Rhythm Heaven's Lockstep: Stuck in your head for 10 years
Ooh-oh-ooh-ha-HEY
Click
Click
Click, click, click, click
Hey, hey, hey, ha-haaa!
Lockstep is the best minigame in the Rhythm Heaven series. That's a lot, I know. Released ten years ago on Nintendo DS, Rhythm Heaven was the stylus-based follow-up to the GBA's unlocalised Rhythm Tengoku, a masterful take on rhythm action that presented the player with myriad short songs that test your auditory skills to such an extent that the visuals themselves are actively distracting.
Oo-oh, oo-oh, oo-oh, oo-oh, ooh-oh-ooh-ha-HEY
Broadly, though, the games are about recognising cues and hitting the A button at the right time. Or, in the case of the DS game, tapping and flicking the stylus, an action that requires a non-trivial amount of practice.
Hey, hey, hey, ha-haaa!
As a consequence, the best games on the DS edition are the ones that don't require flicks, instead simple taps. And Lockstep is nothing more than simple, metronomic taps. Tap. Tap. Tap. At first. Then you're introduced to the off-beat. The space between taps. You push the stylus the bottom screen in a synchronised manner, keeping the beat, and then - ha-haaa! - it changes, necessitating a rapid double-tap followed by an instant resumption of beat-keepery. The song switches it up frequently, requiring absolute focus. It's so difficult, but when you nail it you feel like freakin' Mozart.
Ooh-oh-ooh-ha-HEY
It's just occured to me that I haven't mentioned the visuals. In Rhythm Heaven, the games are often easier without them, as they serve only to hinder you, to attempt to throw you off. Lockstep is inarguably easier to do without looking at the screen, period. Closing your eyes helps. It calls to mind Nintendo's earlier GBA experiment Bit Generations: Soundvoyager, a game intended to play entirely by sound cues. But Lockstep is an evolution. It's a transcendent and exciting experience once you nail it.
Hey, hey, hey, ha-haaa!
Then you unlock Lockstep 2. And the gloves come off.
Ooh-oh-ooh-ha-HEY
