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PataponFrom Sony Computer Entertainment
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Average customer review::

Product Description
Featuring more than 20 missions in a variety of environments such as swamps, volcanos, gorges and deserts, players will outfit a Patapon army, collect resources, and grow their tribe into a devastating fighting force. Patapon presents a variety of warrior types, along with a wide selection of weapon and shield upgrades, that players will use to strategically customize and position their army as they progress through the funky adventure. Players will easily get caught up in the addictive action by collecting rare weapons and items as the adventure unfolds, and by earning more points to upgrade to new Patapons. Additionally, Patapon features five unique music-based mini-games to earn additional upgrades for the Patapon army. With vibrant character designs by popular French graphic artist, Rolito, Patapon introduces a unique, 2D art style incorporating abstract shapes, colorful environments, and larger-than-life boss enemies. STORYLINE For years the Patapon tribe has lived in the desolate frontier, driven from their home by the evil Zigoton army. Behind the Patapons' cute exterior, lies a fierce warrior spirit that can only be commanded by the beat of their God's war drum. They wait for the day that the "Almighty" will return, to lead them against their enemies and bring them back to their homeland. Finally, their wait has come to an end as the drums of war are heard once again.
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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #200 in Computer & Video Games
Brand: Sony
Model: 98711
Released on: 2008-02-27
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Platform: Sony PSP
Dimensions: 2.00 pounds
Features
Simple Commands, Deep Gameplay
Fight, Explore and Hunt
Strategy and Customization
5 Musical Mini-games
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Enter the world of the Patapons, a small, yet brave noble tribe. Behind the Patapons' cute exterior, lies a fierce warrior spirit that can only be commanded by the beat of your war drum. For years the Patapon tribe has lived in the desolate frontier, driven from their home by the evil Zigoton army. The Patapons wait for the day that the "rhythm god" will return, to bring them back to their homeland, to defeat their enemies and to lead them to the edge of their world. Finally, their wait has come to an end. Lead a small lost tribe to the edge of their world with the beat of your war drum and grow them into an army of warriors. Using simple drum beats, command your tribe to march, attack, and defend themselves against fierce beasts, gigantic monsters, and the evil Zigoton army. Watch as your tribe grows in strength and numbers as they progress through this adventure. Unlock a variety of warrior types from infantry to cavalry, archers to spear-men and maximize them for battle with a variety of weapon and shield upgrades.
Features:
With the beat of your war drum, lead a tribal army into large scale battles
March the Patapons through thirty different environments where monsters and enemy forces lay awaiting to attack
Collect over one hundred weapons and items and build an army with different warrior types
Additional mini-games pair graphic style and tribal music

Customer Reviews

Patapon - the good and the bad

First of all, this is a must play. It seems as more and more developers weigh into the gaming industry, ironically, it becomes more and more rare for one of them to bring something new to the table. Sony, as per usual, comes out of left field with this gem. Part rythm, part puzzle, part rpg, Patapon mashes together bits and pieces of several genres. It's a shallow dash of each, but it's there, and it works. The design is simplistic and flat, but it's beautiful. Nothing seems out of place in this world. If you've read other reviews you probably know the premice of the gmaes . You build an army of little cyclopian soldiers of various jobs and abilities and march them through their enemies to the promised land.

You create your armies from the ground up by combining various materials you get from mini games and missions. The creation screen will place the default ingredients (two for each type of patapon.) but you can replace these with higher quality items you've found to make more powerful Rarepons. You'll also get better equipment to outfit your armies in while on your missions.

Patapons are controlled by using an 8 beat rythm using a combination of the Cirle, Triangle, Square, and X buttons. You play four beats, the patapons sing their reply for four beats and so on. The catch is there's a tempo you have to follow, your button presses must match with the beat flashing around the border of the screen. Keep up well enough and/or hit a high enough combo and they'll enter fever mode. Fever greatly increases the Patapons attributes. Miss a beat though and you're back to normal Patapons until you can pick it up again via combos. It can be difficult at first but you'll find yourself intuitively stringing the various command beats together and watching your patapons follow your directions flawlessly.

The beats are simple but very catchy, you'll find yourself randomly Pata-pata-pata-poning in your head. It has a nice system of combining various materials to make various kinds and shapes of patapons. The story is simple but you find yourself really caring about leading these little eyeballs to their promise land. Lastly it's truly a rewarding site when your little army enters Fever mode and volleys barrages of spears and arrows at your enemy and your warriors crush through the front lines toppling towers and buildings alike. All while singing in unision your praises. This isn't a perfect game though. There's hardly any tutorial, I'm not sure if they just wanted to invoke a trial and error element to the game or if they were just too lazy to flesh out all the mechanics. For instance, say you pick up a really quality piece of meat and some rare metal (required to make the warrior type patapons) and you want to use them to make a Rarepon. That's all well and good if you don't have a full regiment of warrior Patepons. If you do though, it will simply tell you that you can't make any more of that type.

Now there are bosses that will eat your Patapons rendering them irrevivable, but trying to strategically get a boss to eat the right Patapon and ONLY the right Patapons would be an exercise in catastrophe, and a large chunk of wasted time. I had to skim through a walkthrough on the internet to find out how to delete unwanted Patapons so I could create better ones. You have to go to the item equip screen, to get there you have to select a mission to go on first. Then you have to press Triangle over the correct regiment, highlight the patapon you don't want. Now you'd think that there would be an option to "Retire" the Patapon or even "Kill" Patapon... No, the button you have to press is Select, conveniently labeled "Quit". Silly me, not realizing that Quit meant get rid of highlighted Patapon. Instead I assumed that Quit meant Quit the game, or Quit the item selection phase... Another issue is the items that enemies drop. Most of it is completely useless after you've started making Rarepons as you don't use the generic meats, wood, and stones anymore. Rarely do any gear or weapons drop. When they do, they're only there for a short amount of time before they dissappear, and not into your inventory, they're gone for good. So say a nice weapon drops, but when you killed the enemy he bounced back puting him behind the rest of his soldiers. You better hope that they fall back or you kill them all quick otherwise you can just wave goodbye.

If a boss drops an item behind him when he dies and the mission says complete before you walk over it, you lose it as well. You can watch your happy little eyeballs parade by shiny loot and heaps of cash without any one of them picking it up. The mini gmaes are fun but the items you receive from them can become outdated very fast if your bolstering your ranks with Rarepons rendering said games pointless. On top of that, while they're fun the first couple times,each gmaes is the same thing every time.

It's a "song" that you have to mimic or play along with and it's the same song with the same beat and you just do the same thing every time. I can literaly listen to the mini gmaes at this point and complete them without looking at the screen. There's also alot of repetition. You need to go back and do the same farming runs through the same stages several time to gather materials (you'll rarely get the ones you need) and money to make troops. Most farming missions yield around 200-250 Ka-ching! (money) and each of the 2nd best Rarepons cost 1k to 1.5k to make. That's 200-250 Ka-ching! if no monsters block you from being able to pick up the coin dropped by their dead counterparts. The last thing isn't really the gmaes fault, it can just be frustrating. This game requires alot of concentration and if the TV's on or your significant other or a friend is trying to talk to you or the phone rings you'll find yourself getting off beat and losing Fever ALOT. Yeah, there's no pause either.

Once you start a mission you need to finish it, quit, or die to stop it. Even when I'm alone I generally play with headphones as the PSP speakers don't carry the drum beat all that well all the time, plus it cuts down on the distractions. Personally I have a nice pair of Skullcandy Hesh that I use. They have great sound, they're comfortable, and they block out alot of the outside noise even if you don't have them cranked. In closing, this is a gmaes that you don't want to miss out on. It's at a bargain bin price right now, and you don't find anything this original very often. Yes, it has it's issues but what game doesn't? The good far outweighs the bad.

Get out of my head, Charles!

So - I forgot to order a memory stick duo to store save games for my PSP. This means that the only way to "save" until it gets here is to use the PSP's sleep function (effectively keeping me stuck on one gmaes ). Lucky for me, Patapon is so catchy I probably wouldn't have started playing Crisis Core by now anyway! This gmaes is not for everyone - people with extremely poor rhythm, or people who are turned off by simplistic, cutesy graphics (I get made fun of by some of my buddies in Iraq for playing what amounts to a Java gmaes on a 200-dollar handheld system, heh) probably won't like Patapon. Other people that get a kick out of the idea of leading your own tribe against an evil empire using talking drums (people who like "kooky" gmaes ) will absolutely adore Patapon. I, for one, can't get the "Bon BonBon" song out of my head. 5 out of 5 stars.

Most American developers probably wouldn't take a risk on a gmaes concept like this - that's why I really like Japanese gmaes developers. They'll take an idea and just run with it.

Patapon rocks!

Over the years, I have played both strategy gmaes and rhythm gmaes . In Patapon, I get to play both genres in one and strangely enough it works! You are the mighty god of rhythm to a struggling band of Patapon warriors who were displaced from their homeland by the evil Zigoton. You lead the Patapons in the battle to reclaim their territory by pressing the PSP buttons in a rhythmical pattern that simulates drum beats.

Different drum cadences inspire the Patapon to advance, fight, defend or retreat. Each time your Patapons accomplish a mission they earn rewards such as weapons, armor and various raw materials that can be used to create upgraded Patapons with stronger attributes. You can even learn powerful Juju rhythms that will perform miracles such as calling up rain or windstorms that aid you in battle. My only quibble with the game is that the tutorials are very skimpy. You can get some advice from the tribal priestess, Meden, but like most oracles her hints are somewhat cryptic, leaving you on your own to puzzle out what to do, especially for things like how to dismiss your old Patapons in order to swap in their upgraded counterparts.

I suppose you could always read the game manual but honestly, who ever takes the time to do that, really? Patapon is very enjoyable and worth playing. I definitely recommend it but be forewarned the drumbeat rhythms are somewhat addictive. After a long session, it will take a while to clear the Pata Pata Pata PON and Don Dodon Dodon out of your head.


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