EDITOR'S NOTE:
A Vocaloid game? Really? Oh man, who'd we lose a bet with to have to do this?
Now, I don't know if you remember the old version of this page, and now you're thinking, "Old version? You mean this is a new version?! But it's still shit!", but let me finish first. The old version of this page had PV shots that we took ourselves, because the game actually allows you to take screenshots in that mode, but gameplay shots were from Andriasang (R.I.P.) because we couldn't take screenshots. Now, however, we can! Because we fitted our PSP with a screenshot mod! Or we got someone else to do it for us (thanks, Clarkson) because we're shit at everything! So, those in-game shots have been replaced with ones we didn't steal.
More importantly, this is a bit of departure from normal Gaming Hell fare, not just because it's a bloody Vocaloid game (haha this is our standard stuff now, oh God why) but because there are two elements of the game- the Edit and DIVA Room modes- that we're completely ignoring, as they're surplus to the main game. This is less a review of the package as a whole, and more about our experience with the game and its basic mechanics, how they work, and how they don't work. Bordering on NEW GAMES JOURNALISM here, which is a scary thought indeed. Be afraid.
Also, we wanted to try and keep the Vocaloid names western (forenames first, surnames last) but that became a total mess. So first names only, except in the opening paragraph. We are Gaming Hell, and we don't play by your rules.
Also also, we phoned in for help on this one from a Twitter person, Matchi_chan, who is a much bigger Vocaloid fan than us. They fact-checked it for us. So ta for that. They also had a guide to extracting the audio elements from the game, but it's long been removed so we've snipped that bit out.
This is the story of how I became the worst Vocaloid fan in the world.
I like my PSP, you see. Nice screen, nice features, and it has a selection of Touhou themes and also Arle Nadja so it's boss as hell. A few months ago though, I had a problem with it- every game I had for it was either a remake (Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles), a port (Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower) or a collection of old, old games (God, where to start- SNK Arcade Classics 0, Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded, Taito Legends Power-Up)... Let's not even get started on the downloadable titles (JumpingFlash!). After playing Prehistoric Isle in 1930s to death (and, er, reaching a point in Ridge Racer where I couldn't get any further) I decided I needed something new. Something I hadn't played before. Something... Imported. While most of the interesting import-only PSP games are yet more game collections (Salamander Portable, aww yeah) or impenetrable visual novels (see what I did there, hurrr), I decided to hurl myself into new, dangerous territory. After quickly checking with Twitter which version to get (the first is very limited, Extend isn't much of a leap forward) I ordered a copy of Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA 2nd, published by the masters of Blue Sky Gaming, Sega (indeed, as explained in this Iwata Asks article, the kings of Blue Sky Gaming, SEGA AM2, have been involved in the series since 2009! Alas, that's not the case with this one, as 'planning and general development' is credited to Dingo Inc., a Tokyo-based developer also known for the PhotoKano games. I'd heard of the series before (mostly good things, too) so I figured, why not? It'd be a learning experience, I told myself.
A brief explanation for those who aren't familiar with Hatsune Miku (and those who skipped the Groups page on this subject. Miku is a Vocaloid (specifically in the Vocaloid 2 range), a piece of software created by Yamaha and distributed by Crypton Future Media with a persona (in the case of Miku, a teal-haired girl with ridiculous twintails) designed for making music by supplying vocals. Essentially a bank of sound files recorded by a real person (in Miku's case, Saki Fujita), you use the software to add vocals to music without the need to strain your own vocal chords. For most intents and purposes it's just a tool for music making, but a fan culture rivalling even that of Touhou has spawned surrounding Miku and the other Vocaloids. However, it's a bit different from other fan cultures, in that it wouldn't exist at all without them- all that Crypton Future Media make are the sound banks, and it's up to the fans to make beautiful music. To this end, producers (the correct term for those who make music with Vocaloids) from all over the internet have created an insane amount of music, covering pretty much every genre under the sun, and Crypton Future Media have cashed in like no-one's business with an inordinate amount of merchandise, resulting in the most baffling car advert ever made. Although there are many different Vocaloids available (many of which are 'playable' in this game) Miku is the most recognisable and it's why she has her mug plastered all over the box of this video game. There are obviously many other facets to Vocaloid culture that we're glossing over, but we ain't a wiki. We play video games, apparently, so let's get to that.
Anyway, it should be obvious that Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA 2nd is a rhythm game.
The mechanics are extremely simple, which is a given because this isn't one of your fancier rhythm games that has the luxury of an over-sized peripheral controller- all you need are the face buttons and the D-Pad. Button prompts will appear on-screen in three forms (the face buttons solo, a face button plus the corresponding D-Pad direction, and ones that need you to hold a face button for a specific amount of time) and you need to press the right button in time with the little clock hand on each prompt- there are five different 'ratings' for each note hit (Cool, Fair, Safe, Sad and Worst) but only Cool (perfect) and Fair (just about) will keep your combo going. Getting any of the others will break your combo and, in the case of Sad and Worst, will probably reduce your life meter in the corner of the screen- if that hits bottom, the song is instantly over.
It's hardly the most in-depth rhythm game you'll ever play, but it keeps you on your toes, as one of its more novel features is that the button prompts aren't neatly arranged like in Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution- they'll float on-screen wherever they want (although it's the same every time each song) which means you'll have to keep darting your eyes around the screen during gameplay (as a hint, you can keep track of what notes are coming next by looking to the corners of the screen). This also means that it's easy to lose track of what's happening, though, especially since some of the background videos have red herrings (there's a beachball in one that looks exactly like the Circle button). Additionally, each song has a 'Chance Time' where you get 1000 bonus points for every note you hit while maintaining a combo, but as far as mechanics go, that's your lot. Well, that and Easy and Normal use less face buttons (one and two respectively) than Hard and Extreme, which use all four (and man, some of those Extreme songs are tough).
Overall, it's a pretty solid title, with a slight learning curve- initially I was ready to give up because the opening songs are quite difficult, and every now and then certain songs (Marginal and Saihate) will impede your progress, but I eventually got the hang of the rhythm and stormed through Hard and Extreme (except for the last song which is aaaahhhh). It works well enough, and, the first time through at least, has a 'just one more song' element to it. The problem with this basic approach is that it never really feels like you're doing anything, a feeling that's exacerbated by some of the other elements in the game. It's little things, honestly, like the fact that whether you hit a note right or not, button presses make the exact same noise (unlike Guitar Hero which tells you when you've got it right) and the 'promotional video' (PV) for the song- some of which, to be fair, are quite amusing- plays in the background and never changes, no matter how well you're doing. In fact, the PVs can sometimes be a hindrance, because as well as the odd visual red herring, some are so elaborate they cause the game to slow down (Melt is a good example) and in a rhythm game, whoa, that's not right! Little things like this mean you don't really get any immediate feedback aside from the combo meter, if you've even got one going.
More free-form rhythm games like Parappa the Rapper and Space Channel 5 offer instant feedback when you screw up, and even though Dance Dance Revolution has videos playing in the background like this game, that's different because you are actually dancing so it feels like you're accomplishing something when you hit those notes. All Project DIVA has is pressin' buttons while watchin' Miku (or, if you're like me and want to stick it to the man, Haku, official Vocaloid of Gaming Hell), and while it is fun to an extent- for the first week I was playing the game like it was my job, and certain songs on Extreme like Colorful x Melody make you really work to survive- you will eventually reach a point where you're just playing out of habit (or, rather, you're just playing to grind for DIVA Points to unlock the intimidating amount of costumes) and the feeling of satisfaction is gone.
(Well, unless you're a real Vocaloid fan, then you get a little extra thrill-power from unlocking your favourite songs.)
(And then you start to cry because you've just unlocked a song you hate and Sega is laughing at you.)
Indeed, getting a feel for how well you're doing in a particular song is never that clear, mostly because the life meter (which is a bit out-of-the-way, screen-wise) has nothing to do with whether you'll receive a passing grade (Standard, Great, Excellent or Perfect) or fail (Cheap and MissXTake)- you can get to the end of a song without dying and still fail miserably, as succeeding a song is based on how many Cool and Fair notes you hit rather than whether you survive. The minimum amount of notes you have to hit are quite high too, and the bar that tells you what rank you're going to get is teeny-tiny and barely moves until near the end of a song! This is a big contrast to Dance Dance Revolution, which still lets you play as long as you survive, and has the life-bar clear as crystal at the top of the screen. When you first start playing the game, this is maddening as you have to unlock each song by beating previous ones, and it doesn't help that two of the starting songs (Romeo and Cinderella and Magnet) are among the most difficult in the game.
In fact, one of my Twitter followers, Matchi_chan (who checked this article to make sure I didn't fluff it up) got the game shortly after me and in their tweets about it, they summed up this problem- several times they reached the end of Romeo and Cinderella and still didn't pass, which hampered their enjoyment somewhat. It was particularly disheartening because they're a real fan of Vocaloid, and yet the wonky structure meant they weren't able to unlock the songs they wanted. It sounds silly, but a few changes in the basic mechanics would've rectified this- in particular, it baffles me why the life meter is divorced from whether you 'pass' the song or not and yet there's also a grading system. A better system, perhaps, would've been keeping the ranks but to allow players to progress to the next song as long as they made it through the song alive on Normal/Easy difficulty, with higher difficulties keeping the stricter passing grades- that way you can still make progress and it offers a better, more sensible challenge for those who want the higher difficulties.
It's a shame Sega/Dingo/whoever worked on this thing didn't get the basic mechanics down solid, because in every other area Project DIVA 2nd hits all the right notes (Arf! Arf!). The presentation is top-class- I'm almost prepared to call it a Blue Skies Game because holy hell is this aggressively bright and happy, and pretty impressive for a PSP game. The character models in particular are very expressive and detailed (some of the costumes are so over the top), and while they aren't as polished as the models in Project DIVA Arcade or Dreamy Theatre (we'll see DT later), I think the slightly lower-poly count models here add a certain charm to the game. Additionally, each song has a completely different 'stage' for the PV, offering lots of visual variety. Naturally, the aesthetic definitely won't appeal to some players, especially since there are unlockable swimsuit costumes guaranteed to make you uncomfortable when playing in public, but it's mostly safe (unless you read the translated lyrics for some of the songs, oh my) and it's actually a nice contrast to some of the miserably grey video games out there (Blue Skies forever!).
The game is also packed to the rafters with content, mostly in the form of songs (over 40 in all), DIVA Room stuff (if that's your bag, it's like a mini version of The Sims) and costumes (most of which belong to Miku) although you might get a little tired of it before unlocking all the costumes, as after you've beaten every song on every difficulty, all that's left is the grind. Unless you can nail a Perfect on an Extreme song which nets you 30000 DIVA points and will get you all those costumes fairly quickly. Assuming you are some kind of rhythm gaming robot. Those with a Japanese PSN account (we refuse to call it SEN) can also grab a few extra songs and costumes (including crossover content with The Idolm@ster, a series which back in 2010 or whatever I said, ahem, no thank you I'll pass ta, after this nonsense, before fully submitting to our 765 overlords).
What I was most interested in, however, was the music itself. Before this, my experience with Vocaloid songs was limited mostly to this screechingly awful remix of Daddy Mulk from The Ninja Warriors (please note, Daddy Mulk is one of my favourite vid-con songs) and the remix of Quartet Theme from Project: DIVA Arcade so it was nice to find that 90% of the songs on here are really good, with a wider genre range than I was expecting (I was steeling myself for lots and lots of techno, but dude there's a ragtime song on here oh my god i am not even kidding aw yeah). More importantly, unlike the aforementioned Daddy Mulk remix, these songs have the benefit of coming from some of the most prolific Vocaloid producers (OSTER project, ryo, iroha, DECO*27, etc.), which means they sound professional, well-produced and catchy as all hell- it would take too long to list all my favourites, but some include World is Mine, Ai Kotoba and Just Be Friends.
Not all of them were my cup of tea (Melt is almost alright but hits notes only dogs can hear, and Butterfly On Your Right Shoulder, nooooo) and Vocaloid music isn't going to be to everyone's taste, but at the very least there's plenty of variety (the three opening songs range from cutesy pop to aggressive piano), it doesn't sound cheap like some synthesised music, and I promise you the English lyrics in PoPiPo are incredibly amusing (actually, any English in the songs sounds funny). You've got that, at least. Seriously though, this is some very well-produced music that should hopefully cater to your musical tastes in some way, and with all the attention given to every little detail, this would be an ideal fan service game... If the game mechanics were tweaked a bit, of course.
As I said at the start, this was a learning experience for me, and I definitely learnt something. For a start, it pretty much destroyed all of my misconceptions about Vocaloids (I wouldn't call myself a proper fan just yet, but, uh, I'm still looking for Luka songs) and, in particular, showed me that a good Vocaloid song has to have effort put into it in order to really sound good. It's like when people make chiptune versions of 32-bit songs but just shove it in a program that does it automatically- no, that ain't right! You gotta work at it! More importantly, it taught me a few things about rhythm games, and why titles like Guitar Hero and Parappa the Rapper work- it's all about the feedback, the feeling that you're doing something to contribute to the song. Project DIVA 2nd is kinda missing that. It doesn't make it a bad game, of course- the content alone will be enough to make you go back to it for at least a week or so, and the mechanics are satisfying to begin with. It's just that lack of feedback, and the initial frustration when you can't unlock songs because you've got little indication of how you're doing, that really brings it down. If you're looking for something different on the PSP, though, this is your best bet. It's bright, it's colourful, and I guarantee you won't play anything quite like it anywhere else. Just try not to throw your PSP at the wall in despair, alright?
It also has that amazing scene of your chosen Vocaloid hugging Godzilla, so what more do you want?
For proving that sometimes you need a little feedback in your music, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA 2nd is awarded...
In a sentence, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA 2nd is...
The video game equivalent of popping bubblewrap- fun, but lacking somewhat.