Elite Beat Agents

Elite Beat Agents is an interesting case. It's a Western-oriented sequel to a Japan-only rhythm game where you press buttons, trace lines, and spin wheels on the DS touch screen in tune with various pop/rock/disco covers. In the background, three comically-serious agents perform choreography to cheer up a series of people who are having a bad day (each song has its own story, including a jarringly odd Christmas one). The gameplay is supremely fun, and offers multiple levels of difficulty for people with any kind of experience with rhythm games (including "none"), as well as neat unlockables. It's kind of mystery why EBA never got a sequel, but one can assume that licensing the songs was prohibitively expensive for a mid-budget game. Still, the EBA style of rhythm gaming is so addictive that it lives on through fan projects like osu!, and the game itself retains a rightfully-earned reputation as one of the DS's best.

No real complaints about the gameplay to speak of. You'd think all the overlapping elements would mess with the ability to interpret what notes to hit, but EBA remains intuitive and fun even as it gets very, very hard. The presentation of the story is also suitably wacky, albeit corny, but the soundtrack is just weird, with great disco and pop hits like Canned Heat and Survivor being met with odd pop-punk choices from Stereogram, Sum 41 and Hoobastank.