Good game, amazing fan service, import friendly, laggy.
User Rating: 6.5 | Hatsune Miku: Project Diva PSP
Well, first I'll review the game without any mention of the lag, since it's a great game without it. If you don't know Miku Hatsune, or you don't like anime, you probably won't like this game too much. To counter that point, it is an accessible rhythm game, that's quite fun to play. It's very comparable to OSU (Elite Beat Agents) without a stylus. There are only 4 buttons in the game that are in use during gameplay. The main point is to push the button when it overlaps its matching symbol on screen. It's simple, and it works... well, for the most part. It's easy to compare it to other rhythm games out there, and compared to Guitar Hero or DDR, Project Diva feels less organic in the way you hit the notes. This is where the punishing difficulty comes in. By organic, I mean (as a skilled rhythm game player) I usually don't have to look at where the note hits, I just have to know what button I'm hitting. In this game, it is impossible to do that. You have to watch the notes at all time, which takes away some of the fun of a rhythm game. To be quite honest, if this was all the game was, just some rhythm game with songs I don't really know, and less than average gameplay I'd just put the game down and not even bother writing a review. But it's everything else that comes with the game that makes it good. The game is all about Miku, and that's why it'd help to know who she is. (Google her) All throughout the game Miku is in the background dancing to every song, and singing along. The animation is great, and incredibly fun to watch. After a song is beaten with a high enough score you can watch without any notes flying across the screen. Also, there are a ton, and I mean a ton, of things to collect in this game, from outfits, to room customization, to custom songs. Yes, this game is in Japanese, but if you have a modded system there are English patches out there, and you don't even need to patch to enjoy these extra features. There are an insane amount of costumes to get, and you can mess around with Miku's room, adding stuff for the shelves, different room themes, stuff for the walls, a drum set, just a whole lot of fun stuff. The song customization is absolutely insane. You can do everything from choosing rooms for her to be in, to how she dances, to the camera angles, to her mouth movements! It may take a while, but a worth while song is quite a sight to see.
Now to talk about the lag. Overall the game is deserving of an 8, maybe 8.5, but it is inexcusable for a game out on a console where graphics can't be controlled to have lag. Yes, it only lags on a 1000, but that's all I've got, and I'm sure a lot of people still love their 1000's. Yes, I've overclocked my 1000, yet performance was not improved. The first half of the great song list are playable without lag at all, but the second half are unplayable. It is absolutely impossible to unlock hard mode on every song, and though they are passable on easy, it is not fun at all having to play below my difficulty level. It honestly kills the game for 1000 gamers.
Anyway let's break it down!
Gameplay - 7 - It's not incredibly special in itself. As I said, it is not organic at all, and feels more like a chore to hit the notes than fun to move along with the song and easily breeze through the notes.
Graphics & graphical extras - 10 - The graphics are impressive, pushing the limits on what the PSP can achieve. This may be its downfall, as it could be what induces lag. Also, the loading screens are nearly all different, and you are able to take screenshots from in-game footage, or a picture gallery and save them as a JPG to your mem stick, which is quite awesome.
Sound - 7 - Alright, let me get this straight, the songs are great. Each and everyone is a blast to listen to. It's the menus that are awful. It's always the same 10 sec loop that makes me turn my PSP off if I'm not going to choose a different song right away.
Tilt - 9 - I'll give it some credit, this has a lot of extras that save the game from being just an average rhythm game, and it is highly import friendly, so anyone should be able to pick it up.
Final thoughts
It's basically a fan service, which is fine. The game is fun for fans, and probably not for non-fans. There are a ton of fans though, so if you're not, perhaps you should become one? If that's not on your agenda, don't pick it up. Also, if you own a 1000, be prepared to be disappointed.
For 1000's - 6.5
For anything higher - 8.5
