I've been playing Beatmania for years, and I love Frequency and Amplitude. When I hear, "music game," that's the type of gameplay that comes to mind. Technic Beat threw me for a loop. You play as a little cute character that walks around on a square playing field. Circles start appearing on the ground in predetermined locations, and it's your job to unleash the beats inside of them.

Gameplay consists of walking your character into one of these circles as a smaller concentric circle starts to expand towards the edge. When the smaller circle meets the larger circle, you press the square button. There's your rhythm game. The circles come in different sizes and can get you running frantically around the board. While not so bad early on, the harder songs are simply chaos.

There are some advanced techniques that can help you progress to the higher difficultly songs. If you pop a circle that is interlocked with another circle, then the second one will activate automatically. These chains work for as many circles are interlocked. While the circles are going off on their own, you get a chance to catch your breath. Your one weapon to help make this happen is the ability to pick up a circle and carry it to another location before they activate it. In the later songs, you'll not only have to move almost every circle you activate, but you almost have to memorize where to move it.

It's a fun little system, but I do have a couple of complaints. First, I didn't feel like I was making the music. So much of the song plays as background music, that the little beat that you add by activating the circles is disappointing. The feeling of playing or building a song that you get from a game like Beatmania or Frequency is what I love so much about the genre. I also wish that more of the difficulty revolved around the rhythm of the music, not the twitchy action part. As it is, it's very simple to time the your button press to the joining of the two circles.

Technic Beat has a few different modes to play, but most of the game is just trying out different songs in Arcade Mode. There's a Channel Mode within Arcade that pre-packages some songs together, which is fun way to play through the game. The graphics are bright and befitting, like Katamari Damacy. The music and sound effects, which can make or break this type of game, are both above average. The music tracks are a mix of techno and remixed theme music from old Namco arcade games. It's not my favorite selection of tunes, but I found a few songs that I really loved. The sounds effects are great, and the bass comes out strong. But, like I said, the amount of input you have via these effects should have been emphasized more in the game.

It's a busy time of year for music games and video games in general. Technic Beat is available new for only $20, and if you're into the genre then it shouldn't be hard to find a place in your library for it. I love the old standbys better for sure, but there's still plenty of enjoyment to be had here for all types of gamers.