These kids today with their Pata and their Pon

Patapon seems destined for failure.

Due to a schmorgusboard of features, concepts, and gameplay, the Sony Computer Entertainment published title smells like the effort of one too many cooks.

On their own, the real-time-strategy and rhythm-action genres are hit and miss. For every Rock Band there’s a Boogie,  and there’s no need to go into the RTS efforts on home consoles. So converging these two genres would result in a botched experiment that would make Dr. Bunsen Honeydew proud.

But like those dogs with a wheelchair for back legs, Patapon defies the odds and manages to be super cute in the process.

What Patapon excels at is pacing. At first, the game is all about tapping a combination of four buttons to the beat of a song to defeat an oppressive army. And that’s a perfect description because it doesn’t scare you off with the depth you encounter later on.

The concepts of the game are introduced slowly. Instead of bombarding the player with layers of options and alternatives, the game makes itself seem shallow. But as you advance, the games scope becomes clearer, and soon enough you realize just the lengths Patapon will go to keep you entertained.

Alongside an army of drum-obsessed simpletons, the player sets out to amass a larger, better equipped troop. Instead of jumping right into a battle against a fleet of no-good-nicks, you can go hunting. By attacking a plain populated by defenceless bovine, players can earn ka-ching (the game’s currency), stones and meat.

The combat is where the rhythm action and strategy meet. Around the screen is a small white outline that pulses to the beat of the game. Throughout the course of the game, you’ll earn songs that use the square, circle, triangle and X button in simple patterns to issue a command. Each button corresponds to a sound, such as “pata” and “pon”. Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon, for example, will move your troops forward. As you successful input these commands, your combo meter will build. When you reach ten successful commands, your troops will go into fever mode and become much stronger as a result. If you input the commands in tune with the white outline’s pulsing, you’ll reach fever mode much quicker.

One of Patapon’s most endearing qualities is its visuals. Not only are they beautiful, but they’re ingenious as well. Instead of cluttering the screen, Patapon keeps things simple. While the visuals appear simplistic, many of the game’s finer details are represented through the graphics and animation rather than on-screen statistics. When a character is able to attack an enemy, their eyelid will close, making the soldier look focused. The games music isn’t only experienced by you, but by the world as well. It’s easy to stay in rhythm when the flowers bob along.

Like a Transformer, there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to Patapon. It’s core gameplay and visuals scream simplicity, but as with Zack and Wiki, the aesthetics can be fooling. Patapon is deceptively deep, and while I’m happy with what was presented in the demo, I’m all too excited to  see what Patapon has in store.

Comments

[ti-gui34]

Yes, is cool!

[Jp36]

I take back my earlier prejudice of this game and the psp. I saw adds for this on the tele, and it looks awesome. Kudos to Sony for something original.