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Amazingly fun for all ages

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 34 / 34
Date: November 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Elite Beat Agents is one of those games that seems awfully silly - but is incredibly addictive once you get started. It's a rhythm game with some fun songs to play along with.

The plot is the silly part. Secret agents watch for trouble - babysitters trying to calm down kids, little girls missing their daddies - and jump in to help out. The way they help is by dancing along to the music. This is like finding a "plot" for tetris. Just ignore it :)

The real fun is the actual gameplay. You have a song playing in the background - the 19 different tracks include songs like YMCA, Material Girl, You're the Inspiration, La La, Sk8ter Boi, Let's Dance and much more. There's a good mix to please most players. Now you tap along with the song on circles on the screen.

Let's say you're playing Material Girl. They might show 4 circles in a row for you to tap along with the song. A larger circle will show around each circle, closing in on it and matching it right when you're supposed to tap it. Sometimes you slide along a line. Sometimes you double tap. The taps make drum beats and cymbals, so it really does sound like you're playing along with the song. The "closing circles" are really easy to see and understand and draw your eyes along.

In between verses, the top screen shows you manga-like scenes of the "story" you are following. So in one story, a weathergirl is trying to get rainy clouds to go away so she can have a picnic with her son. The scenes show her getting help from people in blowing away the clouds. Depending on how well you do in your playing, you get different endings - so you really have incentive to do your best and to replay.

There are two levels of difficulty, and on each level you get a rating of how well you did. You can easily go back and replay levels to get the highest rating in each one.

You might think that 19 songs aren't a lot, but really, you don't play a song just once. That would be like listening to a song just once on the radio or on your MP3 player! You listen to and play them repeatedly because it's fun to hear the song and fun to play along.

Highly recommended!

If You Only Buy One DS Game, Make It This One

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: March 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I am the sort of person who thrives on negativity. The prospect of failure inspires my personal greatest. The snark factor that accompanies truly bad products is often more entertaining to me than things that are really objectively good. I love to criticize and rarely sing praises... but that just goes to show how much I love Elite Beat Agents. This game has joined my rather limited collection of handheld games, and if the DS never produces another excellent game that's okay, because EBA is reason enough to own a DS.
People have lots of problems. The elite beat agents try to solve them with the power of pop music. As the music plays, you tap the touch screen with the stylus in sync with the music, and it causes the agents to dance. Miss a beat and they fall down. There is a meter at the top that is constantly decreasing. Missing beats causes it fall more rapidly, but hitting the beats gives it little boosts. Hitting all beats in a sequence will net you an Elite Beat that will give the meter a big boost. In the harder difficulty levels this is the only way to stay alive.
EBA is pretty short. It only has a grand total of 19 songs, and three of them you'll have to unlock by reaching a certain total of high score points. Luckily, the game has about four difficulty levels to entertain you with. That and it is just so much fun to play that you'll find yourself coming back again and again. I find it difficult to fault it for length because this is a hand-held system after all, and getting 19 full length vocal songs plus the 3D dance animations for the agents on one cartridge is a feat in and over itself.
Each song is accompanied by a little story that plays itself out in comic book style on the top screen. Your performance during the song effects how it turns out. Each section of the song is broken into 3 to 5 segments, and depending on how well or poorly you do effects if something good or bad happens to the characters. Most of the stories are pleasantly amusing, and more importantly, very fun to watch.
Elite Beat Agents is pretty much perfect, and its forced me to admit it. Hopefully, there will be a sequel one day.

Unique and very, very fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: November 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Here's another exclusive, unique, and innovative triple A title for the DS. Elite Beat Agents follows the exploits of three black suit wearing secret agents on a rescue mission. And the only way to find success with your mission: dance to the rhythm! Now I know what your thinking, that this game is something for acquired tastes and isn't for everyone. While this may be true in some respects, Elite Beat Agents is surprisingly easy to get into and pick up and play. The bizarre but wonderfully drawn cut scenes help reel you into the gameplay, as the soundtrack features a whole laundry list of older and more recent pop songs that are sure to grate on your nerves at some point or the other, but they all feel at home here as you use your stylus to keep the rhythm going. What's really surprising is that how addictive the gameplay becomes once you really get into it. This is easily one of the best games stylus-use wise for the DS, totally making excellent use of the touch screen as well. There's some unlockables as well to help keep your interest, however the only real downpoint of Elite Beat Agents is that at times the game can get too challenging for it's own good. There will be frustrating times aplenty, but the good obviously outweighs the bad here. Even if games like Dance, Dance Revolution (which is one of the most easily comparable games to this) aren't your thing, if you have a DS you should really give Elite Beat Agents a try, I think you'll be pleasently surprised.

Easy way to suck hours upon hours of your life away

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: November 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Fans of dance/rhythm games rejoice, for you touch screen narcotic has arrived.

I originally got to play a demo of this at a local electronics store. It consisted of the first level which, obviously, was simple enough. Still, anyone familiar with games in this genre know "simple" lasts for about three songs. I promptly bought it first thing the day it was released.

The premise of the game, while seemingly cheesy to describe, is absolutely brilliant.
Ready? Here goes: You are a trio of elite special agents who go around and assist people by dancing.
Each story conflict is told through an anime comic style on the top screen, with the dancing happening on the touch screen. There are animations occurring on the top screen during gameplay, but you don't really have time to watch it seeing as you're too busy concentrating on getting your dance on.

To get through a given level, you'll need to tap, spin, or drag numbered circles to the rhythm of the song.
There are two difficulty levels to begin, being able to unlock an additional two.

With gaming classics like "Walkie Talkie Man," 80s flashbacks such as "Material Girl," and Pop tracks like "La La," Elite Beat Agents is filled with hours of gameplay.

As with most multiplayer DS games, I'm kinda disappointed you can't play the game over WiFi Connect.
Also, and this really shouldn't be filed under "con," but it would have been great if there were an option where you could play your unlocked songs while the DS was closed. Sort of a little added "Hey! You get a mix album!" would have rocked and I'd be forever grateful if Nintendo threw that in when they make a sequel (that's right, I've owned the game for less than a day and I'm clamoring for a sequel.)

Now this is how you do a rhythm game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Over the years I've played my share of rhythm games from Parappa the Rapper on the Playstation to arcade embarrassments like those Para Para games (which, while fun, were just painful to perform in public). So I entered Elite Beat Agents (EBA) with more than a little baggage and a confident swagger that it would not be anything I've never seen before. I was wrong. This game is immensely fun and addictive. I tested it at the bus stop across from the shop where I bought it and did not stop until I got home (almost walked into a couple of trees along the way home). The game starts nice and easy and quickly develops into a challenge without being mind bogglingly difficult.

The song choices are great and even though I had some misgivings about some (like Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi") I was blown away about how RIGHT all of these song choices were. EBA just makes them fit.

The animation is quirky, fun, and laugh out loud entertaining. You cannot help but fall in love with EBA.

If you have not bought this game yet you should seriously consider placing an order for this gem right now. EBA is easily one of the DS's best games, period.

Not for lovers of rhythm.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I wanted to like this game so badly, and I did...at first. Then, as I was less and less able to make it through the songs without major frustration, reality started to sink in.

A good rhythm/music game should have a few things. Rhythm, (mostly) great songs, and a somewhat forgiving way of rating your performance in the game. Unfortunately, EBA falls short in all of these categories. First, the choices for beats within the songs are not always particularly intuitive, and are sometimes just mad, arhythmic dashes. Other times, I felt like the game was just not reading my taps. It doesn't help much that the beat sounds are loud and awkward. Next, the song choice is extremely spotty. I understand that Nintendo needs to cater to a wide range of people, but that can be done without sacrificing quality. And, do we really need a song from Good Charlotte AND Sum 41? They're practically the same band. Furthermore, they aren't classic bands or even particularly popular these days. What gives? "Sk8r boi" is even more painful. Thankfully there are a couple of gems, especially the Bowie song. Finally, the difficulty is unforgiving. Basically your timer is always counting down and you have to hit the marks to keep it up. This seems like it'd be okay, but on much harder difficulties the meter almost runs out faster than you can get to the next beat. What this means is there is basically no room for error and that's not really fun at all. I could have a huge score and be 3/4ths of the way through a song with basically no errors, miss a couple of beats near each other, and lose before knowing what happened. The aforementioned spastic beats further confound this problem.

That being said, the design is great and many of the stories hilarious. The off-kilter humor is pretty refreshing for a video game, but then rhythm games like Parappa and Gitaroo man were far more eccentric and entertaining. All and all this is a good idea gone a little sour and stale. Guitar Hero has really raised the bar for rhythm games in all of the points I just mentioned and then some. They popularity of that series shows that Harmonix really nailed the rhythm genre and all future developers need to take a cue from that game.

Just plain fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I own the game that Elite Beat Agents is based off of (Osu! Tatake! Ouendan), so I was very excited for this game to be released here. Elite Beat Agents keeps the same addictive gameplay as the Japanese counterpart, but changes out the songs (while adding 4 more for a total of 19), telling new hilarious stories, and making general enhancements (such as reviewing your recent failed attempt, saving replays, skipping long musical intros).

One can only complain about the tracks themselves. A few of the songs don't seem to fit in with the game (slower tunes). Other songs you know so well that the cover just doesn't sound quite right.

But overall, here's a game that once you start playing, the time just flies by. Harder levels are frustrating, but by practicing, they're never impossible (and the feeling of accomplishment is great). I'm hoping that iNis makes this game a series. I also can't wait to see what they can do on the Wii.

Fun Time

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

After stealing the game from my boyfriend whenever he would let me have it for a couple hours, he got it for me for Christmas. When he first got it for himself, I thought it was boring and I was going to hate it. But now I can't stop playing. It's nice because the songs aren't long so you don't have to commit too much time to playing each time you turn it on. I find it really challenging, as I have no rhythm. I've been telling people it's like DDR, except you're tapping on a screen rather than tapping your feet on the floor. To me, it's definitely worth picking up. The only negative...too much stuff that can be skipped. Luckily, they have a skip option!

DDR For the Hands

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I had no intentions of picking up this game until I was in Target and playing it on their display DS. Immediately I found myself liking the game, even though I didn't really understand how to play. Once I found out the extremely simple to learn controls, I played the first level.
One of the things that attracted me to the game was the art and animation. On the lower screen, you have three agents in 3-D, and on the top screen are characters in the same style as the Wario-Wares characters. You have to play songs and hit the notes in time to the music in order to make the people happy. Every once in a while, you'll get a break and watch a scene where good things (or bad things, depending on how you did) happen to your characters.
The game itself is quite difficult, much like playing DDR, except you use your hands. If it gets too easy, too, there are other difficulty modes, and I've got a feeling there's a lot more to unlock.
The only thing I wasn't so impressed with about this game was the music selection. I would have preferred them to pick songs like those in DDR instead of having pop hits like "Sk8er Boi." I know I probably won't ever play the level with "Sk8er Boi" again just because I simply hate that song.
So if you love crazy games that keep your toes moving in time to the beat, definitely pick this one up.

Fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

EBA is a very entertaining game with many stages and levels. To me, it has great replay value and is great for people of all ages. You can even play multiplayer with one card and challenge your friends. The downside is that there are only a few selectable stages and loading takes forever.

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