K-On Houkago Live!! HD Ver. is a remastered version of the original PSP version. To call it a remaster is awfully generous, as the game is nothing more than the PSP version presented in glorious 1080p HD quality. This is hardly grounds for complaint, though, because the game is excellent. It is based on the hugely successful K-On animated series and tells the story of a group of schoolgirls (Tsumugi, Yui, Ritsu, Azusa, and Mio) who are in the light music club at school. They play music, drink tea, and eat cake. The series is a lighthearted chuckle with some heartstring-yanking moments. It is worthy of a watch if you're even remotely interested in good music and slice-of-life stories.
The video game, Houkago Live, is a rhythm game based off the same architecture as the Project Diva series of games. The goal is to play one of the five instruments (keyboard, lead guitar, drums, rhythm guitar, or bass) with enough accuracy to complete each song and unlock new items. The overall goal is to complete each song, on all five instruments, on both difficulty levels. To play the game, you must match button presses to their corresponding onscreen crotchets, labelled with each button symbol. Sometimes, a combination of both an arrow button and face button are required. Occasionally, notes have to be held for longer than others. Each instrument feels a little like its real life counterpart.
Bass is mostly played left-handed to match Mio's handedness, the keyboard will often have opposite buttons being pressed to give the impression of chords being played, while the button combinations on lead and rhythm guitar use the same directions to create the feel of power chords. Drumming matches up cymbal hits with one button, bass drum with another, and the tom-toms or similar small drums on an arrow press to give the impression of two hands drumming and the use of the bass pedal.
At the beginning or the end, depending on the song, are mic checks. These are another form of collectible, and consist of the player character saying "1, 2, 3..!" or phrases such as "mou ikkai" (one more time). There are over a hundred of these per character; you never will collect them all. The difficulty of each song is ranked depending on character and is indicated by a number of stars. Using an unlockable book item, the game can be made harder still. I actually find the higher starred sections more exciting to play, as there are less moments of dead air to deal with.
The game looks great on PSP. The PS3 version runs just as smooth as its portable counterpart but is quite clearly just the PSP version rendered at a larger size. Where the still-images displayed during songs or cutscenes looked clear on the small PSP screen, the same images are blurred when blown up 1080p on a big flat-screen TV. That's not all, unfortunately. Where character models have been upscaled beautifully, textures have not, resulting in blurred lines or artefacts on clothing and skin. Would it have hurt to redraw them? They were probably made larger to begin with and then scaled down for PSP, so there is no excuse. All fonts and menus have been upscaled cleanly but suffer from being designed for a portable system rather than for a console game. The game also takes place in a slightly boxed area as opposed to authentic full screen, as though it is locked into the PSP's screen ratio.
Looks great... Looks like a PSP game.
Each of the songs in the game come from the official series soundtrack or the character CDs. In Japan, many children's shows have audio CDs released with especially written songs and drama sequences performed by the official cast. The songs from these CDs have been re-recorded so that they better suit a rhythm game, and they all sound excellent. My personal favourite has changed since I reviewed the PSP version, as I now find myself head over heels for the aptly named Gīta ni Kubittake. Unfortunately, there are no new songs added, leaving the song selection at only 20 songs. Admittedly, with five instruments and two difficulty settings you're looking at one hundred song variations to play. However, the lack of Death Devil songs, or the other Character CD songs (Nodoka and Ui), is saddening.
The unlockables include outfits which can be customised. Unlocking outfits is done by clearing songs on particular difficulties as particular characters. Again, much like the PSP version before it, the game is missing the Don't Say Lazy costumes. This is likely because Azusa never featured in that ending sequence song, but it still seems poor to me that no consideration was made to include what I consider the best outfits from the show (besides the Death Devil attire). You can unlock the mascot outfits that they had to wear, though. I find it mildly upsetting that the PS3 remaster didn't seek to add new content, as the game could have done with the main themes from the equally as great second season.
The game has multiplayer, local over ad hoc, and over the internet using the PS3 software Ad Hoc Party. The game can be played with one player using the six-axis controller, and up to four people connecting wirelessly via PSP. A copy of the remaster can be downloaded onto the PSP to allow multiplayer, or players can use their existing PSP version to connect. The save data can also be shared between both versions of the game. As nice as this is, it serves no real convenient use. I'd have much rather the remaster contained new material instead of being made to support cross-saving.
Overall, as far as remasters go, this is mildly disappointing. Not only due to the lack of new content, but also because I could have bought the PSP version for much less. Being almost entirely the same as the PSP version, I have no option but to give Houkago Live!! HD Ver. exactly the same score I awarded to the original PSP version.
