Posts Tagged ‘lets tap’
Let’s Tap Game Review–Let’s Not And Say We Did
I know I’m coming down awfully hard on today’s title, but I assure you it’s with good reason. I’m going to preface the remarks today by saying, unequivocally: Sega, thank you for taking chances. These chances don’t always work out, as is the case with Let’s Tap for the Wii, but still–I’m glad you took the chance all the same.
Basically, Let’s Tap is a collection of five smaller games all controlled by the same method: setting your Wiimote down on a box, preferably a tissue box or some similar cardboard box and tapping on the box. Yes, that’s right–in this game, you will almost never touch your Wiimote. You’ll play games like Tap Runner (where you compete in a four-man foot race by tapping on the box your Wiimote rests upon with various degrees of pressure), Rhythm Tap (where you’ll tap out a series of rhythms in time with on-screen indicators), Silent Blocks (where you’ll remove blocks from a stack in a bid to lower an item stacked on top of them to the ground), Bubble Voyager (where you move a space-suited character through a series of obstacles) and Visualizer (which isn’t so much a game as it is a way to play around with the tapping system to make various special effects).
I’m somewhat at a loss by this game. There’s no storyline here–it’s almost as if Sega were making a demo reel for some greater application to be announced later. I admit that the concept is unique enough–I definitely don’t remember the last time I played a game that literally required that I never touch my controller–but I’m just slightly dismayed by the results it yielded. Sure, this game is fun, but not for very long. There’s just so little TO it that it can’t produce much in the way of a fun factor. All you do is tap, tap, tap a box over and over and over and over again for little or no clear reason. And when you smack a box a couple hundred times with your hand or fingers in rapid succession, chances are you’re going to be left with a sore arm and not much else to show for it.
In fact, after playing a round of Let’s Tap, I’m left with a whole lot more questions than answers. Why did they even bother with this game? There’s so very little to it that it’s almost not worth playing, except as some kind of precursor, some kind of training implement to a future game. And it could definitely be interesting–think about a version of Missile Command where you fire missiles by PRESSING A BUTTON corresponding to a tap on a box. Especially if you were to use the Wiimote simultaneously to aim by turning the Wiimote slightly to the left or right to adjust an aiming reticle before firing. That’d be awesome.
But I’m getting away from the point here–the point being that Let’s Tap, by itself, is really not much of a game. It may represent a greater game to come, but for right now, Let’s Tap should better be titled Let’s Avoid This Piece of Crap And Get On With Our Lives.
Weird Wii Game Coming to America
Sonic the Hedgehog creator Yuji Naka formed a studio named Prope in 2006 and released its first game late last year – Let’s Tap – in Japan. Sega today announced that the unique Wii game will make its way to North America this summer.
Interestingly, the game is played without actually holding the Wii Remote. Players are instructed to place the Wii Remote on a flat surface and smack that surface to “play”.
The game features five modes, each with multiple levels and support for up to four players.