I have little or no coordination so I tend to stay away from tennis and games that require me to rapidly press buttons to a beat. However, this game was somewhat of an exception. It was recommended to me by a friend who is usually right about games being awesome so I decided to give it a whirl. 

There’s nothing like a spaztastic game that can give you seizures and a headache at the same time. If you’ve ever played Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero or Beatmania, this is pretty much the same thing. DJ Max Portable was created by a South Korean company called Pentavision for the PSP (Playstation Portable). It first came out 2 years ago while it’s second generation game out last year. The game features various Japanese and Korean songs with anime-style avatars to go with the music. By anime-style I mean cute big boobed girls dancing around in skimpy clothing and no I’m not complaining. You have a choice between several modes including rookie (4 buttons), advance (6 buttons) and expert (8 buttons). I’ve gotten as far as rookie mode.

No matter which mode you play, the game is overall very difficult. Your goal is to match the notes to the line bar at the bottom of the path. You’re given a percentage on how well you were able to match up the note and the bar and whether or not you got a 100% or 1% it still counts as a combo. If you miss, you break your combo and instead of a percentage, you get a break.

Easy right? No, it’s not. Don’t be fooled. For those of you who can’t spend hours on hours pressing buttons to frantic beats like a freak, I usually just spam all four buttons which doesn’t work out when you’re getting 20 notes per second. Oh btw, if you fail to keep up your power bar, the game tells you that you suck and to either try again or pick a different song. If you manage to make it through all 3 stages, I hate you. I’ve only gotten as far as half way through the 2nd stage and yeah, on rookie mode.

Like all games, the more you play, the more you unlock whether its new modes, songs or avatars. You can also play with other gamers in versus mode which is either hard to find or doesn’t exist in the first version. So far, I’ve beaten myself.

Overall, the game is fun for the first 10 minutes but afterwards I get a headache and have to set the game down. Then I pick it back up regardless of the headache because it’s quite addicting. However, it’s been 23 hours since I last touched it but no worrries, another Square Enix game, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, is my crutch for the time being.

Official Trailer