Elite Beat Agents [Nintendo DS]

"Elite Beat Agents.. I've seen the screenshots but I never bothered trying the game. Anyway, last week I got my chance playing this game, and it turned out to be a really fun experience. It's a music game for the DS. You need to hit the dots on the right time to keep the beat going in the game. Sometimes a ball will roll, and you need to follow it with your stylus to score ‘rolling points'. At the end, and sometimes in the middle too, you have bonus rounds where you have to draw quick circles on the screen to score bonus-points.

So now that you have the lowdown on the gameplay.. a little bit on the set up of the game.. It makes no sense! You have a world screen, with buildings popping out at certain places, with people who are screaming for help. So you tap the person you want to help and you get their story. It could be a dog trying to get home or a nurse who needs to help a patient.. It could be anything really. This is when commander Kahn (or something, I can't remember his name right now, hehe), leader of the Elite Beat Agents, shouts 'Goooooo' and you together with 2 other Elite Beat Agents go to the rescue. Somehow all these problems can be solved by dancing to a beat/song. You need to keep your agents dancing by tapping the right beats at the right times. Meanwhile, the completely bizarre story of the person you are trying to help is playing in your top screen. We were laughing every time you saw a story progress. When you fail to hit the buttons, your agents will fall, and your Elite-o-Meter will go down.

The first few songs on 'medium' are pretty easy, but after about 8 or 9 songs it gets pretty hard! I was playing it in the car, of course not while driving, and because of the shaking I couldn't complete the 8th or 9th song. We also played some multiplayer (you can either play co-op or go versus) and we had a great time. I think we will replay this game in multiplayer often. It's too bad that you can only play the songs you've unlocked, so I would recommend setting the mode on easy, complete all songs, and then use the game for multiplayer in easy or single player in medium mode. I'm not sure if you can play the songs you've unlocked in easy also in multiplayer medium. In co-op, you play with your friend (or friends but we only had 2 devices) together to complete a song. You play a bit, your friend plays a bit, you play something together etc. We liked versus better (I have a very competitive little sister) which is where you play the same song, on the same medium or easy level, but you have to do better than the other in order to score more points. When you ace a few notes, you get to nag the other player by giving them small notes. Very annoying, and a lot of fun :)

I was amazed by the selection of songs which feature songs like 'September' or 'YMCA' but also 'Sk8rboi' (or however miss Lavign spells it). I thought the game would have zero familiar songs. So don't worry about that. For a DS game, the game has a great playlist.

Because of this game I'm confident that a Guitar Hero or something for the DS would work, even if you don't have a guitar. It's all about the music and acing the button sequences. It's just hard to make double notes I guess.. maybe with the use of shoulder or ABXY buttons? I'm sure it's pretty easy to figure out.

This game gets a solid 8 from me, maybe you won't replay this game as much as you would expect from a solid 8 game, but it sure delivered. We've been having fun with this game for 3 days straight in the car :) (okay we didn't play 7 hours each day hehe). This is one to get.. when do we get EBA2?
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