Gitaroo Man - Music Battle, Go!

Gitaroo Man is a very unique game. It was made for the PS2 by iNiS studios in mid June of 2001. iNiS Studios specializes in music and rhythm games, and Gitaroo Man is no exception to this franchise. The game itself focuses on a kid from earth who inherits an instrument from another planet called the Gitaroo, and this sets an adventure in motion that involves him traveling and fighting music battles.

You end up fighting anything from guys in bee suits, to skeletons, to robot sharks, and all other manner of interesting colourful characters. And over the course of the game end up freeing the planet where the Gitaroo originally came from before heading back home. Now some of you might say this is spoilers, but the game makes your goal clear right from the first stage or two.

Jumping right in, the graphics in this game are goofy and blocky, but the style of it fits the goofyness of the game pretty well. Luckily on games like this your primary focus is on the music and game play, not on the graphics. So while they aren't astounding, they're good enough not to detract from the game in anyway. Course we do have to keep in mind this game was made over ten years ago.

Sound. Now this is where the game really drags you in. The music tracks in this game are varied, and the enemies you're fighting always fit the music well. They designed it in a way that even if it takes you a few tries, or a few dozen, you aren't likely to get bored by hearing the same tracks over and over again. You jump from rock, to electronic, to jazz, to acoustic, and that's only a small selection of the musical flavor that they have in this game.

Now as for the story, there really isn't much of one. You can pretty much figure out the whole plot of the game by the time you reach the third stage at the latest as they don't worry about plot twists or anything all that much. This isn't to say that the story isn't interesting. It's just focused a little bit more on being a funny story to watch unfold than anything dramatic to draw you in deeper. The music and game play are the real hooks into the attraction for this game.

Now then for the game play. They follow the easy to learn, hard to master approach with this game. The game is divided into two main phases. The attack phase, and the defense phase.

In the attack phase you use the control stick to follow a line around and it weaves about. In time to the music you have bars that appear on this line that you have to press and hold the button for the duration of the bar, then let up right as it hits the end. This seems like a really simple concept, but combining the two with how fast some of the songs get can be really complex.

In the defense phase you have the different symbols from the controller coming in from the edge of the screen to the center. You just have to hit the correct button as it hits the center of the screen. Simple, right? Well at the start it is because you only have a few notes coming in at a time. As you start getting closer and closer to the end of the game, you start having to keep track of multiple notes from multiple directions at the same time.

Now just to make things a little harder they give you almost no time at all to switch from your attack phase to your defense phase, and you lose health for every action you miss. So if you lose all your health before the end up the song, you have to start over from the beginning, while trying to get the opponents health down instead.

In conclusion, while the game itself might not be the prettiest thing around, the music and simple yet addicting game play will be enough to keep many gamers entertained for hours or days at a time, possibly even more than that. Got reviews from IGN, Gamespot, and Eurogamer there so you can see what other people think.