Was out at the cottage for Canadia Day celebratations. Happy belated, by the way. I’ll run up some general impressions/stories/whatever it is where you tell about a generally uneventful trip probably tomorrow or maybe even Wednesday. Now, more Ouendan chatter.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time away from Resident Evil 4 playing Ouendan 2, and while I’ve already mumbled a few uncoordinated sentences about it, I think it’s probably worth a revisit to pick out the more outstanding nucances of the series, and what makes it so much more enjoyable than the basic rhythm game.

I said last time I talked about Ouendan 2 that I had been apprehensive about the soundtrack, and why wouldn’t I be? My experience with Japanese music is shockingly limited, given my burning desire to seek out new music. And given that a lot of popular music in the North America region does in no way suit my tastes, I guess I was kind of expecting popular Japanese stuff to be equally off-putting to me. But quite to the contrary!

Not only do I find almost the entire soundtrack enjoyable, but a lot of the songs are really fantastic. The main factor here would be that even on the most basic level, Japanese music is so obviously different than North American – and even European – music, that it kind of falls into it’s own category. Our Black Eyed Peas are one of the few bands that feature constant simlutaneous male and female vocals, and they have a weird sort of sound that merges rap and pop. Mihimaru GT, on the other hand, has the same man/lady vocal schtick, and they also do the rap/pop blend thing. But depite the simlilar nature of the two bands, I cannot stand the former, and cannot help but be entranced by the latter. Plus, if we’re comparing Fergie to Hiroko, Japan wins hands-down. Ewwww Fergie.

And let’s not just skip past the really high points for the sake of making a semi-intelligent sounding post. Have you heard “Bambina” yet? If not, get that embedded video above loading on the double! Hotei Tomoyasu is nothing short of a musical genius, and I don’t doubt that everything he touches turns to gold (metaphorically, of course). That isn’t to say the rest of the soundtrack isn’t splendid as well; “Samurai Blue”, recorded by ZZ – apparently Japan’s answer to Fall Out Boy – given all the oh-oh-ohing – is fantasically catchy, and Mika Nakashima’s “Glamorous Sky”, when kept in the context of the Ouendan scenario, tugs at the heart like a box of abandoned puppies.

But the music in not the only thing that has really drawn me into the game. I discovered with Elite Beat Agents (Ouendan’s North American counterpart) that iNiS’ simple approach to rhythm-based gameplay was was fantastically addictive. Rather than confounding yourself with making sure you’re hitting the right button/fret/whatever it’s called on the dance pads, the Ouendan formula makes life easier by just having you tap beats in the right order at the right time. Of course, while the concept is simple, mastery of it takes time, practice, and most of all, good rhythm. That is to say, Jews are pretty much screwed. (jk jk jk I’m not anti-semitic!) When you start out, the beats will appear long before they need to be hit, but once you get up to the higher difficulty levels, they show up almost right when they need to be poked. And the fact that once songs get beat-heavy, the chains will start intertwining, and you’ll not only have to make sure your timing is right, but you also have to be careful that you’re following the numbers properly. Needless to say, it can get pretty hectic.

Of course, this is all before you factor in the ever-present “rhythm game life bar”. You may know it better as a “Dance Gauge” or “Rock Meter”, but it’s all the same thing; basically a bar present of the screen that causes you to lose if it’s emptied. The various gauges and meters in other rhythm games are pretty damn leniet, decreasing with a missed mark, and increasing with a hit mark. Ouendan’s is a little more evil. Rather than being static between beats, the life bar in Ouendan is constantly depleting, and at higher rates in higher difficulty levels. Missing a beat altogether will cost you a serious chunk of the bar, and on expert mode (“Magnificanet cheering”), hitting anything less than perfect beats will only serve to slow the trickle. One song in particular, “Believe”, is so slow that while playing on expert, I could hit every note (albeit not a perfect hit each time), and still fail the song halfway through because the bar was emptying faster than I could fill it. It took a long time, but eventually, I pulled of a long enough streak of perfect hits to make it to the end with but a sliver of life remaining. To put it simply, the game gets difficult. And it’s not like you’ve got a Star Power gauge to carry you through the rough spots either. No, if you want to play Ouendan to its full potential, it’s really a go-big-or-go-home kind of game. Like Bonk’s Revenge or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where you can only play through the whole game if you’re playing on the hardest difficulty setting.

So yes. I think that’s about everything I needed to say. Also, if you haven’t played them yet, or can’t see them for some reason, I’ve embedded music videos for two of my favourite songs from Ouendan 2 in between the preceeding paragraphs. Hotei Tomoyasu’s “Bambina” was an obvious choice, because it’s not only like the best song ever recorded, but the video is wicked trippy too. The second, featuring Sambomaster’s “Sekai Wa Sore Wo Ai To Yobundaze” is a great song too, and I really like the concept of the video. In conclusion, if you have a DS (or even if you don’t), import it now. Buy Elite Beat Agents too while you’re at it, because despite the somewhat sketchy track list, it’s still incredibly fun. And more sales mean more sequels, so hop to it!