REVIEW
Let’s Tap
By Jamie Love - June 28th, 2009
It’s remarkable that for any length of time Sega was home to Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka, and Tetsuya Mizuguchi simultaneously. Even more incredible to ponder what energy must have pulsed through the walls of such a building as all three considered the future of their medium through different, sometimes comparable approaches, largely sharing in the singular desire to connect with the gamer on a deeper level.
When Yuji Naka founded Prope Studios with the intention of pursuing the development of new titles separate from his legacy of work with Sega, it was hard to know what to expect. Certainly the responsibility of leading Sonic Team limited the possibility for working on new IPs – much in the same way Kojima speaks of working on new titles but is continually drawn back to the Metal Gear franchise as a foundation of Konami’s fiscal success.
New ideas are reliably risky – it’s a fact. But a new studio offers the chance to create a space where the goal is to explore new possibilities. Studios are too often weighed down by the success of previous titles, enslaved to the inevitable demand for more. Videogames may be a business, but in any other medium there would be more people arguing that the pure pursuit of profit prior to the development of ideas results in bland, soulless creations that corrupt the point altogether. Maybe it’s because videogames as a medium haven’t yet achieved the same level of critical placement, that we focus primarily on the financial aspect. Or maybe we reliably reveal the dollar as our primary concern. But regardless of whether you place more emphasis on the statistics of financial firms rather than the goals and aspirations of those that founded and nourished the industry, perhaps you wouldn’t begrudge me suggesting that this is a very grey and dull way to interpret the medium.
The peculiar part is that Let’s Tap is very reminiscent of the type of release that could have come to the Dreamcast. And I’m not mourning for my little white wonder box so much as suggesting that despite the casual audience marketing, this is a game for gamers. It may not have the exact same qualities as REZ, but it certainly shares the same spirit. Placing the Wii-mote face down on the nearest box and using the vibrations of finger taps to play these games causes an undeniably intimate connection with the player that is felt without the need for verbal explanations.
The million dollar question is whether setting a Wii-mote face down on the nearest cereal box and tapping your hands to interact with the game is a gimmick. The answer hides within the collection of games Let’s Tap provides to accompany this augmentation of play control – there are five in total. And the question really becomes whether these games are familiar. Are players simply being asked to play with the same games again with modified controls for the sake of creating the illusion of a new experience? Or are these experiences that wouldn’t have been possible without these controls?
Circular thoughts led me back to Wii Sports, and the way those games directly showcased the immediate potential of the Wii Remote. While not every mini-game accomplished this with the same success, golf, tennis, and particularly bowling managed to present gameplay situations in which it became largely impossible to imagine performing those tasks via any other means.
Breaking Let’s Tap down to the five essential games starts with Tap Runner – there’s a reason it appears on the front of the game box. These competitive races require the player to use constant rhythm to maintain the pace of movement – something a button press would never accomplish in the same way. And the layered additions of hurdles and track obstacles forcibly inserts breaks in the pattern of beats, which makes the perfect race a more tangible matter of timing on the part of the player, with a measure of dexterity that the Wii often introduces and Let’s Tap promptly mutates. Rhythm Tap shares a similar aim, requiring players to physically hit beats with varying pressure in time to music. And the curious quality comes through feeling those beats with each tap, which despite the number of rhythm games I’ve played, is something that perhaps only Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is comparable to.
Silent Blocks offers a Jenga styled block game where players select one block amongst a stack and attempt to tap it out of the stack without collapsing the pile. And this is probably the one game that feels the most disposable or tacked on, simply lacking the same tactile energy as the other games. Bubble Voyager ranked slightly higher, using the same principles as Tap Runner in a shooter-styled attempt to navigate obstacles. It’s a more open game than Tap Runner, almost too much so for me. Odd then that the most open-ended game of all, the Visualizer, was the Zen garden where I’ve spent the most time prior to this review. But there’s a difference between open-ended gameplay, and an open set of play options without a direct objective. And that freedom has made a considerable impression upon me.
I found a different way to approach Let’s Tap while watching my girlfriend experiment with the game. There was this perfect moment when the Visualizer revealed the pattern for calling Koi fish at the river. Her eyes sparkled with inspiration while her hands tapped rhythmically against the box, repeatedly, until the river was overflowing with Koi. The splendour is in the screen that simply awaits your interaction patiently. Sit and tap to call fish to the river, throw paint at a canvas, or launch fireworks depending on your preference. It’s simplistic, stress-free, and entirely inviting to anyone. It has occurred to me that questioning the experience would be very much like questioning the point of visiting the lake. And I wonder if this particular game might separate those of us who enjoy taking time out from the day for coffee from those that are perpetually too busy. The comparison to Rez is apt with the Visualizer because of the background music that plays in steady streams, inviting the player to use the sound of their taps to accompany and enhance both the music as well as create the visual stimulation that occurs with the interaction.
This time around the point is in not looking beyond the edge of our collective noses for a point to begin with. From one perspective, the game is comparable to an artist from a favourite band pursuing a solo release. And if this is Yuji Naka stripped down to the bare essentials, the oddity is that his work shines brighter without all the complicated layers game design typically necessitates. All of his games, at the core, offer a freedom in their design that has no rival – and there’s more than enough room to appreciate it herein. Naka’s success is in so often expressing the joy found in the trip itself through an open and accessible connection between the controls and the player. The immediate conflict of any game occurs between the user and the controls, and Naka continually takes that conflict and transforms it into the primary experience. Everything that follows is the open ended opportunity to appreciate that accomplishment.
