Elite Beat Agents
Jan 12, 2007 · 2 minute read
If Full Spectrum Warrior can be used to train soldiers in the US Army, I don’t understand why crisis negotiators and bomb disposal teams aren’t using Elite Beat Agents to train their new recruits. No other game comes close to teaching you the importance of staying calm under pressure like EBA.
Elite Beat Agents is the English-language version of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, a cheerleading game which appeared on the DS in Japan a while ago. It’s basically a rhythm-action game, requiring you to tap the screen in the right place, in time with the music (the unbearably cute J-Pop of the original replaced with unbearably cute western pop in EBA). Simple, right?
Wrong.
The whole time you’re playing, your “Elite Meter” is trickling down. Tapping the screen at the right time will top this up slightly (How well you tap the screen in time with the music affects the amount that this gets ’topped up’). Miss a note and your Elite Meter drops slightly. If your Elite Meter drops to nothing, it’s game over.
There’s a point, roughly halfway along your Elite Meter where it turns from yellow (fine) into red (danger!). Once you cross into the red, your on-screen cheerleaders stop cheering. They stand there, panting, until you manage to bring the Elite Meter out of the red. With all its liveliness and constant movement, the sight of your cheerleaders standing completely motionless, is the most distracting thing in the game.
If you get into the red, it’s very easy to drag yourself back out: all you need to do is score some perfect hits and boost your Elite Meter. But when you realise your cheerleaders aren’t dancing, you panic. You start keeping one eye on your Elite Meter. Then all sense of rhythm goes out the window and it’s virtually impossible to get the perfect hits you need. In other words, if you panic and lose focus, it’s game over. It took me a long time to learn this. Frustration almost drove me to shove the stylus through my DS while trying to crack “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, but I got there in the end.
So if you ever see a guy defusing a bomb and humming ‘Sk8r Boi’, don’t worry. You’re in good hands.
So far, Elite Beat Agents hasn’t been given a UK release, but DS games aren’t region-locked, so buy a copy from eBay and enjoy.