Gitaroo Man

"Everything but the game..."

This game is great, but it's a rhythm game. When I break it down to exactly what you're supposed to do, and the incentives provided for accomplishing it, to me, it's not quite worth it. But even if you're undecided on how you feel about these types of games, and even if you're leaning a little toward avoiding them, I strongly recommend trying this game.

The story is extremely satisfying. The graphical style, the cut scenes, the opening video are all extremely fun and cute and entertaining, without being so childish that no one over sixteen could appreciate them- and that's coming from someone who saw the screen shots and at first thought, ''There's no way I want to own a game that looks like that;'' it just needs to be seen to be understood.

You can look forward to a quirky take on a coming of age story, that has some self esteem and love troubles involved. So you can also expect to be able to relate regardless of where you're coming from. Adding to the story's depth are these wonderful little proverbs that have a feel like haiku poems. Presented along with caricatures in between all the stages, they are inspiring and deep. Just don't expect to get a technical explanation of why you have to fight some of these wacky off the wall characters, this is not that type of game; it's fun and silly, and if you have a problem with that, well you know what to not do.

As far as gameplay, you alternate between traditional timed button pushing, and using the stalk and any button to ''trace'' these macaroni things curving toward the center of the screen. Simple idea, challenging in practice; good times! But about the tracing, I don't think it works that well. You do get a little leeway, but I feel like the stalk is unforgiving and loosely correlated with the actual tracing. Perhaps this perception is due to the fact that all the smaller squiggles are automatically followed(you don't actually wiggle the stalk a little back and forth). In any case, you can surely get used to it.

The un-lockable character bios are a joke, not really worth being seen(still picture), or heard(quirky narrator's description)even once. But you do get to play with these characters in multi-player, and you get different instrument and patterns accordingly, which is pretty cool. I imagine it would probably make for a uniquely competitive as well as cooperative experience, seeing as that better performances from both players will result in better music.

The music is great in terms of variety, and in pulling off all of these styles in a competent, sensible way. For instance, once you get a feel for the style the song is in, you are that much better at following the patterns because they totally correspond to the rhythms that you ''feel'' should happen. But I don't feel these songs qualify for CLASSICALLY GOOD game music. Good music yes, but classics? Memorable? No.

Bottom line: Don't judge by appearances, reviews, screen shots, just get it and play it soon.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/01/02, Updated 03/01/02