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Daigasso:
Band Brothers
Band Brothers is a nifty little japanese
title for your DS that is in a similar
style to Mad Maestro, Space Channel
5, Gitaroo Man etc. Now, what I mean
by that is that Band Brothers is one
of those games where you need to hit
certain buttons in time to the music
in order to proceed. A first for the
DS and therefore definitely worthy of
a look, Band Brothers may never be released
in the UK so I had to import it from
our lovely friends at Lik Sang.
Now, the first problem you’ll
encounter with this title is that it’s
in Japanese, well duh. The odd thing
is however that it has english speaking
spattered throughout it and there are
english instructions now and again on
screen.
Overall, you can play this game without
too much trouble but to get a real grasp
of the title there are going to be moments
when you wish you read Japanese. At
certain times, you’ll be wondering
exactly what it is you’re doing,
ie, are you about to save, progress,
retry and so on. It’s not a huge
problem because at the end of the day
you’re pressing certain buttons
to a variety of familiar and not so
familiary tunes. Each of these tunes
has different difficulty settings and
therefore the better you get, the harder
the moves you have to pull off become.
From what I can gather, the overall
aim of the game is to make it as a rockstar
and be accepted into the band. The title
has single player mode, band play, wireless
multiplay and various options on setup
also. For the most part I decided to
play single player, getting used to
the buttons and the controls,. Within
this you also have the option of ‘special
event’ where you have to stop
a bomb from exploding with your nifty
fingerwork. The band play area is 2
player and it’s a nice addition.
I’d have liked some kind of career
mode but I may well simply be missing
that at the moment from the non english
explanations.
The graphics on this title are funky
and fresh, interesting little band brothers
bats are the main characters and they’re
amusing and brightly coloured so light
up the screen when they’re on
it. Most of the time you’ll be
looking at a scrolling screen that tells
you which buttons to bash next so overall
the graphics don’t need to be
that great. They are fairly cartoonish
however and do a good job at brightening
up what could have been a very dull
dual screen game.
The sound on this title is one of the
most important aspects. Now, you need
to listen to the tunes and play along
with them basically and this can get
really fiddly and tricky as you progress.
At times it can be so difficult that
it edges on frustrating but it’s
just so much fun overall that you can’t
help but keep at it. Deaf gamers aren’t
going to get much from this title as
clearly it’s music based however
in the name of research i did turn the
sound off during gameplay to see if
it made a difference and I actually
did just as well without it as i did
with it. Thats because it has a little
arrow scrolling across the screen at
the right time to show you where you
are overall on the game and to indicate
which part of the tune is coming up
next. Obviously the deaf gamer is also
going to miss out on the amusement of
hitting wrong notes, as this is a sound
based title the deaf gamer may want
to spend money elsewhere. There are
tons of songs and variations on this
title and you can alter the tempo if
you wish to give yourself more of a
challenge. One of the coolest parts
was tapping along to the Super Mario
theme one second and then Classical
Music the next.
Female gamers are tradionally seen as
fans of music based games titles and
I think this won’t be much different.
If you enjoy these games then you’ll
like this whether you’re male
or female. The main character throughout
is a funky female bat and even though
I didn’t know what she was saying
she still seemed really cool.
Overall I would recommend this to DS
owners who want something a little different
from the usual racing/adventure/touch
game. It’s fun and unusual and
I’m really hopeful that they’ll
bring it out over here in Europe. It’s
an interesting game because of the way
it plays but also beacuse of the storyline
so getting to know more about it would
be great. The main faults I found were
mainly due to the language barrier and
the more I played the less of a problem
this seemed to be. This is a very cool
title and worthy of a look, I’m
off to see if I can finally finish a
five star tune with something better
than ‘not bad’.
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