Patapon 2 Review - Beat your tribe

Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 24 March 2009 04:12

Entertainment

A quick check of the Patapon Alter to see what goodies have been collected and then it’s off on mission to bring the Patapon tribe closer to the ‘Ends of the Earth’.

But before the mission starts, you selected tribe warriors must be kitted out.  Helmets, shields, weapons, class choice for your Heropon, positioning of your Patapons.  It is here that the mission could be won or lost, and it doesn’t take long for the options to become bewildering.  Thankfully, developer Pyramid gave us an ‘optimise army’ button to automatically select the best items available at the Patapon Alter.

So onto the mission, here the Patapon’s will battle enemy tribes, strange creatures and break through structures solving puzzles along the way.  The puzzles are light, and mostly involve getting the Patapons to utilise the prevailing wind – indicated by the background graphical swirls – at the correct moment.

So how does god control his minions with drums?  By utilising various beats, tapping on the PSP controller buttons Square= Pata, Circle = Pon, Triangle = Chakka and X = Don.  Using these four beats, players are introduced to 18 4/4 beats that issue commands to the Patapons.

Building up combo’s of beats will enhance the tribes abilities until they become frenzied in their abilities. 

And it is no mere button mashing exercise that drives these combos, all the beats must be issued smack on time, and as battles intensify, and the background noise becomes further frenzied, the pressure is on to maintain a rhythm.  Nothing is more deflating to the Patapon tribe performance than god losing his mojo and having to start the beat combo from scratch.

Without enemy life gauges’, it is sometimes difficult to, well, gauge how well the tribe is going against particularly large creatures, and with the camera zooming in and out at various stages in a mission, sometimes you will find yourself committed to a ‘move’ beat and it is too late to change to the suddenly revealed need for an ‘attack’ beat. 

There are frustrations, when you lose the beat, and just cannot get it back, but herein lies the challenge, and even if you’re a rhythmically challenged god, it will be hard to resist replaying failed missions just to be immersed in the charm and intricacies of the Patapon’s quest for liberation.

7 Pata Pata Pata Pon’s out of 10