Monday 20 September 2010

Hatsune miku: Project diva

gamespot score:n/a
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my score:8.0
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(+)pros:- innovative gameplay mechanics,- great song selection for those who love vocaloid music, - chance time is a good feature for racking up points,- loads of unlockable content like clothes and other characters,- the room is a good place to customize and just chill out to listen to music.
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(-)cons:- can get boring to keep listening to hatsune miku's voice,- song selection is quite limited
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gameplay time: 30-40 hours( above average)
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Finally a review after a week or so! Time to get back in business. Today's game will be hatsune miku: project diva. It was released last year and is fairly old now....with the 2nd installment out and all. Still, I started this pretty late, so here I am, havent even started playing the 2nd one. Most people will know hatsune miku, shes like an idol, appearing in web ads everywhere and shit, and she is a pretty common face in the anime community. So yeah, this game features hatsune miku, so if you like her, this is probably the game for you.

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Project diva is a beat/ rhytm game, and thus, there is no freaking story, just like most music games out there. Dont be fooled by the opening where she gets enrolled into a school and stuff, its just an opening MV and has no connection to the game at all, it has no story, so stop whining. But well, it doesnt really need 1 anyway.
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Being a music game, its concept is pretty much a damn simple one. You follow beats or rhytm of a song, and hit incoming notes, then get points. Keep doing this until the song is over to see your overall score, which you will try to beat over and over. Oh and of course, if you miss too many notes you die, simple as that. Also, in this game if you didnt do too well in a song, you will "fail" it at the score calculation screen and you wont unlock its harder version, if you successfully cleared it you will unlock a harder version of the song..
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Now hatsune miku has a good selection of songs for you vocaloid fans, world is mine...melt...moon and disappearances are only some of the available pieces. If you havent heard any vocaloid music before this game can bring out that love, since they are pretty good. The gameplay in this game is pure love, and is obviously where it shines. For one, there isnt a "gear" or "pad" where notes will constantly land on ( rock band, djmax, guitar hero, pump it up etc.). In projecct diva, black and empty shapes will appear througout the screen, when the MV is playing. Shapes are of course from our classic PSP buttons, then, following the appearances of these shapes, thier coloured counter parts will appear, from random sides of the screen, and they will fly to the black parts in confusing patterns, your job is of course to hit the respective note when the notes correspond. This is confusing and will be hard for 1st timers, but you will get used to it. The randomness of these notes will cause some headaches, but their rhytm when hit matches to that of the song, so it isnt just for fun. Also, theres a chance time, which appears near the end of the song, its a short mode that lets you hit notes in rapid progression and for each successful hit you get more points, it great for racking up some points.
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The songs in project diva are great pieces, but they are all sung by hatsune mikum which can get boring since you will be hearing her voice for EVERY SONG. And while there are unlockable clothes that make miku stand out even more its still the same. Even if you use other charaacters, guys/girls alike, its all miku's voice, so its all pretty damn weird. Plus, there song selection is quite limited. There are like 30 tracks, but there are some repeats, its just the same song, with a different character in the MV, wtf? These obviously are wastes and thier song slots can be given to other songs.
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If you dig japanese songs or vocaloid songs in general, there is a lot of love to be felt in hatsune miku: project diva, and you can cook up at least 30 hours in terms of gameplay time. If you jus dig the beat/ rhytm genre in particular, its still good to give this game a try for its innovative system, this is one game where you can really milk time into.
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Happy gaming.