Elite Beat Agents is an irresistibly wacky package that anybody should be able to enjoy.
Cons: Later difficulty settings ramp up a BIT too quickly, and easy is totally superfluous; no online multiplayer unfortunately.
Elite Beat Agents is the American version of a Japanese DS game launched in 2005 called Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! that gained a lot of recognition among critics and game connoisseurs as one of the best DS games around. In it, you encouraged people who were going through some sort of difficulty by - what else - dancing, as male cheerleaders. People worried that the "Americanization" of the game would remove it's Japanese predecessor's endearing wackiness, but thankfully, Elite Beat Agents makes the transition with the charm and fun of the original all intact.
The premise is similar, and the gameplay all but identical. You play as three agents (the middle lead one will be different based on which difficulty) who also encourage people by dancing, because, you know, secret agents are cooler than male cheerleaders. In any case, slick suits aside, the game looks pretty similar - like the original, it sports crazy anime-style drawn storylines that play out on the top screen as you frantically work on the bottom screen.
The game is a rhythm game played completely with the stylus and the touchscreen, and the basic premise is that you tap the screen in time with the rhythm of the music. Of course, you don't just tap randomly, there are small circles that appear with a ring that slowly shrinks around it, and just when the ring hits that circle, you're supposed to tap it right at the time. Depending on how well you'll get it, you'll get some amount of points that will keep your constantly decreasing life bar in the clear. There's one other main move, in which you tap and then trace the path of a ball to a certain spot, and the occasional spin the wheel thrown in in the middle of it all.
This is all making it sound really complicated, but actually, it's super-easy to pick up with no explanation, and the best way to explain it to somebody is just hand them a stylus and a DS and say "Get ready." There's an easy difficulty setting, but almost anybody should be able to pick it up on the normal well enough, and that includes people who don't normally play games.
Song selection, as in any rhythm game, is extremely important in Elite Beat Agents, and one aspect of the game fans of the Japanese version were wary of was how it would turn out when they were hearing covers of songs they recognized as opposed to covers of songs they've never heard of sung in a different language. In fact, you will recognize all the songs here - you might not even realize in most cases that they are covers - and most of them are huge pop songs, with the occasional rock song like Rolling Stones classic Jumpin Jack Flash (which is the hardest song in the game) thrown in there. There are fifteen songs with a few bonus tracks thrown in for good measure, and all the songs, despite being stuff that you would never admit to listening to or just wouldn't normally listen to, can mostly file under the "guilty pleasure" category, and even if you don't like the song (nobody needed to hear Sk8er Boi again, ever, ever, ever) it'll make for good stylus tapping anyway, guaranteed. Obviously you always wish that there are more songs, but there are certainly enough, and the added multiplayer modes (though they're only local wireless) just add to an already great game in terms of value.
Elite Beat Agents is a DS game well worth purchasing, and a shining example of a game that can really only be done on the DS. Few rhythm games are this satisfying.