Friday, April 1, 2011

43 - Mad Maestro! (PS2)

Genre: Rhythm/music
Rating: E
Developer: Desert Productions
Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Platform: PS2
Release Date: 2002

This is one of those games I passed up on innumerable times. Back when I would see games like this and Rhapsody: A Musical Tale on store shelves I was a connoisseur of Dance Dance Revolution. Because of this I was kind of stingy with other rhythm and music titles. Nothing would be as good as DDR, so why even try? That's how I felt for a while anyway before finally latching onto each music game that would come out.

I do kind of regret not getting it sooner, as well as those other musical titles. This one isn't especially difficult or anything, but it's certainly a new idea (conducting). It's really simple to understand how to play too. There are 4 markers on screen and as a ball passes through them you are supposed to hit a button. It doesn't matter which button, you just need to get it in time with the music. Along with that, the markers have one of three colored borders. The varying colors tell you how hard you should press down on the buttons. It's a slightly unusual gameplay mechanic which took surprisingly long to get used to.

Beyond this stuff, the story was really cheesy. The point of the whole thing is that a concert hall is going to be closed so you are tasked to gathering up musicians to play in it and convince people to save it. Once you start interacting with the cast of weird characters you realize it's so very Japanese in style.

I managed to push through all the chapters and get to the finale concert in maybe an hour. However, at that concert I completely failed on every song and couldn't save the concert hall. What amused me though is that when you fail the screen doesn't say Game Over. No, it says "Nooo...." which is really how I felt at that moment.

Would I play again? Nah.

2 comments:

Bryan Ochalla said...

Hmm, so you liked it well enough but wouldn't play it again? Is that because you basically made it through in about an hour, or because the final challenge was so difficult?

Anyway, I've always been curious about this. Not sure now if I should eventually track it down or just leave it be...

Marcus said...

Yeah, I basically beat the entire game and there's only a few songs to play through haha. It's a cute little diversion but not something you'll keep coming back to. It just makes me wish Wii Music were like this.

If you can find it for $5 or under I'd say it's worth a shot. :P

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