already have heard, I only bought this game back on Saturday…but I hadn’t played until today. So far I only invested about 2 hours, but that’s enough to give my first thoughts on it. Once I played some more, i’m planning to do a more in depth review. For now though, here it goes!

Graphics: For a 2005 game on PS2, the graphics are solid enough. Nothing is especially breath-taking so far, but the character and monster design is solid. My biggest fault with the graphics (and the game in general actually) is how much the levels lack discernable features, to even tell where your going!

Music: I like all the tracks I have heard so far, and they seem on par with Castlevania’s best soundtracks. So far I only heard about 3 different tracks, but they are all solid.

Gameplay: Solid and responsive controls, and nothing seems especially complicated to pull off. Hector’s attacks can seem a little slow at times, but it’s nothing too bad. Unfortunately, the gameplay is not without it’s faults. The level designs while having nice concepts, leave much to be desired in their execution. The complete lack of variety in textures makes getting lost very easy, just because all the damn rooms end up looking the same! This leads to my second gameplay issue…the cameras! While nowhere near as bad as in some other 3D action games, you sometimes get attacked before you can even tell there’s an enemy in the room with you. As a result, you’ll probably end up slashing your weapon wildly…just to make sure nobody is in there with you. There is also a “stealing” system apparently, but I have yet to attempt it. The return of RPG style leveling up and equipment is very welcome, and helps to nullify some frustrations which may have come from enemies sneaking up on you.

Overall: Were it not for the level design problems, and the occasional camera issues,this game would be practically perfect. The gameplay is addictive, with an excellent musical score. For the $17 or so I paid for this used, it was already well worth it. This turned out to be far more enjoyable than I had expected it to be.