1524: I Love DIVA

I was editing some Dark Souls 2 walkthroughs the other day, thinking to myself that the idea of spider enemies that cause instant death if they fall on you didn’t sound like very much fun at all, and that I didn’t really want to play Dark Souls 2. Then I contemplated what I have been playing recently — and, more notably, how I’ve been playing it — and realised that perhaps I’m not quite so different from the Dark Souls nutcases.

I am referring to the Vita version of Hatsune Miku: Project Diva f, a quite astonishingly excellent rhythm game starring the eponymous Vocaloid voice synthesiser personification and her similarly artificial friends. It’s a game that encompasses a broad spectrum of electronic music, and has one of the best feelings of getting “into” the music that I’ve felt since plastic instrument-wielding games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Project Diva f is a rhythm game in the Japanese mould, in contrast to Rock Band and its ilk, however. This means that there is a strong focus on attaining absolute perfection, and then improving on it some more if at all possible. Specifically, there are two scoring systems at play: a “Grade” bar that goes from 0 to 100 per cent as you accurately tap or hold notes with the correct buttons or flicks of the touchscreen, and a more conventional numerical score that increases according to whether your taps, holds and flicks are “Cool” or “Good” (or, heaven forbid, “Safe”, “Bad” or “Awful”). In order to get a “Perfect” rating on a track, you have to hit every single note with a “Cool” or “Good” rating, including nailing two challenging “Technical Zone” sections as well as an additional “Chance Time” section which is also used to trigger bonus events in the background music video of a track.

I got reasonably into the PS3 version of Project Diva F (the PS3 version has a capital F for some reason) but the usual music game audio-visual latency issues rear their head at times, making it an occasionally frustrating experience. You can manually calibrate the latency, but without an easy test function a la Rock Band it can be difficult to judge. This problem is not at all present on Vita — plus there’s something a whole lot more satisfying about having the music right there in the palm of your hand. Consequently, I’ve got a lot more into the Vita version than the PS3 incarnation.

How much more? Well, I’m currently systematically working my way through the Normal difficulty and attempting to attain a Perfect rating on all the tracks. And I’m doing pretty well so far — though some of the later tracks are going to give me some grief, I can feel it. The challenge is something I relish, though; I enjoy the music, and the feeling of absolutely nailing a difficult track utterly flawlessly is hard to beat. Similarly, missing an easy note with a “Safe” is disappointing and a cue for an immediate restart. Yes, I’m being one of those players. But I’m having a blast — and this constant repetition, practice and improvement is just the same sort of thing that Dark Souls players are presently indulging in, albeit with more slobbering monsters rather than doe-eyed anime-style characters.

Once Normal mode is done with, it’s onto Hard mode, and possibly Extreme if I’m feeling very brave. These two modes are significantly more difficult than the already challenging Normal mode, but I’m looking forward to taking them on; unlike the seemingly impossible harder difficulties of Rock Band et al, I feel that Project Diva f’s harder difficulties are well and truly within reach — and that mastering them will be a gaming accomplishment to be proud of.