It's an American version of the popular Bemani game Pop 'N Music.
Anyway, as someone who's played quite a bit of Pop 'N, here are my impressions...
-This game looks and sounds really nice, I'll give it that.
- no speed modifiers, not that you need them
- no hard songs! The difficulty modifier is 1-9, but there's only two styles, 3 button or 5 button. 5 button is easy as all hell, and only goes up to difficulty level 3, what the hell, there's still 6 levels unused unless I'm somehow missing higher difficulties. There is room on the sides for a 7-button mode, but I don't see any way to access it.
-Timing is sloppy
- XB Live arcade battle is barebones. Its just comparing scores after the both of you play the same song together, nothing like Pop 'N's robust online modes.
- Online Mode is in 3-button mode ONLY!
- leaderboard is only to rank cumulative Online Versus scores only. No arcade mode scores, or Endless score tracking. Lame.
- When you hit a perfect on a pop'kun, it doesn't disappear like Pop'n Music does, it falls through as if you missed it.
- Endless mode groove gauge artwork doesn't change to the Expert gauge.
- NO CONTROL CUSTOMIZATION. The default controls are questionable, I'd much rather remap them but have no chance to do so. Goddamn, unacceptable.
Songlist (no complaints here):
We Two Are One
Gotta Get My Groove On
Moon
Missing Cat
R.C.
Spicy Piece
100Sec. Kitchen Battle!
Beyond The Earth
Starmine (pop’n mixx)
This is a disappointment and is a terrible way to bring Pop 'N Music to America. The only reason you should buy this is to support the game and hope that Konami makes a sequel that's better. Maybe at least they can add some DLC for more songs and a 7-button mode.
Ah well, 10 bucks ain't bad at least.
