While writing for Blogcritics is a ton of fun, there are times where I sit down to write articles and just don’t have any motivation or desire to put my fingers to work. It’s times like this that I need my own personal ouendan.
Such is the concept of iNis’ chart-topping game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! which has had its place at the top of frequently imported Nintendo DS games. Given the critical (not financial) success the company had with Gitaroo Man, iNis’ lends its charm to the rhythm genre once again and strays from the beaten path.
Players take the commanding role of Ouendan (“ouen-dan” – Japanese basically meaning “cheer – squad”), a group of black trench coat-sporting motivational supporters. The city is bustling with people tackling everyday duties but when the stress of their situation becomes too much to bare, Ouendan is in the wings and waiting to motivate the citizen in distress. The squad will help a variety of people throughout the game from helping a student crank out better homework and test scores to going back in time to help ancient Egypt.
The game features 15 stages of playing, each featuring covers of licensed J-pop tunes. Songs from notable artists such as Orange Range, Asian Kung-Fu Generation and L’arc~en~ciel make the cut in title and ring out in surprisingly fantastic quality during game play. With four different difficulty settings and different rankings obtained through accumulating high scores, players will have to up their game in order to take on all the challenges in the game.
The control is perfect as the touch screen puts you in full control of tapping on timing circles that pop up in time to the music currently playing. Ouendan also makes further use of the touch screen’s capabilities by introducing commands that require players to slide indicators along set paths and spinning the stylus in circles in order to fill a meter. All the controls mesh together very well with the timing of the songs and bring variety to the game play.
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