HEEEAAALLLP! AGENTS ARE GO! Whenever you hear those words, the Elite Beat Agents will be on the scene helping you out.
Elite Beat Agents is without a doubt, one of my favorite Nintendo DS games ever made. At the time, I thought that the game sounded stupid and silly. But then I decided to check it out because of how I heard about the game play, and I fell in love with it. The history behind this game's creation is very interesting. You see, Elite Beat Agents was developed by a Japanese company called iNiS, which is an acyromn for "infinite Noise of the inner Soul." With a slogan like that, I guess it is safe to say that they're mostly a developer for music games. Their first game made for the DS was the Japan only, "Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan" or "Go! Fight! Cheer Squad" Which is basically what the game play of Elite Beat Agents was based on. The reason we got Elite Beat Agents was because of how many copies of Ouendan were imported outside of Japan, and Nintendo saw note of that and decided to bring the series over to the US. During one press release, they even referred to Elite Beat Agents as the American version of "the cult import hit Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan." When you mention the fact that this game is going to be the American version of a Japanese only game
The game play is pretty straight forward. You tap these balls known as Hit Markers that appear on the touch screen in numerical order. You get points based on how well timed they are. 300 for Perfect, 100 for Good, 50 for OK, and an X for Bad. Also, there are times where you then hit the number and follow a path, this path is known as a Phase Marker. Within this path, a ball appears and you have to keep your stylus on it at all times. They also follow the same mechanics as Hit Markers with the scoring system there is also random intervals where you have to spin a circle known as Spin Markers. You have to spin this and fill up the bars on the side before a circle closes in on it. Spinning it even long after you fill up the bars on the side is a good thing, considering that it does boost your score, I do recommend spinning it as fast as you can. For every consecutive note that you hit, there is a multiplier that will boost your score as well. Like most other music games like Guitar Hero and the like, you have a life bar. If you do well on a song, you get a positive scene in your scenario. If you do bad, but not fail the song completely, you'll get a failed, but hilarious scene. If you let that life bar drop to zero, you have to start all over again.
What does the scoring system do? Other than ranking your progress on the song, with the usual rankings of D, C, B, A and S, there is also a ranking system where you're given separate title and can be used to unlock 3 more songs in the story, which you can then used to rank up yet again. You can also check back on your progress of a song by hitting replay after finishing a song., and you can choose to save it for future reference or not.
The story in this game... well... uh... it's kind of hard to describe really, and that's OK, because every scenario is a standalone adventure until the final 2 songs/scenarios where everyone else bands together for the big bad. You can be helping someone like a babysitter trying to ask her boyfriend to go steady while trying to calm down these kids she has to babysit, to a movie director that's trying to finish his movie, to helping a white blood cell who is personified as a hot nurse fight a virus that is infecting this athlete, to helping a retired baseball player fight a lava golem at an amusement park. I think that's a perfect example of how the jobs can range from pretty mundane stuff to extraordinary, out of this world stuff.
As for the agents you control, they depend on the difficulty you're playing on. Easy gets Agent Spin, a rookie among the lowest ranks as his rank is even lower than the back-up dancers of Derek and Morris. He's sort of looks like Agent J from Men in Black, which would kind of it with his rookie motif. Agent J, he's the guy you play with on Normal and the one you see on all the promotional material. Think of him as the Mario, Link, Pikachu, Samus, Fox, etc. of the franchise. Agent Chieftan is the #1 agent. He looks more like a Blues Brother in appearance. Then for the very hard mode, you have the Elite Beat Divas, the only playable females in this game. They're basically a separate unit that dresses differently than the males. Instead of wearing suits like the males, they were very revealing clothing and wield pom-poms. There is also their Commander in Chief, Commander Kahn. Who watches for problems to send his agents to solve. You could also play as him after beating the game with everyone.
As for the song selection, I will say that when it does come to music that I'm not really the paragon of good taste when it comes to that kind of stuff. However, I will say that most of the cover songs in this game were better than the original. This song made me like an Ashley Simpson song of all things. That song was called "La La" which was about how she wanted to be your sex slave. According to some research, I found out that Chicago's "You're the Inspiration" was one of the worst songs ever made. Really, I was shocked to learn that after the heartwarming segment it was paired with. I will also go on the record saying that the covers in this game had me singing the songs to myself, they were just that good.
The graphics, you have 2 different styles. On the top screen, there are some comic/manga inspired drawings. They are pretty high quality stuff. The details on certain characters are pretty amazing. From the strands of hair, to the muscle tone, these guys really had their work cut out for them. The bottom screen has the agents dancing. I will say that despite how blocky the Agents look on the DS, and I do keep in mind that when it comes to rendering 3D graphics, the DS isn't the king in that department, that were rendered pretty well. They have separate dance moves for every song, and it's not like that you'll see agents repeat all the same movements that they do during the songs chorus. You won't see the handstand they do in "Canned Heat" anywhere else, or even their funny dance in Material Girl repeated on any other songs. To that I say, kudos to all those guys that programmed the agent's models to do that. I wonder if they used reference or created them on the spot. But either way, I still like that nice touch.
I will say that when I did take the chance to listen to some of the songs, learn the meanings of their lyrics and such, and most of the time, it doesn't make sense. I mean one scenario is about a baseball player who feels all washed up, and tries to save one his fans from a fire breathing golem. The song that went with that scenario? "The Anthem" as made famous by Good Charlotte. Of course that's just one example, considering that this whole game is filled with it. In fact, I think it might be easier to just list the songs that actually fit the scenarios in question. The one off the top of my head has to go with the second to last stage, set to Hoobastank's Without a Fight. Considering that you're fighting what is considered the ultimate evil at this point, and the song is about fighting back, it is the most fitting song. I guess Chicago's "You're the Inspiration" can work as well. Seeing as how that song is about someone you love and hold dear to your heart, and the person in this song does have someone that they hold dear to their heart that is no longer with them. In fact, the song selection was one of the reasons as to why some friends of mine in High School gave this game a pass. Such a shame really, they were missing out.
All in all, this game had some decent game play and charm to it. You can find this game either at your used video game retailer, or on an online store. Since I think that Nintendo stopped manufacturing this game and sending major retailer’s new copy.
