We don't know about you, but we love a good music game. Simple to pick up, difficult to master and perfect to play in short bursts, we've rocked our way through every Rock Band and Guitar Hero, swiped our way through both of the Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy games and aced all the songs on the Xbox 360's karaoke 'em up, Lips. We've saved babysitters in Elite Beat Agents, interviewed wrestlers in Nintendo's Rhythm Paradise and danced along to the Tetris theme in Just Dance. Next on our list? Fighting shadows with dance moves, alongside the folks from Persona 4.
Kanji looks like he could hold his own in a fight, at least.
As you can probably guess from the name, Persona 4: Dancing All Night is a game that takes the characters (and parts of the setting/story) of visual novel/role playing mash-up Persona 4, and turns it into, well, a music game. It's a suitably bizarre choice from a developer (and publisher) that never seems shy of doing something different - especially as, at first glance, Persona 4 doesn't exactly seem to lend itself to button mashing, rhythmic action. One of the PS Vita's most memorable role-playing games, Persona 4 Golden followed the antics of a group of crime-solving teens, as they tried to balance their school work, extra curricular activities and jobs with their dungeon-crawling detective work. With their small, rather conservative Japanese town racked by a spate of rather grisly murders, and only one thing tying the victims together - they're all students of the same school - this isn't your average Sherlock Holmes story. Someone has been throwing the poor teens into a mysterious, parallel TV world, where they're left to fend for themselves in a world inhabited by their deepest, darkest secrets and fears, fighting for their very lives against the things they fear the most. Leaping into the TV world after them, it was up to you to do battle with the hostile shadows that inhabit the world, fighting your way through to your friends, before it's too late.
As the title suggests, Persona 4: Dancing All Night takes the Persona 4 characters, and puts them on stage - from the kung-fu obsessive with a bottomless stomach, Chie, to the tough-looking-but-cute-animal-loving biker, Kanji, and of course, Teddie, the strange bear thing always trying to get into the pants of the female party members - only this time, rather than whacking enemies with weapons, they're all dancing their hearts out in a rhythm action button-matching music game. Using a mixture of the buttons, d-pad and analogue sticks (or by tapping the touch screen if you're really crazy), you simply have to press the right button at the right time, following the icons on screen to mash button in time with the music - something which is usually easier said than done, as we found out when we recently went hands on at last week's Gamescom.
Icons in Dancing All Night fall into a few broad categories. Yellow circles are your bog standard button presses, which move from the centre of the screen outwards in one of the six different lanes, each corresponding to a different button press, whether it's up, down or left on the d-pad on the left hand side, or the triangle, circle and X buttons on the opposite side of the Vita. From time to time, you'll get green 'bubble' like symbols coming down the screen, which tells you you'll need to hold the corresponding button down, while the long pink horizontal lines show when two buttons, generally opposite each other on the Vita, need to be pressed together. Finally, and much easier to miss and/or tie your fingers in knots with, are the massive screen-sized coloured circles that radiate outwards, looking a bit too much like part of the scenery at times, which you need to wiggle the analogue stick for.
Do the monkey with me!
To be honest though, it all sounds a lot harder than it actually is, and Persona 4: Dancing All Night seems like a seriously solid music game, once you get the hang of all the different symbols and such. Do well, and your character will enter Fever mode, racking up points faster, and if you manage to majorly ace a song (as our rhythm action god of an Editor, Ian did), your character's Persona (their shadow form friend) crashes onto the stage at the end for a big finish - in our demo, tough guy Kanji's skull-crossed Persona exploded onto the stage, played a short drum solo and promptly left again, mere seconds later. For some reason. But, with more than thirty different songs, multiple difficulties and oodles of outfits and accessories to unlock for your favourite characters, it certainly appears to be a pretty chock-a-block title, reminiscent of the Hatsune Miku: Project Diva vocaloid music games, also for the PS Vita (and Playstation 3).
But shimmying your stuff on the stage is only a small part of Persona 4: Dancing All Night, as the game wraps the core button-matching gameplay inside a rather extensive story mode. A visual novel of sorts, it tells the tail of the Persona 4 gang's latest rescue mission - finding and saving the members of mega-idol Rise's 'Kanamin Kitchen' pop group, who've disappeared into a brand new world. Instead of the previous game's Midnight Channel, they're now stranded in the mysterious Midnight Stage, terrorised once more by the evil Shadow enemies. The best way to defeat these Shadows and save your friends? With dance offs, naturally. With branching paths, multiple endings and all your favourite Persona 4 characters, Dancing All Night is shaping up to be one heck of a game.
Persona 4: Dancing All Night will be boogieing it's way onto the PS Vita in the coming months, sometime this Autumn. Promising some light-hearted, whacky rhythm actioning, all wrapped up in a substantial visual novel-esque story mode, it's a fusion of two of our favourite genres - we can't wait!
