Last November, I got a game called Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (Go! Fight Cheer Squad). It features a group of tough male cheerleaders helping people around their city by dancing to music inspire people in their time of need. You control their cheers by tapping points on the screen. It’s as awesome as it sounds, or perhaps moreso. Words simply do not describe this great game concept.
The game is a good test of accurate tapping of the Nintendo DS touch screen in time with music. I was able to get to the last stage, where you have to save the world by dancing to the song Ready Steady Go! This song is known to be the hardest in the game, because it’s long and very fast. Compared to the levels that proceed it, it’s much more difficult. Beating this stage opens up the next difficult level of the game by unlocking a new cheerleader to use. I was stuck trying to beat the "Normal" difficulty for the past seven months. SEVEN MONTHS.
Here is the stage in question, Ready, Steady, Go! :
This isn’t me beating the stage, but I’ve been playing this exact same level for the past seven months.
When I first got to this stage a few months ago, I couldn’t even make it more than a minute before dying. This discouraged me, but I kept trying to improve. Later, I was able to get to the "spinners" of the stage, but not much farther. I simply didn’t have enough of the "cheer life bar" left to continue. I was told that if you hit the last set of numbers in a color group exactly correct you get twice the energy refilled in your "cheer life bar". Armed with this knowledge, I was able to progress to later parts of the song, but I still was just a little short of completing the song since I hadn’t memorized the new sections yet.
Today, I got the fartherest I ever had without beating a level. I actually got to the last "spinner" I needed to complete to finish the song only to fail. Determined, and unwilling to go crazy after being so close to victory, I finally beat the song. Seven months of on again off again work rewarded. It was very satisfying. I’ve unlocked the third male cheerleader and can look forward to the "hard" difficulty.
So far the songs in the new difficulty are much harder, but actually follow the beat of the song more closely and are easier to learn to a degree. They do require very accurate tapping and a lot of memorization. I’m currently stuck on one song, but at least it’s a new song. I’m not sure I can ever listen to Ready Steady Go without my blood pressure rising in frustration thinking about at all the times I failed to complete that song.
That being said, Ouendan is one of my absolute favorite games on the Nintendo DS. Only a very good game could keep me playing after seven months of failure. I’ve sold off some games, bought some new ones, but I always come back to Ouendan from time to time to try to unlock a new song or try to do better.
