Demo Review: Patapon

While looking at the PlayStation store on my computer for demos to download to my PSP, I came upon Patapon. A game that looked pretty weird but pretty genuine, so I decided to grab it. It was only about 100MB so the size wasn’t terrible. (My memory stick is only 1GB, so anything over 100MB is considered a pretty big download)

As the story goes, you are a God. And the Patapons serve you. You communicate with them by drum beats which when you hit it in the correct order while keeping with the tempo, they respond. In the demo, I only got “move forward” “attack” and “defend.” Unfortunately, it gets pretty tiring after awhile. There really are no other controls other than hitting the same buttons over and over again when you want to either attack or move forward. The attacks are automatic and the movement is done after hitting the four-button-combo. You could probably play with one hand if you really wanted to. This may not be as repetitive later on since I only played for about an hour but after the fourth level I found myself ready for something different. Another thing to mention is that if you do a sequence in tempo without skipping a beat or note after awhile your patapons go into hyper mode, which make them more powerful and stay that was for a long time as long as you keep up with the notes and tempo.

The graphics are really unique. I like the design of the Patapons, especially when they get mad or into attack mode. If you look closely at the picture above you’ll see about two of them who are in attack mode. The art direction is definitely original. It reminds me of the cel-shading style that we’ve seen in the past. It’s a graphic style that I’d like to see again – just maybe with more options of controls.

The sound, obviously are the drum beats, the Patapon’s response and the sound effects. Despite doing the same command over and over again – the voices were unique enough that I never got tired of them. If there was music, I never noticed it.

The length of the demo was nice. I honestly don’t think there’s a point where they make you stop. The downside is that they won’t let you save. So you can probably play as much as you want but once you quit – all your progress is lost. It’s nice because it’s not limiting at all.

So, with these demo reviews I don’t give official good bad or “meh” reviews. I’ll just say whether it’s worth a rent, buy or not worth it at all. This game has a uniqueness to it that I really like but I don’t like the idea of just hitting the same buttons in a sequence throughout the entire game. So, I personally think this would be a good rentable title but probably not a game I would buy. The deal breaker for me was the controls.

I would definitely download the demo – it’s small enough that it won’t hurt your memory card and lets you experience a different style of gaming. It’s just unfortunate that after awhile the uniqueness wears off and it may get boring.