Rhythm Heaven is a great music game thanks to simple controls and an awesomely bizarre presentation
Rhythm Heaven is played holding the DS "book style", and all controls revolve around the touch screen: taps, holds, and flicks of the stylus. The goal in each of the fifty mini-games is simple: keep the beat. Surprisingly, this task is more difficult than it sounds.
A tutorial is given at the start of each game before the actual "performance". Success entirely depends upon audio and visual skills, for when it is your turn to tap, you are expected to be fully in sync with the music. A few mishaps can result in failure, but completing a mini-game with (usually) only one or two mistakes will earn you a Superb Medal. Medals can be used to purchase stand-alone mini-games and rhythm toys for individual play. There are over a dozen toys and stand-alone mini games each, giving you much incentive to go for those medals, but the task is not easy.
Thankfully, the game's wonderful presentation will endear you to press on; the sheer wackiness and superb tunes are at the core of what makes it so great. Each main rhythm game rarely clocks in over two minutes, but "Remix Stages", which play as the game's boss levels, combine the previous five unlocked and completed mini-games into one. There are no licensed tracks here, nothing from Nintendo's masterful music catalog, but the original tracks are so catchy that it hardly matters.
One of my favorites is a mini-game in which you tap to help a dancing frog, in a four member group of backing dancers, swing his hips to the music as the lead dancer gives the cues and a blue frog sings some old time rock n' roll. And as silly as it sounds and looks, I found myself thinking about how much of an excellent spoof this is of old rockers like Buddy Holly and Bill Haley & The Comets- good stuff!
Rhythm Heaven succeeds in providing musical variety: house music is represented by a DJ performance, punk rock by a band of ghosts, piano/club music by the "Glee Club", and almost everything in between.
The difficulty swings back and forth; you may complete a very difficult tune only to encounter a surprisingly easy one. With some songs, if you are stymied, the game will allow you to skip and move to the next, but this only applies to a select few. I found myself barely completing the ones that did not offer the easy way out, and eventually succeeding with the ones that did. Tempos vary from tune to tune, ranging from very slow to extremely fast, and in some cases you are to tap to the off-beat as opposed to the beat.
The motto "practice makes perfect" can be rightfully applied to Rhythm Heaven. Conquering its playlist will take some patience, especially when random "Perfect Challenges", in which you must complete an entire song without any mistake whatsoever, comes open. It is a Nintendo DS gem, a game with a charming, hand-drawn cartoon aesthetic, simple, easy-to-use controls, sweet presentation, and most importantly for a rhythm game, an excellent soundtrack.