Elite Beat Agents

iNiS - 2006 - DS

Oh man, this game. Elite Beat Agents is a music/rhythm game for the Nintendo DS. Gameplay in EBA consists of tapping and sliding the DS stylus on the screen when the game prompts you in time with the music. It’s kind of like Guitar Hero but without the guitar. That may sound easy to you, but on faster songs with a lot of beats, the screen can fill up with a lot of beats and it becomes hard to hit them all in the correct order and with the proper timing. I found myself doing better on songs I had heard before so I could sort of use the rhythm as a guide. Nearly all of the songs in the game are pop songs, but I really don’t listen to much popular music.

The gameplay in EBA is fun in the same sort of way Guitar Hero is fun, but the real draw of EBA is the absolute lunacy of the games’ “story”. Now I looked this next part up on Wikipedia, cause the game doesn't really straight up tell you what’s going on, but the “story” of EBA is that there is a government agency that dispatches special elite dance agents to help people when they’re in trouble. The agents don’t actually directly assist people with their issues, but rather they dance to motivate and inspire people to overcome their problems. Each song in EBA is accompanied by a humorous short story about a person or people in peril that apparently need dance inspiration to overcome issues. It’s really goofy and silly in a very bizarre way. The closest thing I can draw a comparison to is the humor in the WarioWare games.

Summary:
If you like rhythm games or games with a really wacky sense of humor, check this out. It’s short and I’m not sure how much replay value it has, but it could be an interesting way to kill some time on the go.