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Posted on October 14th, 2007 - 1860 Reads

Rated Everyone High School Musical: Makin' The Cut! Nintendo DS Review

-- Written by Saul Santiago



 The Disney Channel movie hit-"High School Musical"-comes to the Nintendo DS in High School Musical: Makin' The Cut!. Having never seen the show, I had to refer to the press kit to learn a little bit more about the franchise. In the game, you play as one of six "High School Musical" stars-Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay, Ryan, Char, or Taylor, though you can customize your own character as well.

The game includes 12 songs from the two "High School Musical" movies, with four difficulty levels. The gameplay is instantly familiar to anyone who has played the wonderful Elite Beat Agents. In fact, this game may as well be called Elite Beat Agents: Disney Edition. Of course, like the Disney edition of Meteos, adding a Disney tag to a great gameplay idea isn't necessarily a bad thing. As a matter of fact, just like Disney Meteos, this game remains true enough to the Elite Beat Agents gameplay mechanic that it succeeds in providing a rhythm-based fix for those who've beaten EBA. If you've never played this type of game before, here's a quick breakdown of the gameplay mechanic:

A song plays in the background while targets appear on the screen. The objective is to tap each target in rhythm with the music playing in the background. Of course, the challenge is in timing the tapping of the on-screen target at the optimal time to score points on each target. You don't tap the target as soon as it appears, and instead wait for the target's circular indicator to turn green (in unison with the song's beat) before you tap it. Like all good rhythm-based games, part of the fun is getting into the groove with the song and tapping the targets based on the song's beat rather than the indicator on the target.

Whether you find the songs and theme appealing is really more of a personal issue, and I'm sure fans of the show will be ecstatic to hear their favorite tunes reproduced on this cart because they sound great for being so heavily compressed. In general, the songs lend themselves well to rhythm based genre, though some of the songs are definitely too slow paced to be exciting. With the game's demographics likely skewing young, that's not a big deal. The character models are pretty basic 3D models and look nothing like the Disney stars they portray. Perhaps 2D graphics would have served this game better. Not that this matters, of course, because the action on the top screen (with the stars dancing through the song) isn't relevant. You focus on the lower screens and hitting the targets, so you wouldn't be able to see the performances unless your viewing a replay of the performance.

In terms of gameplay, Disney's High School Musical is mostly spot on. There are some instances where the optical target taps are not 100% in sync with the beat, but for the most part, the targets and timing are executed perfectly. The game isn't very challenging otherwise, although the higher difficulty levels will definitely test even the most hardcore EBA player. For younger players, the action remains fairly tame and the difficulty ramps up slowly enough so that they can keep up. The different backgrounds are nowhere near as vibrant or varied as they should be, mostly because the actual performances by the Disney stars happen on the top screen.

Overall, this game is a perfectly competent recreation of Elite Beat Agents for the Disney High School Musical fans. For fans of this genre, regardless of age, this game will certainly be fun as well. The song selection could use a bit more variety, and certainly some faster paced songs as well. Still, Disney's High School Musical: Makin' the Cut gets the gameplay basics of this genre right, and in the end, that's the most important element in making a fun rhythm based game.

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