Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise

Rhythm Paradise is a series of rhythm-action games which focus on minigames with minimal button controls. All you need to know is how to keep the beat. The minigames are short, and doing well will net you medals which will unlock music, microgames and other bonus material. As with all rhythm games, the goal here is to keep the beat and keep it well.

In the very first minigame you are a golfer hitting balls thrown at you by one little monkey and one large baboon, aiming at a giant whale in the distance during the practice round. This pretty much sums up some of the random and silly scenarios that Beat the Beat: Rhythm Paradise will present you with. Others include double-dating with a pair of ferrets, stabbing beans with a fork as they are flicked your way and attending a board meeting with a bunch of pigs wearing sunglasses as they sit in spinning office chairs. This is what the Japanese, and indeed what Nintendo, do best – clean, cute and silly fun. Some of the scenarios are really laugh-out-loud, and the game is sure to put a smile on your face because of it, at least right until you find that it’s a little trickier to screw on robot heads than you thought it was.

You only really need two buttons in this game: A and B, and you need to press them in various combinations to keep the rhythm and pass each minigame. You don’t use the nunchuck at all. To be honest, there’s very little about this game that makes it feel like a ‘Wii’ game – there’s no use of any motion control beyond pointing the Wiimote at the screen to select something. Where WarioWare had the same simple, colourful graphics, there was creative use of the Wiimote’s tilt and movement functions that made you feel like there was a point to it being on the Wii. Unfortunately, Beat the Beat is not the same. The lack of motion controls combined with the simple graphics really makes it feel like it should be on the DS, or maybe even the Gameboy Advance, and seeing as the interface is very similar to the previous Rhythm Paradise games that were available on those systems, it doesn’t really do the game any favours. Also, for a game which prides itself on your desire to retry constantly for a better score, there is no instant retry feature – you have to quit and go back into the game. The tutorial also plays at the beginning of each minigame unless you skip it. Why? Why?! Let me just play!

If you can get past these little things though you’ll enjoy a wonderfully simple yet fiendish rhythm-action minigame collection with really catchy songs. Rhythm Paradise is one of my favourite series of rhythm games, and the Western market isn’t really known for liking the genre so to see another English translation of this game is great news in itself. Who knows, with the release of Final Fantasy: Theatrhythm, we might be seeing more of these quirky gems making their way to our shores in the future. I for one certainly hope so, there’s a certain satisfaction to being able to play through a song and get a perfect score.

The minigames form the bulk of the game. There’s very little outside of them to entertain you, but you won’t be coming to this game for the extras. You’ll be coming for a quick rhythm fix, which makes me wish this was basically another portable Rhythm Paradise game. If you like a challenge, the game also seems to be less forgiving with timing than previous games in the series so you’ll really need to be sharp in order to beat the beat, a fact only highlighted by the game’s introduction which shows your accuracy to the millisecond.


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