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Let’s Tap Review for Nintendo Wii

Let’s Tap Review for Nintendo Wii

Let’s Tap is a very interesting title. While the game boasts an all-new control mechanism, at first glance you wouldn’t think this would involve tapping your fingertips and palms on a box you had lying around the house. Even though this sounds bad on paper, and I certainly had my reservations about this title prior to playing, once I got over the awkwardness of playing my Wii with a box, I actually started having some considerable fun.

Let's Tap screenshot

As you may have guessed from the title, this game is all about the tapping. You play by placing your Wii-mote on top of a box and tapping. Although any box will do, I tested out several boxes for… ahem… tapability, and I found that not all boxes are created equal for Let’s Tap.

First, I tried an old DDR mat box with the mat still in it. I thought the box’s size and squishy interior would make for an ideal tap surface. However, I was quite mistaken. Using the DDR box made the game a lot less responsive, and I found that some of my small taps were not even registering. Next, I tried an old Amazon.com shipping box (with nothing inside) this worked very well, as it provided a nice rigid surface with which to tap. However, the best tapping surface I tried out had to be an old board game box. This box gave me plenty of tapping real estate, and it also provided just the right amount of feedback. From testing out all these different boxes, I think I can postulate that if you decide to give Let’s Tap a try, you will need a box that is hollow on the inside, with a thin tapping surface but a wide construction.

Once I found my ideal tapping surface, I have to say that I was impressed with the overall tap mechanic. The game never really calls for anything beyond a light, medium, or firm tap, and I never had any trouble with the controls, which was a very nice surprise.

Let's Tap screenshot

Even though the centerpiece of this game is its box-tapping mechanism, you won’t have very much fun if there’s nothing to tap to. Let’s Tap features four distinct mini-games that you can play with your box, as well as a visualizer that lets you tap out cool designs and funky patterns.

The first game (and probably the best to get into early on) is Tap Runner. This mini-game plays a bit like Track and Field, and it puts you on an astronomically set course where you must jump hurdles, walk tightropes, and avoid obstacles that may crash down on you. You tap light to jog, moderately to run, and firmly to jump. There are about 20 levels, and you can play with up to three friends. This mini-game is fairly fun, but after the first few levels, just running and jumping gets a little monotonous.

Let's Tap screenshot

The next mini-game is the one I think most people saw coming. It is a drum simulator known as Rhythm Tap. This takes high energy dance tunes (think DDR) and gives you a beat to tap out. Icons that flash across the screen will let you know whether you should be tapping softly, normally, or firmly, and there are special icons that indicate rapid tapping or accelerated tap strength. However, much like Tap Runner, after the first few levels I found myself increasingly bored with Rhythm Tap.

By the time I started playing Silent Blocks, the puzzle-centric element of Let’s Tap, the main problem with this title started becoming clearer. This mini-game’s premise revolves around pulling blocks out from a tower without it tumbling over by tapping gently on your box. An advanced version also allows for you to remove mass blocks by linking up like colors. However, like the other two mini-games, this one just couldn’t hold my interest.

Let's Tap screenshot

The only mini-game here that I found to have any real staying power was the 2D adventure game: Bubble Voyager. This game revolves around getting a little rocket hero around levels filled with obstacles by using a tap-controlled jetpack. This game was a lot of fun, although controlling the jetpack is a little herky-jerky at first and there is a bit of a learning curve, as Let’s Tap doesn’t exactly tell you how to avoid obstacles, land, or regain health, so you’ll have to figure it out on your own. Still, if I had to pick a favorite Let’s Tap mode, this would be it.

As for the game’s visuals, Let’s Tap has a very simplistic style, which allows you to really focus on the gameplay. Most levels feature bare-bones graphics with stylized backgrounds, which look fairly good, just not incredibly detailed. However, what Let’s Tap lacks in detail, it more than makes up for in color. Let’s Tap has to be one of the brightest games I have played in recent memory, with vivid splashes of orange and yellow frequently populating the screen. Even the Tap Run levels, which take place in space, feature neon-colored stick figure characters and bright orange and green obstacles.

Unfortunately, this is where our tapping journey ends. Although Let’s Tap has some really great ideas, my main problem with this title is that there just isn’t enough to it. Unfortunately, with just four games and a visualizer, the game feels more like a tech or gameplay demo rather than a full-fledged game. If there were more modes or methods of play, I could really get behind Let’s Tap, as it is a lot of fun, and the tapping mechanism works very well (with the right box, of course.). As it stands, however, Let’s Tap is a title that is a whole lot of fun for about three or four hours. Then you’ll probably put it on the shelf, put away your box, and never tap again. But, for those few hours, you’re pretty much guaranteed a good time.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.9 Graphics
Graphics are very simple, but I am pretty sure that’s the point. The visual style of the game is extremely colorful. 4.1 Control
Tap mechanics work very well in most mini-games, the only one with somewhat of a learning curve is the action side-scroller, Bubble Voyager. 3.3 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Music is fairly good in the rhythm section, but level music in other modes is lacking. 3.0

Play Value
This is where Let’s Tap falls flat. Although there are plenty of good ideas at work here, there just isn’t enough to keep you coming back for more.

3.4 Overall Rating – Fair
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Let’s Tap presents an assortment of different finger-tapping challenges for players to master, in Tap Runner differing finger tapping pressure makes simple stick figure racers run through an obstacle course, whilst Visualizer allows users to create dazzling fireworks, dramatic paint strokes and other effects as they tap out different rhythm patterns corresponding to different effects.
  • Silent Blocks finds players taking turns removing blocks from a large stack, but tapping too hard will result in a collapsing stack of blocks.
  • Bubble Voyager allows players to fly through space, blasting obstacles and enemies in order to reach the far stretches of the universe, and finally Rhythm Tap sees players tapping their fingers in time to high energy music.

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