Chaka-Chaka-Pata-PON
Oh, GOD, Patapon what have you done?
Published: March 16, 2008
If there's one thing I love about Sony, it's that every once in a while, they're willing to get behind a surprisingly weird concept. PaRappa the Rapper all but kick-started the rhythm action genre, Intelligent Qube made simple flipping cubes into the stuff of nightmares and now we have the utterly-bizarre-yet-absolutely-intoxicating peanut butter/chocolate combo of a rhythm action and real-time strategy game rolled into one.
Combining the stark color contrast of LocoRoco with a slightly Lemmings-esque control vibe, Patapon is at once a frighteningly immersive action game and a slightly disconnected set of stacked commands. The game is, frankly, almost imposingly jarring as a handheld experience; it doesn't offer a pause feature, it all but requires that you play it with headphones in a place where distractions are cancelled out and yet it feels like... well, like a PSP game. I don't even know how to describe it, really.
The idea, for those that didn't read our preview a few weeks back, is that you guide a small army of little guys that range from archers to horse riders to spear chuckers through a simple set of six different "songs," patterns played using the four face buttons to do everything from ordering an attack to setting up a retreat. It's an amazingly simple concept, but thanks to a wealth of equipment options and a carefully balanced bit of synthesis, your options for amassing and controlling an army are surprisingly complex.
It's all about returning the cute little Pons to their rightful place in the world after being chased from their homeland by the Zigaton army, all while searching for the mysterious IT, and throughout the double-digit length of the game, you'll slowly learn various combinations of materials used to craft an army, as well as slowly unlock new songs that allow you to revisit previous levels to comb them for new materials or gather stores of old ones.
While at home, a handful of mini-games help make the process of earning new components to build an army that much easier, but by and large repeatedly striking out into the world to push back the Zigatons, defeat bosses to earn swanky new loot and items that grant your army stat boosts and resistances to the elements and discover just what "IT" actually is.
The different layers of gameplay all revolve around carefully timed and sequenced button presses; tap all four notes at just the right time (or just keep a string of commands going long enough) and your Pons will enter Fever Mode, which boosts their abilities or in some cases unlocks completely new ones. So long as you can keep in time or don't use a special ability, it's possible to stay in Fever Mode for most of the level, and the sense of satisfaction that comes from mowing through armies while your little guys all chant along really can't be overstated. Sure, Patapon requires laser-like concentration, but the rewards are unlike anything else on the PSP -- or any other system for that matter.
This, combined with a careful cat and mouse game between your assembled units, the enemies or targets in any given stage and absolutely epic boss fights that can result in your entire army being gobbled up and lost forever (if a unit falls and you collect its hat, it can be revived for free) gives Patapon a uniquely rock/paper/scissors feel to the events. Constant attention has to be paid to what kind of units are attacking, where your units are standing to maximize range and attack types and what kind of advances and retreats are being made by your targets, and again, it's something that all but negates being played on a bouncy bus or loud area, but there's no bigger rush than taking down a boss after a good five minutes of diligently staying on beat and matching their movements with your own, sometimes making pre-emptive decisions based on patterns, sometimes just chancing a move and hoping it doesn't spell doom for your army.
This can be minimized a little by going back and farming unique items for your units (though, again, if they're eaten by some bosses, kiss all that hard work goodbye), but there's an unquestionable amount of geekery needed to really get into the game. An almost RPG-like level of grinding is necessary to earn the right items combinations to make the right army, and at times Patapon's difficulty spikes can make some sections seem utterly impossible (I personally had to restart after about four or five hours because I worked myself into a corner with the units I'd built and the amount of cash -- sorry Ka-Ching -- that I'd built up), but if you're the type that doesn't mind a little repetition (hell, it's a core theme of the game after all), you're going to go ga-ga over the amount of options presented.
It helps that the combination of constant chanting, unabashed worship and adorably simple and unassuming visuals are damn near irresistible. The relatively basic nature of the graphics hides a commendable amount of animation detail, and some of the bosses sport more personality in their movements and more little touches to their design than a lot of big budget action epics or 60 hour RPGs out there. Little touches like wind wisps and tribal backdrops only make the game more visually endearing. Ditto for the audio, which is fairly basic (the Pons speak in gibberish), but will make you oh so glad you're wearing headphones when a Fever Mode song starts to really build.
Patapon is just one of those games that you don't see very often. What originally seems like a basic concept is almost constantly being fleshed out with nuance and depth as new songs, items, units and enemies are added with each successive level. The storyline, such as it is, is just interesting enough to keep you going until the RPG-lite elements sink their teeth in. At only $20, the game is positioned to be one of the biggest hits for the PSP this year, and if there's any justice in the world, it'll be one of the biggest sellers on any platform. Go buy it. Now.
Combining the stark color contrast of LocoRoco with a slightly Lemmings-esque control vibe, Patapon is at once a frighteningly immersive action game and a slightly disconnected set of stacked commands. The game is, frankly, almost imposingly jarring as a handheld experience; it doesn't offer a pause feature, it all but requires that you play it with headphones in a place where distractions are cancelled out and yet it feels like... well, like a PSP game. I don't even know how to describe it, really.
The idea, for those that didn't read our preview a few weeks back, is that you guide a small army of little guys that range from archers to horse riders to spear chuckers through a simple set of six different "songs," patterns played using the four face buttons to do everything from ordering an attack to setting up a retreat. It's an amazingly simple concept, but thanks to a wealth of equipment options and a carefully balanced bit of synthesis, your options for amassing and controlling an army are surprisingly complex.
It's all about returning the cute little Pons to their rightful place in the world after being chased from their homeland by the Zigaton army, all while searching for the mysterious IT, and throughout the double-digit length of the game, you'll slowly learn various combinations of materials used to craft an army, as well as slowly unlock new songs that allow you to revisit previous levels to comb them for new materials or gather stores of old ones.
While at home, a handful of mini-games help make the process of earning new components to build an army that much easier, but by and large repeatedly striking out into the world to push back the Zigatons, defeat bosses to earn swanky new loot and items that grant your army stat boosts and resistances to the elements and discover just what "IT" actually is.
The different layers of gameplay all revolve around carefully timed and sequenced button presses; tap all four notes at just the right time (or just keep a string of commands going long enough) and your Pons will enter Fever Mode, which boosts their abilities or in some cases unlocks completely new ones. So long as you can keep in time or don't use a special ability, it's possible to stay in Fever Mode for most of the level, and the sense of satisfaction that comes from mowing through armies while your little guys all chant along really can't be overstated. Sure, Patapon requires laser-like concentration, but the rewards are unlike anything else on the PSP -- or any other system for that matter.
This, combined with a careful cat and mouse game between your assembled units, the enemies or targets in any given stage and absolutely epic boss fights that can result in your entire army being gobbled up and lost forever (if a unit falls and you collect its hat, it can be revived for free) gives Patapon a uniquely rock/paper/scissors feel to the events. Constant attention has to be paid to what kind of units are attacking, where your units are standing to maximize range and attack types and what kind of advances and retreats are being made by your targets, and again, it's something that all but negates being played on a bouncy bus or loud area, but there's no bigger rush than taking down a boss after a good five minutes of diligently staying on beat and matching their movements with your own, sometimes making pre-emptive decisions based on patterns, sometimes just chancing a move and hoping it doesn't spell doom for your army.
This can be minimized a little by going back and farming unique items for your units (though, again, if they're eaten by some bosses, kiss all that hard work goodbye), but there's an unquestionable amount of geekery needed to really get into the game. An almost RPG-like level of grinding is necessary to earn the right items combinations to make the right army, and at times Patapon's difficulty spikes can make some sections seem utterly impossible (I personally had to restart after about four or five hours because I worked myself into a corner with the units I'd built and the amount of cash -- sorry Ka-Ching -- that I'd built up), but if you're the type that doesn't mind a little repetition (hell, it's a core theme of the game after all), you're going to go ga-ga over the amount of options presented.
It helps that the combination of constant chanting, unabashed worship and adorably simple and unassuming visuals are damn near irresistible. The relatively basic nature of the graphics hides a commendable amount of animation detail, and some of the bosses sport more personality in their movements and more little touches to their design than a lot of big budget action epics or 60 hour RPGs out there. Little touches like wind wisps and tribal backdrops only make the game more visually endearing. Ditto for the audio, which is fairly basic (the Pons speak in gibberish), but will make you oh so glad you're wearing headphones when a Fever Mode song starts to really build.
Patapon is just one of those games that you don't see very often. What originally seems like a basic concept is almost constantly being fleshed out with nuance and depth as new songs, items, units and enemies are added with each successive level. The storyline, such as it is, is just interesting enough to keep you going until the RPG-lite elements sink their teeth in. At only $20, the game is positioned to be one of the biggest hits for the PSP this year, and if there's any justice in the world, it'll be one of the biggest sellers on any platform. Go buy it. Now.
