Patapon 2 Helps You Keep Your Groove

In Patapon you controlled an assortment of highly stylized characters by tapping out music on the four face buttons of the Playstation Portable. I was a big fan of the game, but found over time that unless I gave it 100 percent of my attention I would often lose the beat.

Sounds like I wasn't the only one.

Sony Computer Entertainment designer Hiroyuki Kotani told us that Patapon 2 will include a couple of features that will make keeping the game-playing rhythm alive easier. Now once you hit a few stanzas of the rhythm and hop into Fever mode it's much harder to drop the ball and get kicked backed out.

The first misstep you make brings a little skull badge up on your Fever mode banner. Then the game emphasizes the rhythm with audio cues, and if you still screw it up you revert to normal mode.

"The rhythm is made much easier this time," Kotani said. "We wanted to expand the number of users, that's also why we added multiplayer."