I may have been slightly disappointed with Ouendan 2, but it seems I'm not quite ready to give up on new spins on the music genre just yet—at least, not after I laid stylus and thumb to Atlus' upcoming Ontamarama, which they showed us this past week at E3. (We've got three new screenshots of the game for you, straight from Atlus.)
Although I couldn't make much sense of the Japanese present in the game on display, the way the game worked was pretty readily apparent. Across the top of the touch screen, directions scrolled for you to tap out on the d-pad (or buttons, for lefties) in time with the beat, in a fashion similar to Donkey Konga. However, behind each direction was an empty circle: before they reached the left side, you needed to tap like-colored Ontama appearing on the touch screen in various patterns. These fill the circles and let you hit the directions.
The result is a bit like simultaneously playing a DDR game and Elite Beat Agents. It's a novel concept that I thought had a lot of potential, and was immediately catchy. It's worth noting that despite the cute-ish anime characters, Ontamarama is hard, owing mostly to having to constantly juggle your attention between d-pad and stylus. I think, though, that with practice, I could get into this game's groove pretty solidly. I'm looking forward to its release later this year.
Although I couldn't make much sense of the Japanese present in the game on display, the way the game worked was pretty readily apparent. Across the top of the touch screen, directions scrolled for you to tap out on the d-pad (or buttons, for lefties) in time with the beat, in a fashion similar to Donkey Konga. However, behind each direction was an empty circle: before they reached the left side, you needed to tap like-colored Ontama appearing on the touch screen in various patterns. These fill the circles and let you hit the directions.
The result is a bit like simultaneously playing a DDR game and Elite Beat Agents. It's a novel concept that I thought had a lot of potential, and was immediately catchy. It's worth noting that despite the cute-ish anime characters, Ontamarama is hard, owing mostly to having to constantly juggle your attention between d-pad and stylus. I think, though, that with practice, I could get into this game's groove pretty solidly. I'm looking forward to its release later this year.