Groove Coaster Wai Wai Party!!!!

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen, Local Wireless)

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Review:

The Groove Coaster series (in some regions called Rhythmvaders) started on iOS in 2011, and in the time since it has come to other platforms, including arcades, and even the PC, but with the release of Wai Wai Party on the Nintendo Switch in 2019, the series makes its first jump to consoles. Like its predecessors, Groove Coaster Wai Wai Party is a Music-Rhythm game that has players following a cursor on a line and hitting notes when the cursor passes them on that line.

Visually, this is a game that feels very much like it is trying to distract the player. Where in most games the seizure warning at the beginning of the game feels like a formality, here it feels fully justified, as players will be assaulted with all manner of flashing lights and various visuals popping onto the screen. I feel the distracting nature of the visuals is intentional, as the course of the line you follow as you play also shifts around in an erratic fashion. Whether you find this a charming added challenge in the gameplay or a frustrating and unnecessary element will probably come down to personal preference. At the very least I can say that the visuals are lively, and each different song seems to have its own unique visual presentation, even if those visuals are usually abstract and don’t necessarily have anything to do with the song they accompany.

As for the sound, well, first of all, I hope you like J-Pop, because with rare exceptions that’s pretty much everything here, with the game’s songs separated into categories like vocaloid songs, anime soundtracks, and so on. If you’re a fan of this stuff, you’ll undoubtedly find a lot to like in this game’s good number of songs, but if you’re wanting variety, this probably isn’t the game for you.

However, when talking about the sound, I also have to mention the sound effect noises your cursor makes as you enter in notes. Unfortunately, more often than not these noises are distracting and don’t fit the song well, and while you do get the ability to unlock different sets of sound effects noises, from the start you don’t have much to choose from, and as a result this element of the game will actively be making the musical experience worse for a while – sorry, but the last thing I want while playing the Neon Genesis Evangelion theme is to have Space Invader noises shoved into it.

On the gameplay side of things, Groove Coaster keeps things fairly simple – a brief tutorial at the beginning of the game introduces players to the different kinds of notes, but basically players will be responding to them by pressing any button on either the left side of the controller, the right side, or a combination of both. The game is pretty flexible about this, even letting players use motion controls for some of this if they want (the motion controls work fine and are reasonably responsive, but I don’t see any reason players would use them over traditional button controls).

While this gameplay is fairly standard, I do give the game credit for having a pretty nice progression system, with players unlocking new songs, avatars, and other things not necessarily based on which songs they complete, but based on specific goals on a chart, such as “complete five vocaloid songs” and “get a perfect score on an Easy song”.

Still, despite how user-friendly the basic gameplay is, and the nice stuff the game does with progression, I still have a problem with the way Groove Coaster Wai Wai Party is constantly pushing you out of “getting into the groove” rather than bringing you into it. It’s not just the presentation that keeps trying to distract you from the music, it’s not just the sounds the game makes as you’re hitting notes that clash with the music, it’s also little things like the game having “secret notes” that players are expected to hunt for without any indication where those notes might be. Add to that the lack of variety in the music, and Groove Coaster is a game that, while it has its charms, and is still a decent entry in the genre, fails to reach the top tier of music-rhythm games on the Nintendo Switch.

tl;dr – Groove Coaster is a Music-Rhythm game where players play notes as their cursor crosses them on a line that’s constantly shifting and moving. The core gameplay here is decent, but the game keeps doing things seemingly designed to push players out of the groove rather than bringing them into it, such as its distracting presentation. Also, the music lacks variety. This is still a decent Music-Rhythm game, but it’s still a far cry from the best that the Nintendo Switch has to offer.

Grade: B-

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