A quirky and often downright weird game that somehow is nonetheless captivating and endearing.
The general premise of the game is as follows: you play one of four agents (depending on the difficulty level you chose), and through the power of your dance, you inspire others to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks, from helping a girlfriend take care of kids she's babysitting to helping a director make a smash hit of a movie. If you think this sounds weird, it is. If you think this makes no sense, it doesn't. But that's the beauty of the game: you know it's weird, and you know it makes no sense, but you really just don't care. It doesn't matter, and this game knows it.
The way you instruct your players to dance is quite simple on paper: pairs of circles appear on the screen, and you tap the inner circle when the shrinking outer circle just overlaps its edges. This sounds simple, and it is - for the first while. Where you have songs where you're easily tapping five circles in a second, it gets less simple - but fortunately, you'll have had lots of practice by then.
The graphics grow on you in a huge way. The game is told in the comic book format that DS players have come to love. Through just two or three frames, the game can quite effectively create the illusion of animation without actually needing to use up a lot of space in memory. I have nothing bad to say about the way the game is presented.
In each level, you have one overall task that needs to be completed, and within each level there are various subtasks that also need to be completed. For example, in the movie director level, the overall task is "make a good movie", and there are four scenes that you need to complete along the way that make up the subtasks.
The game keeps track of how well you're doing through the Elite-o-Meter, a meter at the top that shows your status. If the meter is above 40% full, you're in the "Yes" zone, which means you're doing well. If not, you're in the "No" zone, which means you aren't. If you complete a section in the "Yes" zone, you complete that subtask successfully; if not, you don't. In either case, you get a cutscene that shows either your success or failure. After the song, you get one of three endings that show the overall extent of your success. If you completed no subtasks correctly, you still complete your task, but in a horribly bad way (it's often fun to try and get this just for the heck of it, as the ending is often hilarious). If you completed some, but not all, you complete your task in a respectable manner. If you completed all of them, you get the best ending.
All in all, Elite Beat Agents is a game that defies all the odds by working beautifully, and is a solid addition to anyone's DS collection.