You might have been skeptical when Famitsu gave Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! a score of 35 last week... 35 points for a rhythm action game, huh? Well, they're pretty much on the mark for this one if my first few hours with this game are anything to go by.

First, the types of hit... you've got odd beats, that just appear as a 1 with a circle around them. The circle gets smaller and when it reaches the size of the number, you have to hit it. Then there's the sequences going 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. again with the circles that diminish in size until the beat hits. Third kind of hit is a rolling hit. A circle shrinks around the number and when you hit, you keep hold of the ball that appears and roll it along a line, keeping your pen inside the ball space, and letting go at the end of the path. Finally there's the spinning disc. Every now and then a disc will take up the bottom screen and you have to spin it as quickly as possible (either clockwise or anti-clockwise is ok) to build up excitement.

The story is told like an interactive manga. Images appear telling the story, you do the rhythm thing and in between parts of the song, more manga appears. The story depends on your progression in the song, and there are different degrees of failure and success. Your "life" is measured by a spirit bar which automatically ticks down with time and you must keep it filling up by getting good scores. When it runs out, you fail totally and have to start again.

Levels can be chosen freely to some extent. The menu consists of a map of a city which you can slide around the screen by touching and dragging your stylus. At the start of the game, there are four people you can help. Succeed with all of them and another four open up. It's worth pointing out that the first four are quite straightforward and can be passed on the first or second try. However, the second group of people are all die bitch hard... really. You really have to get to know the song well to succeed, which is a satisfying requirement for this type of game. Gitarooman fans will love this!

The music is a collection of famous j-pop tunes, including Supercar's Loop & Loop and The Blue Hearts' Linda Linda Linda. They're not sung by the original artists, but the nameless replacements are all competent and pull of accurate performances. If you happen to hate j-pop, you'd best avoid this, but it seems that j-pop and the rhythm action genre have a long history together, so it's not really anything to be surprised by. The songs fit well with the stories told and there's some classic slapstick humour going on in the manga.

As far as longevity goes, it's a tough call and surely depends on the type of gamer you are. The high level of difficulty for some songs prevents rapid progress, but like all games of this type, it's only a matter of perseverance before you beat the song. There is a total of 15 songs in the game, and assuming a constant increase in difficulty level, it's going to take a regular bemani gamer a couple of hours to get through. Then you can improve on your rank per song and your overall game rank.

-Jonnyram