Music surrounds us in our daily lives. We hear the latest smarmy pop ooze on the speakers at the mall, we listen to the same dozen classic rock masterpieces on the way to work, we sometimes get the most irritating garbage stuck in our heads for no apparent reason. So it would stand to reason that a game involving music would be an almost sure-fire hit. I mean, take a look at Dance Dance Revolution or Parappa the Rapper. Proof positive that if it has a beat, it will sell, right? Technic Beat answers that question with a big fat "WRONG."
Technic Beat is a music game in name only. Your objective is to run around a small field activating sound markers in time with a background track. As you activate the markers, they become the main melody of the song. Activate them off-tempo and the music sounds terrible. Fail to activate them at all and you're warned with an extremely obnoxious "Ding!" which sounds like it's been ripped straight from Family Feud (the first time I heard it I half-expected Richard Karn to shout "Survey says!"). Like other music games, you are also maintaining a life meter which must be above a certain point by the song's end in order to progress. It sounds like a winning concept.
The problem is that the game does not really understand what it wants to be. Veterans of rhythm games such as DDR or Pop'n Music will be frustrated at how the markers spawn on the field, seemingly at random-- there is a defined pattern to them, but in the immediate you only are presented with stuff that's about to expire. If you're on the other side of the field, kiss your chances--and life meter-- goodbye. Veterans of action games will likely despise the game's low difficulty level. There is little difference between a level 3 song and a level 5 song, given a little practice. And folks looking for a multiplayer experience are likely to be annoyed as well, as the game's two-player mode is simply the one-player mode with two people picking up the markers. Is it cooperative or is it competitive? Who knows? More importantly, who cares when it makes the songs too bloody easy?
The game looks terrible. The character models look like they were pulled from a PSOne title and the backgrounds are alternately too bland or too busy. One time I freaked out because a particular arena floor, which was covered in Winamp-style visualization monitors, had an expanding circle on each one (just like the sound markers). The interface is minimalistic but still manages to be useless as the end of the life meter flickers, making players unsure as to whether or not they'll pass. More than anything, however, the lighting of the arena changes depending on how well you're doing. If a player is doing badly, the lights go out gradually. Of course, this has the side effect of making it a bit harder to see what's going on. Great user-interface design choice there. Why not just make the controller rumble constantly to really piss off the user, hmm?
I will admit that the game has one strong suit, and that is its music. Kind of. You see, Technic Beat's major selling point is that in the 85 song library it boasts, over thirty are remixed Namco tunes from titles like PacMania, Dig Dug, and Ridge Racer. Sadly, those three titles are probably the only ones you'll recognize as the vast majority of the Namco tracks come from games which are ludicrously obscure in America. I am a hardcore devotee of all things cute and I've never even heard of Wonder Momo. The songs are recognizable, but the mixing jobs done are less than stellar. It's very hard to accept PacMania as a gabba track, and even harder to adjust to what they did to Rally-X. The original songs are a bit of a mixed bag as well, given that most players will just pass right on by them. Some are very interesting musically, and others are just kind of "rrrgh".
The back of the case advertises ten game modes, and technically that's what's there, if you count "Options" as a game mode. Really you have about three different variations of the main game-- single player, multiplayer, and challenge mode. Challenge mode is basically like DDR Extreme's "Mission" mode; players are given a set of tasks to complete and gain points and extras for completing them. There are also a few basic amenities such as training and a "free play" mode, but for the most part the game gets old very quickly.
Like other Mastiff releases, the game is budget-priced. While you might think this would be an excellent counter to all of the somewhat uneven aspects of the game, it really just proves that you get what you pay for. It also proves that if the company that has a significant hand in releasing the game doesn't release it Stateside, there's a pretty good reason for it. I mean, here we have a game that is two publishers removed from its biggest draw, and after all of that, it still manages to be a near-total waste of time. I suppose there's a remark in there about "too many DJs", but for the life of me I just don't care enough to make it.
If there was one thing I would want to ask Mastiff, it's why they decided to take the quick and easy path when picking a music game to 'polish up'. I mean, sure, perhaps losing the Nippon Ichi license to NIS itself would be a bit demoralizing, but come on. There are many, many more deserving games, maybe not music games, but surely you could have found something less awful than Technic Beat. You have a good track record going here, and overall we'd really like to overlook this. Just please. Please give me a reason why you picked this stinker.
All in all, players who want to have an interactive hand in making Namco music would do much better to shell out the $50 for Taiko Drum Master instead, which turns out to be a much better game. Still, if somehow you manage to see Technic Beat in your rental store, give it a run. You might not like it, but at least it will help you appreciate the good music games out there, by putting them in perspective.
