Rhythm 'N Notes
Score: 30% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Agetec Developer: Company Not in System Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 Genre: Edutainment/ Trivia/ Miscellaneous
Graphics & Sound: It's a rare occasion when we're forced to say that a game falls this short of expectations. The notion of a music training game on DS is fantastic and it's easy to imagine all the cool things that could be developed around this theme. What's been delivered here as Rhythm 'n Notes is just nothing close to what was possible and shouldn't motivate anyone to part with twenty of their well-earned dollars. The graphics aren't at issue - they're adequate for the task at hand. The theme is very young with a loopy little character that demonstrates the rhythmic patterns so you can follow along. Given the young theme, the game is surprisingly difficult and is more appropriate for older children or even young adults that have a year or two of music training. Perhaps that explains the subtitle of Rhythm 'n Notes, "Improve your music skills." There isn't nearly enough variety in the game and there aren't many opportunities to explore or do free play on piano-style instruments or rhythm instruments. There is no option to record or save tunes, so be aware that this isn't any kind of music creator. There aren't even play-alongs that would provide a slightly less mundane practice experience. Get used to staring at the same two or three screens for the few hours it will take you to exhaust Rhythm 'n Notes. The biggest failing is sound and audio. Practicing or copying rhythm patterns is fine, but the tones coming out of the DS speakers create real obstacles to progress in the chord and note training. The less nuanced harmonics or overtones in computer-generated music coupled with the limited range delivered through the DS just makes for a experience. Even a trained ear will have difficulty picking out notes and differentiating between chords. There is a screen that lets you listen to each chord prior to entering the training exercise. When the three-note chord is played in the training, you have to select the correct choice from the touch-screen. You can repeat the chord and you have no initial reference note or chord. This is crazy. Are we training someone with perfect pitch? Each chord should be voiced once in its note-sequence and then as a single chord to help beginners or to create a more approachable basic exercise. You have to realize that many student musicians aren't all that comfortable determining high vs. low with notes played in sequence, so asking them to perfectly capture a three-note chord voicing without a reference is crazy. The chord/note training is really a wash. Almost nobody will enjoy it, and even if they do it is limited to a short-list of exercises that never gets into very advanced chords. The free-play and note training is opened up later rather than introduced at the beginning, which will shut down all but the more advanced musicians.
Gameplay: Rhythm 'n Notes is divided into two parts, Chord/Note Training and Rhythm Training. The manner and style of the Chord/Note Training has been outlined above, so let's talk about Rhythm Training. Learning to snap out beats sounds fun and this is the only redeeming element of Rhythm 'n Notes. You start the training by copying a little character as he beats on a can, a mug, and finally some drums. The simple beats can be played with the stylus on the touch-screen or with the (L/R) shoulder buttons. Eventually you are forced to use (L) or (R) to represent different drum beats. This comes late in the rhythm training and ends much too soon. If Rhythm 'n Notes were 80% rhythm training, it would be closer to greatness. If you could save beats or do play-alongs, it would also be much better. None of these options are available, unfortunately. The time it takes to go through these exercises isn't worth the payoff. Even the fun rhythm exercises take forever to complete. First you have to watch the character beat out the rhythm and then wait for a countdown. After the countdown, you get a shot at performing. At this point, smart design would dictate that the game ask you, "Do you need to see another demonstration?" In other words, if you got it right the first time, why do you need to see it demonstrated again, right? Instead, you are forced to watch another demo before you can perform a second time. If you complete both performances perfectly, you can open up a new training and do it all over again. The Chord/Note Training works somewhat differently. In this section, you hear a chord voiced and have to select a corresponding chord. There are a series of chord voicings and if you choose the correct option every time, you get to move on to a Note Training sequence. The Note Lesson eventually will open up to allow you to identify single notes, but initially it sounds just like the Chord Training. The whole exercise is totally pointless unless you need to be able to differentiate between a C-Major chord voiced C-E-G versus G-C-E. On a piano, I'd instantly hear the difference between a C-Major and F-Major chord but on the DS speakers, the voicing C-E-G and C-F-A sound waaaaay too similar. One tinny chord compared to another tinny chord is the central problem.
Difficulty: I've alluded to what really makes this a lousy experience beyond any of the limitations of the system. Unless you get a perfect score on each exercise, you can't proceed. Perfect means not one rhythm out of place and not one chord missed in a sequence of six chords. The rhythmic patterns are easy to goof if you happen to strike the touch-screen early/late or if you twitch a bit on the shoulder buttons. It would be reasonable to hold someone back for scoring less than 80% on an exercise, but holding someone back with a 96% is ridiculous. There aren't any reasonable explanations for this other than some vain attempt to artificially extend the length of the game. The lack of reference notes as mentioned above makes Rhythm 'n Notes too difficult by far for young students. They'll eventually just memorize the chords, which is fine except they're really supposed to be aware of the notes in the chords and the position of the notes. Different voicings of major triads are very similar on any instrument, but the tonal range of a string or a horn helps to identify a chord voiced C-E-G versus E-G-C. The DS is a bad platform to feature this type of challenge. The designers would have helped themselves immensely by giving players some way to reference even a single note and then hear the chord repeated. There isn't even a way to repeat the chord that you're being asked to identify! The other really strange choice made in the Chord/Note section is to move around the selections each time. On the touch-screen after you select a chord voicing correctly, that same voicing appears in a different place. Like we needed it to be more difficult? Opening up Note Training is supposed to be the "prize" after working through but few players will be motivated. A much better use of Chord Training would be to give players major and minor chords to compare and chords voiced in different extremes of the keyboard. This would allow for some easy wins and warm-up material before the advanced training. I would say that for any child without perfect pitch, this training is equivalent to at least middle-school, if not high-school level. Looking at it this way, the silly character and visuals are not a match for the potential audience. If the older kids are in fact the audience, Rhythm 'n Notes will miss the mark anyway by not including some features like recording and play-along.
Game Mechanics: Control doesn't get much more simple than this. The stylus or shoulder buttons control the rhythmic pieces of the game and the (A) button or stylus is what you'll use to select the correct chord or note. Moving around through the various menus and areas of the game is all done through the touch-screen or (A) button. There are only about four different screens to move through before launching one of the play modes, so there's not much complexity to navigate. The foibles of the game's design were mentioned above, but control isn't a part of what makes Rhythm 'n Notes frustrating. The L/R controls tied to different drums work well. Execution of beats on more than one drum is fun but not used nearly enough in the game. By the time this mechanic comes into play, you're almost done with all the rhythm elements of Rhythm 'n Notes. There isn't enough in the way of extras or custom features for this game. Some type of free play can be accessed on the side devoted to Chord/Note training but you can't play more than a note here and there or one chord at a time. There isn't anything related to chord notation or music reading that really pops up to make this a deeper experience. At some point it would have been great to allow for a deeper learning experience. Other than unlocking the later challenges, there is only the very strange unlockable feature that turns piano tones into non-instrument sounds like water drops. The manual points out that if you can identify a chord when the notes sound like a water drop, you must be improving. I'd say if you can struggle through the normal mode and unlock the water-drop sound, you're my hero... Nothing much exists to redeem Rhythm 'n Notes other than the relatively low price point. The so-called modes here feel more like incidental mini-games than freestanding challenges that are worthy of any serious attention. Much less $20... If you have a trained ear already and just want to challenge yourself, you might enjoy Rhythm 'n Notes. If you have perfect pitch and just want to practice naming your chords, you might also enjoy yourself here. It's a tough call as to who else would like this, and I'm not sure the people I mentioned would really have a good time. Rhythm 'n Notes is just one of those off-the-wall titles that feels like the leavings on the cutting-room floor.
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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