| | Third console port of the arcade drumming series; the subtitle for this one babelfishes as "Admirable 3rd Generation."
Appare 3 follows the same formula as its predecessor (see entry 965), with more songs (26 in easy mode, 34 in normal and hard modes; no unlockable songs as far as I can tell), and four new minigames. The song selection, as usual, is eclectic and overall quite good as far as drumming challenges go; I particularly like the segments of Aida and Beethoven's 5th.
Even though there are four of them rather than just three, the minigames don't fare quite as well this time around. The first is a semaphore verbal-command-matching game, which requires that you hit one of the rim-quarters of the drum to raise/lower the dog's arms to match the directions of the drum-creature. The directions are given in Japanese, so unless you understand the lingo, you'll have to just memorize by trial and error which sounds correspond to which flag positions. I've done this before (I think it was for a minigame in Naruto (see entry 183), but I can't remember for sure), and it really isn't worth the effort.
The second minigame is in the mold of those "gopher boppin'" games you find in some arcades, where you hit a certain part of the drum to swap animals popping out of a cabinet with a paper fan.
The third one is the most unique: an eating contest, in which drumming makes your drum creature eat the plates of spicy food set in front of it, building up a fire meter. Once the meter is full, you can tap one side of the rim to blast the competitor, but if they anticipate, they can counter by tapping the other side of the rim to block with a plate. If they get burned, they're stunned for a few seconds, which you can use to take the lead in the eating contest. I didn't find blocking to be very intuitive, and the fire doesn't stun for very long at all, so really it's just a contest in madly drumming as fast as possible, which I find tiresome.
The last minigame is a matching game; the opponent plays a sequence of drum/rim hits, and then you have to play the pattern back. If you're successful, they play the same sequence, plus one more hit, and you have to play that back. The sequences get quite long, and although the graphics in the game are cute, trying to hold the lengthening sequences in my head makes it hurt. Poor head! But I'm not very good at memorization in general, which is why I have to write everything down in entries like this. ;) |
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