Prior to the release of Let’s Tap,
the mechanically-innovative Sega game seemed to fall within two categories:
those who instantly understood its potential brilliance and those who simply
wondered why anyone would want to play a game that revolves around senseless
tapping.
For me, it was more than a game of
anticipation. Finally, I thought. Somebody gets it. I’ve been tapping on tables,
drumming on counter tops and pounding on steering wheels (while parked or
stopped at a red light, of course) for years. Long before Activision and EA’s
music games hit it big (but after Konami launched the genre with the first music
peripherals), I used to dream of a game that took the fun of rhythmically
pounding on something and placed it within an interactive world. It wouldn’t –
or at least shouldn’t – be an experience designed to replace a drum controller.
Rather, it would be a music game of a different breed – something to capitalize
on the urge to turn anything into a drum.
When it was announced, Let’s Tap
appeared to be as brilliant in its design as it was innovative in its use of the
Wii remote. You don’t touch the remote. You don’t swing it. You place it upside
down on top of a box (the game recommends a tissue box but an empty shoebox
works too; using the game case wasn’t half-bad either). The Wii remote, with
another layer of sensitivity hidden beneath its white plastic exterior, can
actually detect the vibrations/motions you’re creating every time you tap the
box.
This, however, comes at a price. By
not forcing gamers to buy a separate peripheral, Sega was able to keep
development and manufacturing costs much lower than most music games. Thus, the
retail price is also much lower: $30 – a small fraction of the price of Guitar
Hero or Rock Band. By using the Wii remote and only the Wii remote, gamers will
learn that its technology is indeed more impressive than we thought. But not
impressive enough for this game.
According to the intro calibration
screen, which registers varying degrees of box taps, Let’s Tap is capable of
detecting a large number of beats. Despite this, the game only uses three beats
(light, medium and heavy), immediately limiting how much the player can
accomplish.
Let’s Tap is comprised of five
different mini-games, and when I say “mini,” let me tell you: this game gives
new meaning to the word. To qualify as a game, you’ve got to have more than
interactive content. You must also contain specific goals.
One of the mini-games – Visualizer –
does not have any objective at all. You tap the box and the game reacts with
fireworks, splashes of paint, water ripples and other colorful things. This
would have been kind of cool if the game could keep up with a realistic level of
drumming. But it assumes that every player is a sluggish turtle; tap on the box
any faster and the visual display will fall behind your speedy beats.
The other four games – Tap Runner,
Rhythm Tap, Silent Blocks and Bubble Voyager – aren’t much more interesting. Tap
Runner is just as it sounds: you tap to make the little wireframe guy run across
a wireframe environment. Silent Blocks is a horrible version of Jenga where you
tap lightly or forcefully to remove blocks, one at a time, from a large stack.
Rhythm Tap is your typical tap-the-box-when-the-icons-scroll-by mini-game. Some
of the music is great and some of it is terrible. The visuals, however, make it
all but impossible to enjoy – the act of watching mundane circle icons scroll by
while wireframe shapes spin in the background is as boring as it is dizzying.
This isn’t 1998; today, music games, whether part of a concept game such as this
or a full-fledged game itself, need to offer more.
More than the rest, Bubble Voyager
had the potential to be a really cool mini-game. In a nutshell, it’s a
side-scrolling aerial shooter (think R-Type with a little robot) controlled
entirely with taps. Unfortunately, its slow pace drags the game down, as do the
repetitive controls (tap lightly to thrust upwards; tap firmly to fire missiles)
and repetitive goals (is that a barrier up ahead? Firm tap! Another one? Firm
tap again!).
Of these five, Bubble Voyager
responded the best; Rhythm Tap responded the worst). None of them were
particularly standout, and none of them were suddenly more fun when a second,
third or fourth controller was added. When you do that, the monotony is
multiplied by the number of people playing the game.
Technologically, it’s amazing that
the Wii remote can work this way. At the same time, it’s disappointing that it
didn’t work better considering the application at hand. But even if it had, that
wouldn’t have made Let’s Tap the star music game it should have been. Before
that can be accomplished, the developers need to realize that tapping alone
isn’t fun; rhythm has to be a significant part of it.
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Gameplay: 6.9
Thirty bucks for a concept game that’s more fun to examine and dissect than
it is to play.
Graphics: 3.0
Simplistic colors, wireframe models and a lot of 2D flash. Not much to get
excited about.
Sound: 6.0
Had this been a full-fledged music game, Let’s Tap couldn’t have survived.
There just aren’t enough good music tracks to keep the listener engaged.
Difficulty: Easy
Mechanically frustrating but still a relatively easy game.
Concept: 5.0
The idea of using a Wii remote and a box as a tap-sensitive device is
definitely new. But the mini-games found within Let’s Tap are the same old
thing.
Multiplayer: 5.5
When the novelty wears off, your friends will pick up their boxes and go
home.
Overall: 6.7
Let’s Tap is one of those games that had the potential for greatness but
ultimately couldn’t achieve anything above a Wii remote feature we didn’t know
existed.