Video game number one hundred and seventy eight: Rhythm Heaven

Video game review number one hundred and seventy eight in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Rhythm Heaven".

This game is one of the first games for the Nintendo DS that I can't imagine playing without the stylus. It's a really tough game to describe, but basically....it's filled with music-based minigames, and your job is to "flick" your way through them. "Flicking" is sort of like drawing a check mark on the touch screen at first, and many of the games involve that simple motion.

It's addictive as hell.

The little singing game where you press the stylus onto the touch screen to shut your guy up cracked me up. If you remove your little pencil from the screen for even a fraction of a second, the little guy will start singing, and he won't stop until you put the stylus back. The game is a "Glee club", so you have to sing in harmony with the other two folks (meaning most of the time, the trick is knowing when to shut up).

Another game I like involved three monkeys at a concert, and whenever the singer says the same word three times, you clap four times (using the stylus). Whenever the singer says "I suppose", you do a strange button combo that involves three fast claps and a flick. It sounds weird....and it is...but it's fun.

The funny thing about renting DS games from Gamefly is I usually get to see how far the people have gotten before me (because the saves are stored on the cartridge). In less than 6 levels, I was already beating the top two scores of the last two people that rented this. HAH!

Of course...after the first block of levels, it got harder, and I got stuck on some silly rhythm based ping-pong game that I just couldn't make sense of. I tried to get through the level 5 or 6 times, but I kept failing....and eventually, I switched the game off.

Overall Score? 7/10. It's good, but that one level I couldn't beat stopped me dead in my tracks. I had the opportunity to buy this from Gamefly for about 17 bucks, but I chose not to. It's a decent enough game, but I think there are better ones in my DS arsenal right now. If I'm going to buy another one, I'm thinking about "Inside Story", which I really liked a few weeks back.