It's been a dull few weeks for gaming lately. Nothing against Splatoon 2 or FF XII or especially the Crash Triology, but when I get home from work lately I either watch Crunchyroll or watch HBO (I picked up the HBO app for this season of GoT so I'm milking it while I've got it). Today marked the first day where I didn't want to do any of that and I was at a loss for what to watch or play. Then I remembered a PS3 gem that I can pick up and play for either 5 minutes or for a few hours at a time. My old reliable.
"Perfect" indeed.
We all have a game that we can just pick up and play at random. For me, that game is the music rhythm game Hatsune Miku. You must be thinking all kinds of things right now, but I can assure you..........actually they're all probably fairly accurate. The HM games came around about when I was really missing the Guitar Hero franchise. I'll never forget when I was working at my store and a new demo disc came for our PS3 display. I did the update, browsed the games, and didn't think much of the new lineup, but ever since Guitar Hero and Elite Beat Agents, music rhythm games have kind of been among my favorite games. I gave the HM demo a try and I immediately knew I would be buying the full game.
I think one of the major pull factors to rhythm games is how quickly you can accomplish something. In less than five minutes you can play a track and make a score. That's it. After you finish you have the simple option to play again, play a new track, or simply call it quits. It's also one of the reasons that CoD's multiplayer is so incredibly addicting, or "binging" Netflix. That "one more" mentality can really be difficult to say no to. Especially when it's only at the cost of 4 or 5 minutes.
Hatsune Miku has a fun cast of characters, a fun lineup of songs, and a well balanced difficulty scale. It keeps giving you something to strive for. That's really important. When I picked up the new Guitar Hero for the PS4 I was really, REALLY, disappointed. I loved the old GH games because they gave you something to shoot for. Finish this set, unlock a harder set. Can't quite get the hang of it? Drop the difficulty and come back after you've practiced. The new GH game just throws everything at you at the beginning. There are concerts to perform, but they don't give you the feeling that you're getting better or that you have a real goal or purpose. Where's the fun? HM starts off like the old GH games and lets you unlock more songs all while gaining experience and slowly getting better. That's how it should be.
Much like my experience with the first Guitar Hero, Hatsune Miku was not as simple to get the hang of as I imagined it would be. I played the game quite a bit. I mastered the Normal difficulty with ease, but the Hard proved to be more of a challenge. There were quite a few tracks that really had my number and I just couldn't quite get the hang of them. I decided to move on to Extreme before I finished Hard and it turned out to be a good move. By the time I reached my limit with Extreme I went back to Hard and managed to wrap up the songs that remained unbeaten. Extreme, however, was not going down. There are still songs I haven't beaten, but at this point I simply concede defeat. The reason I relate this to the first Guitar Hero is because I had long given up on finishing GH1 when I thought I had reached my limit, but when GH2 came out I picked it up and the more I played the more I wanted to challenge myself. I put A LOT of time into GH2, and eventually I went back to GH1 and all the songs I hadn't finished on the first game I managed to complete on my first try. HM was similar after I played the second game, but I still can't quite master 3 of the songs in the first game on Extreme. Oh well. I still enjoy playing the game!
And when there is nothing to play, nothing interesting coming out (until Everybody's Golf!!!), nothing at all that you can really get pumped for, there is ALWAYS old reliable. We all have one (I assume?). Whether it's a main stream, must play game, or a music rhythm game that is your secret guilty pleasure that you assume most people don't even know existss, there is always one game you can play at a moments notice. What's yours? Let me know in the comments, and thanks for reading.