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Patapon Preview
Written by Elmer Concepcion on Monday, January 14, 2008
Pata pata-ing to victory!
When first playing with Patapon, one of two things will occur. It will either charm the hell out of you. Or it will annoy the crap out of you. I am scientifically certain, that there is very little middle ground here. You'll either like it and love it for what it is. Or you should just forget it's coming out get back to whatever it was you were playing. Patapon seems the bastard child of so many disparate genres, that it still remains so artistically certain about what it wants to be is a testament of strong original game design. It's a rhythm based, real time strategy, sidecroller. Which is just a way of saying there's nothing like it.
Like any RTS, you must successfully manage and lead your army defeating many enemies across a vast campaign. But the Patapons make for a very strange battalion, not just the fact that they're a bunch of eyeballs with legs and hands. To command them, you have to play a song which they will cheer and follow. Each of the face buttons coincide with a drum sound. For example you press Square for "Pata!", Circle for "Pon!" When you play "Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon!" your army will chant and march forward. "Pon-Pon-Pata-Pon!" is the attack command and the little eyeballs will wail at anything in range. And like any instrument player can appreciate, you've got to have great rhythm or your chant will fall flat and the Patapons will make fun of you or panic. It's hard to say which is the worse insult.
Sure, anyone with a third grader's knowledge for keeping musical beats should be able to keep up a decent rhythm. But when your army is staring down a fire breathing dragon or an army of the square eyed evil Patapon, things get a little hectic. You're going to miss your cues, your army's in danger, it's damn certain your going to lose Patapons. Getting back to the music analogy, I couldn't help but be reminded of my old lessons and tapping my toes. The same discipline applies to Patapon. You have to be aware of your role as drum major. No matter how repetitive it may seem to hit the snare in even beats, everyone's going to falter when you mess up. And then your teacher throws a chair at you.
Have I buried the music analogy into the ground yet? Because I've still got to say that each level successfully feels like a kind of interactive song. And not the "interactive" that most rhythm games offer, but one that you're really in control of just as much as it is in control of you. Each of the fields present themselves with different challenges, not to mention the massive boss battles you encounter. With judicious use of the attack, defend, march, and potentially so many more chants to become available, entire levels are played to a kind of living tribal soundtrack each their own.
Cheering themselves on, crying with every missed beat, flailing around when set on fire. It's hard not to root for these little creatures. And when they return to their village of Patapolis, whether from a great hunt or a terrible battle, victory spoils in tow seeing them celebrate with a small sacrifice to your honor is a great reward. And while you're in Patapolis, you're given more of the story, the chance to create more patapons of different skills, revive your fallen patapons, or participate in minigames. Playing trumpet for a singing tree with a headache proves surprisingly fun.
As much as this game is about keeping the rhythm, preparing your army for the mission you select is at this point surprisingly deep. I can already begin to tell that there are missions when I'd want more archers or more axemen in different positions. Axemen with shields being resilient to fire attacks yet easily gobbled up by dragons. Archers with their potential to shoot past tall walls. Spears for attacking past front line enemies. That's before we get down to individual equipment and special items you can find along your travels.
Possibly the only grievous sin I've encountered in the early preview is that the game lacks a pause button. While not so bad in the home environment, the lack of which on the go it proves a bit of a hassle as you're switching subway trains when you're trying to hunt down kacheeks on the open prairie. But that's a small contention. The PSP's standby is enough, though getting back into the rhythm is going to be a struggle.
Still as long as I had my grade school band practice fall back on, and attaching some decent headphones to boot, the game's shaping up to be a real gem. We can all look forward to experiencing the title when the game releases in February. I, in the meanwhile, will just have to look forward to destroying all evidence that I was a band geek.
