I’ve always been terrible at rhythm games. I’ve sort of stayed away from them because I know I’m terrible at them. I absolutely adore music, but rhythm games have always been my weak point. I mean you’re looking at the guy that can’t usually hear the bass in a song so I wouldn’t really see myself as someone who can find the beat to something. But patapon is special…well the sequels anyway.

You guide the patapons on their quest to find earthend. You play as their god known as the ‘Almighty patapon’. And that’s kind of all there is to it…not the most exciting story but why should it be?

Gameplay is a mixture of rhythm and strategy. You’ll have to put in different command using the face buttons and time it to the beat, if you time it well then you’ll go into a ‘fever’ where your attack and defence increases…but good luck keeping that fever. Pon is used with the circle button, pata is used with the square button, Chaka is used with the triangle button, and don is used with the x button. If you time the drums to the beat then you’ll be able to do different command such as charge, attack, defend, and others. You’ll also be able to gain more troops with the more items you gather as you fight. In the game there are around about 40 missions so if you know what you’re doing the game is pretty short.

For the first game in its series, patapon feels like a rough draft for what could be an absolutely brilliant game. Patapon 2 would improve on all of it drastically but I’ve got a review lined up for that game in the near future.

Rough draft, excellent music, fever is hard to hold onto, adorable art, pata pata pata pon!