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PSP
DJ Max Portable Prestige Package - Belated Import |
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The Prestige ~Collector's Edition~ of DJ Max
Portable includes the following bonus items: 1) DJ
Max Original Soundtrack (2 CDs)
2) 2006 Illust Calendar
3) Visual Collection Card Set
4) DJ Max Portable Strap
Everything is packaged in a long, flat box which
measures 18 1/2 x 9 5/16 x 1 1/4" in dimension.
NCS Game
Synopsis
«©NCSX»
Konami's crop of Bemani games have inspired
imitation and subsequent lawsuits. South Korean
developer Amuseworld's contributions to Bemani
clonage include EZ2DJ which mimics Beatmania and
EZ2Dancer which apes both DDR and Para Para
Paradise. Konami sued Amuseworld in 2001 for patent
infringement but since EZ2DJ is already up to its
sixth "Style," it's safe to say that the two parties
have settled out of court.
To take advantage of a ready-made Beatmania home audience, EZ2DJ
finds new life as DJ Max Portable on the PSP. Konami
won't be porting BMIIDX to the PSP anytime soon so
kudos to Pentavision for providing a slick clone to
hook Beatmania jockeys on the go. After viewing the
game intro, scrolling through the menu, and playing
a few games, DJ Max Portable pretty much matches
recent Beatmania IIDX efforts in terms of visual
gloss, sharp presentation, and pop sensibilities.
None of the songs will be familiar to you unless
you're savvy to the PC version of DJ Max but the
genres are the same - techno, pop, rap, hard rock,
r&b, slow jams, fusion, etc.
Glossy Introduction
In the intro to the game, a blonde girl is standing inside a train
and bopping to the music in her portable MP3 player,
oblivious to the world. The train steams into a
station and the doors open - blonde girl blossoms
out the doors with a waft of wind. While at school,
she daydreams and the intro shows other attractive
music lovers leaving the train, in nondescript
rooms, and other locales. Everyone appears to be
headed to a jam session but it's only a fantasy. At
the imaginary jam session, the blonde girl
transforms like Wonder Woman into a mini-skirt,
bikini-wearing songstress who dazzles the rocking
crowd. The other citizens form her band with two
wielding axes while another massages a synth. After
the concert, the blonde girl's back to reality and
she's on a sidewalk with the rabble. A bus passes,
she looks up and walks. The text, "Make Your Own
Music World." appears and fades.
DJ Max Portable Game
After the intro, the title
screen appears and an electric blue whirlwind spins
around the DJ Max logo. Eye candy galore. By
pressing right on the D-pad, the following options
appear: PORTABLE / OST / M/V CLIPs.
Click on the PORTABLE
option and the following modes are available:
PORTABLE
/ Rookie DJing - 4 button game play where
LEFT,
UP, TRIANGLE,
and
CIRCLE
are used. Basically, if you've never played PSP
DJMax, this mode is requisite to practice and train
your brain so that it's wired properly for the game.
There are 10 songs at the outset in this mode with
difficulty ratings from 1 to 4 but once you complete
one song, 10 new songs replace the original 10.
There are three songs (Memory of Beach, Luv Flow,
End of the Moonlight) that may be played in Hard
Style Mode which is activated by selecting the song
and then pressing up or down on the D-pad until the
HARD STYLE indicator on the upper left corner lights
up.
/ Pro DJing - 6 button game play which adds the
RIGHT
and
SQUARE buttons to the mix.
The difficulty of the game ramps up due to the
buttons involved and also the amount of cues that
drop. At 0.5
speed, the cues fall in such a heavy pitter-patter
that most novices who didn't practice properly in
Rookie mode will be destroyed in 20-25 seconds.
That's right, 20 seconds. At
5X speed, it's actually slightly easier because while the
cues drop at blazing speed, they're not as plentiful
and the buttons may be mapped out in your brain as
the cues hurtle downwards. The song list contains 11
tracks with difficulty ratings from 1 to 7 (Ray of
Illuminati) and just about every song has a HARD
STYLE variant while two songs also have an MX STYLE
variant
if you want to be blown out in a few seconds.
/ Master DJing - 4 or 6 button
mode which is selectable by the player (the top
option is 4-button mode, second option is 6 button).
Eight button mode is unlockable but not available to
the beginner. This fresh madness takes place at a
virtual Club where four songs are knocked out in
quick succession. The unlocked clubs at the outset
are Temple of Black Music (Black Hitz), Club 420
(Electronic Sound Voyage), Iridium, Purple Lounge
(Jazz Funk Music Lounge), Club Shake (Dance Music),
Flora (Soft Pop Compilation), Under Attack (The
Stage of Hard Beat Music), IZ (Mid-Level Music
Club), Club N (High Level Music Club), and eight
other clubs that require unlocking.
/ Freestyle - Play 4 button or 6 button mode
with 39 songs and the usual Effector Select options.
There's a randomizer option for the song as well if
you have no preference. Think of it as nonstop mode.
The amount of cues the fall down at 0.5 speed is
thicker than anything in Beatmania. Bump the speed
up to 3X and things get a little more manageable but
the game potentially degrades into a button mashing
fest as your brain commands your thumbs to move in
tune to the cues but most player will fall behind
and just tap indiscriminately on the PSP. We're
looking forwards to the "Master Play" DVD for this
game so we can check out how the elite play this
game.
/ Gallery - If you've played well, bonuses will
be added to the Disc Collection, Image Gallery, and
Media Gallery. A Collecting Rate percentage meter is
located on the upper right corner of the screen to
keep you updated on how much further you've got to
go.
/ Ranking Chart - The top ten scores for every
game mode are recorded and stored. If you've never
made the leaderboard, all of the default DJ names
tagged up are "DJMAXPTB."
/ Option - Move the game display, toggle sound
to speakers or earphones, toggle between three
button configurations where the L+R triggers may be
optioned to Speed Down and Speed Up respectively or
used to trigger the Blue Note cues, and Save Data to
memory stick.
OST MODE
All 58 songs in the game may be listened to in
their entirety. The first virtual disc contains 29
tracks which you may flip through and the other 29
songs are on another virtual disc which are flipped
between by pressing the L or R trigger. To listen to
all of the songs, press the SQUARE button and the PSP
will become a little jukebox which plays the songs
randomly. Songs to check out: Light House by xxdbxx,
Bright Dream by M2U, Temptation by S-TRO, Chrono
Breakers by NieN, FunkyChups by Forte Escape, KUDA
by Gonzo, Fear by ???, Minimal Life by Earbreaker,
SIN by ESTi, and Hamsin by makou.
Note that many of
the songs are in English and the manual devotes a
good chunk of its pages to the music and the lyrics for many songs. However, some of
the songs are sung in a nigh unintelligible English
pronunciation so the English lyrics help...
Basically, DJMax contains an energetic mix that would be
welcome in any techno club in London or New York.
M/V CLIPS
Since you'll never get to see the 39 animated
videos in the game while you're concentrating on the
cues, this is your chance to watch every video in
wide screen splendor. Everything is unlocked from
the start so there's nothing to unlock or scramble
around for. After watching the SIN video this
morning, we're guessing that it's a stylized
interpretation of the age old werewolf story but we
don't understand the surfeit of chrysanthemums. The
KUDA video is slick but it might prompt Konami to
file another lawsuit for infringement on their Metal
Gear property. We clicked on the JBG video by
mistake, thinking it was Alizee's song but it's a
rap fest with a hooded gangsta and a graffiti spraying
artist. Occasionally, speakers may be seen booming in the
background.
NCS Game Test
To start a game, press the O button to proceed or the X button to
return to the title screen.
In the Rookie DJing mode which is aimed squarely at
novice players, ten songs may be selected at the
outset but 10 more songs are opened after completing
1 song - push the d-pad left and right to flip
between the attractive disc covers. The song from
the animated introduction by Forte
Escape is selectable as track 01. While flipping
through the tracks, about 30
seconds of each highlighted song will play before
looping. We tested the game with the first song. DJ
Max requires that you rewire your brain so that your
thumbs move in time to the cues on screen. The cues
are apportioned on the screen in the following manner:
4 button mode:
LEFT
|
UP
|
TRIANGLE
|
O BUTTON
6 button mode:
LEFT
|
UP
|
RIGHT
|
SQUARE
| TRIANGLE
| O BUTTON
It's intuitive to focus your mind and fingers on the relevant PSP
d-pad and face buttons and only flip between them.
However, as the cues rain down steadily, you might
be perturbed if your brain can't translate the cues
quickly enough to move your thumbs to the proper
button pushes.
If you botch too many cues and drop your energy bar to
zilch, a
big red "GAME OVER" crashes on screen along with "U
NEED MORE PRACTICE." At this point, you may hang
your head in shame or highlight RESTART and try to
earn some credibility once again. Your HP is
indicated by a rainbow colored bar on the left side
of the active screen. Each time you miss a cue, it
drops down a little lower. Miss an entire stream of
cues and you're booted out of the game. To
re-energize your health bar, performing lengthy
combos boosts it up.
If you hit the cues perfectly, you'll
earn a MAX 100% but if you're too late or too early,
you'll get a MAX 30% or another percentage depending
on your hit. Even if you
get a MAX 1%, your combo streak register keeps tacking on
your combo count which is fairly lenient for an
otherwise very demanding game. If you botch a cue entirely,
you'll get hit with a BREAK and your combo chain
resets to 0.
There are Effector Select options in the mode screen
which you may access by pressing the TRIANGLE
button. The Speed of the cues may be toggled to 0.5,
1.5, x2, 2.5, x3, 3.5, x4, 4.5, x5 and a Fader may
be toggled as well as a Key Mirror. At slow speeds,
there's more cues that drop but at x5 speed, the
cues are more sparse although they're breathtakingly
fast.
To scale into the game, NCS recommends playing a few sessions of
Rookie DJing to adapt to the 4-button control. The game may be played
with all thumbs or if you're in an experimental state of
mind, lay the PSP flat on a table and use your
thumb and index fingers on both hands to tap the L,
U, TRIANGLE, and CIRCLE buttons to match the rain of
cues as they hit the base line. The gist is exactly
the same as Beatmania but once the game starts, the
screen is divided into 2 portions - 1/3 of the
screen is your play area and the other 2/3 shows a
music video - since you won't get to see any of the
action on the video when concentrating on the cues,
they're really there to provide flashy lights and
blips for your peripheral vision.
DJ Max
Portable's Easy Style songs (Difficulty 1-4) are relatively breezy to plow
through once your fingers are sufficiently trained but the difficulty level reaches
nigh unmanageable proportions once you test the Hard
Style and MX Style songs (Difficulty 4-10 - yes,
there are Easy Style and Hard Style Difficulty 4
songs).
After each stage is cleared, you're ranked on your
MAX, BREAK, and COMBO counts as well as your percentage
of hits. A letter grade is also assigned such as A or
B+.
Closing thoughts
DJ Max Portable is
unforgiving for the most part. Botch the cues
early on and you're abruptly booted out of the
game. The Bemani elite will take the difficulty
level in stride, prosper from their talent, and likely
unlock ~80% of the game's secrets. Weekend
warriors will probably not even see 5% of the unlockables. That said, if Pentavision releases a
sequel to the game, NCS has some suggestions:
1) Include a Practice Mode where a player can test
their skills without being kicked out every 10-30
seconds in the normal modes of the game. Give the
option of unlimited health in Practice Mode. When
you slam a "U NEED MORE PRACTICE" in our collective
faces without any recourse, it hurts.
2) Incorporate an online mode with side by side
challenges for up to three players since the active
game screen takes up 1/3 of the PSP screen and three
players can be accommodated.
3) Love the music but maybe include some licensed
Euro-beats or talent from other parts of Asia in the
next volume?
4) Add an option to use the analog nub to trigger the
4-button cues as well as a button re-map option. Failing that, a miniature USB DJ deck
that's a true to scale rip-off of Konami's PS2
controller. You've already infringed on their Beatmania IP, so might as well go for broke...
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This document is ©NCSX 2006. All rights reserved. No
reproduction in whole or in part of this document
may be made without express written consent of
National Console Support, Inc.
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