Party Game Sundays: Let's Tap

After playing the gem that was Cruise Ship Vacation Games I demanded that we play the game I had purchased for our Sunday shenanigans. Last week something made me recall the game Let's Tap, which for some reason SEGA published. When I looked it up on Amazon they had one copy left in stock for the hot hot sale price of $13.50, which I promptly bought. The entire concept of the game is that you set a Wii remote face down on a box and tap your fingers on the box. I knew that if it worked as intended it could be really cool, but figured that the much more likely alternative of it not working and sucking terribly would be the case.

Tap to make the crazy stick men move!

In a crazy turn of events tapping on a box to make a Wii remote vibrate works insanely well. I figured that it would suck, because almost all motion control involving a Wii remote is awful. I feel confident in saying that Let's Tap is one of the most fun games we've ever played on a Sunday evening. It's awesome slogan of "Tap into a new party experience" is actually quite fitting.

When you first boot up the game it demands that you set the Wii remote face down on a box so that you can play the tutorial. I, being a weirdo, brought two boxes with me to our Sunday gathering. One was from my wireless Logitech keyboard and the other was the box my Song of Fire and Ice book collection came in. Both of them actually worked very well, as did the board game boxes we had on hand. The tutorial has you tapping on the box in order to show you just what the hell it is you need to be doing.

Tapping the box lightly is what you want to do, because if you do it too hard the game pops up a message in the corner yelling at you for tapping too hard. You hardly need to tap at all in order for the game to recognize movement, which completely blew my mind. You even navigate the game's menus by tapping and then select an option by double tapping quickly.

Let's Tap has five modes, all of which can be played with up to four players. Tap Runner is the first mode and my personal favorite. Each player is a neon colored stick man, and they want to try and reach the goal first. Tapping lightly as fast as you can makes your character run. If you tap down hard you'll jump. The first few stages are fairly straightforward and have you jumping over hurdles, but as it progresses things get pretty crazy. Eventually there are boosts in the air that propel your character forwards and weird black holes that change your place on the map. This mode was definitely the most exciting. The way each stage is set up allows for crazy comebacks and insane photo finishes.

Tap Runner is probably the best mode.

Rhythm Tap is a rhythm based mode just as it sounds. It reminded me quite a bit of Taiko Drum Master. Notes run past on a line and you need to tap when they reach the center of your circle. It's the same concept as Guitar Hero and almost every rhythm game before it, but you're tapping on a cardboard box. There are 16 tracks to play through and they're appropriately crazy and Japanese. The major downside to the mode is that you're competing for score, but you can rapidly tap the box the entire time and it doesn't penalize you at all. When played normally though it's very fun. It's more challenging than most rhythm games though, because when your opponent is off beat you can hear it on their box and it totally screws with you.

Tap your finger to the hot beats of Let's Tap.

The other three modes aren't really anything special, but at least they're unique. Silent Blocks is a mix between Jenga and a match three game. Bubble Voyager is a multiplayer battle mode, where you tap the box to shoot missiles at your opponents. The final mode is by far the dumbest, which you might be able to guess from it's name of Visualizer. It's basically a windows media player visualizer, but when you tap the box something crazy happens on screen. This ended with us madly tapping for around ten minutes as I collapsed laughing from how stupid the whole scenario was.

While there are only two modes that are truly worth playing in Let's Tap I think I got my $13.50's worth out of it. I had a lot of fun and I'm almost certainly going to play this game again, which is not something I'd say about 90% of the games we've played so far during Party Game Sundays.

Let's Tap has an innovative way of using the Wii-remote and it actually works properly. It doesn't necessarily have a lot of content, but the content that it does have is super fun, or at the very least entertaining to try out once. If you have a spare cardboard box you should definitely consider giving Let's Tap a shot. It's a party game that doesn't suck!