Vocaloid!

For the past couple of weeks, I've been playing quite a lot of Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA on PSP. It can be a bit complicated explaining quite what that is though. It's not every day that you play a rhythm game by Sega featuring a virtual idol who is the face of synthetic singing software by Yamaha. Although she's also featured on a Super GT racing team's BMW Z4, maybe a videogame isn't that odd.

The game itself is standard rhythm game fare, essentially consisting of pressing a sequence of buttons in time to a display, scoring points depending on how accurate you are. If you do well, you unlock extra songs, costumes and items for Miku's room. In Miku's room, Miku will simply wander about and interact with furniture and decorations that you put up for her. It's very simplistic.

Which seems to kind of be the point for Project DIVA. It's mostly feels like a game for existing Vocaloid fans where they can see Miku actually move about to songs, rather than fan made videos featuring a sequence of static images. There's even a feature to simply watch the music videos rather than play the rhythm game section.

Because of it's origins as music designing software, the game features a variety of composers and in some cases, animators for the dance routines. It's nothing spectacular, but it is fun, and the music is pretty damn catchy at times. I'm just glad I was already a fan!