Rhythm Heaven Groove is another successful entry in Nintendo's most madcap musical series, with plenty of fun minigames to enjoy and worthwhile secrets to uncover. The game earns a 4/5 rating, proving that the 11-year wait was worth it.
What Happened: A Decade-Long Absence Ends
11 years is a long time to wait for any video game sequel, but especially one for a franchise as inventive and outright bonkers as Rhythm Heaven. 2015's Rhythm Heaven Megamix was the last time Nintendo fans were afforded the chance to tap along to the beat as part of a string of increasingly beat-fueled minigames - and even then this served as a mixtape of sorts composed of familiar challenges.
Enter Rhythm Heaven Groove, the first full fat entry in over a decade, which brings with it mostly all-new music-based minigames primed to test your ability to keep on rhythm and stay on the beat. As its title suggests, it is certainly a worthwhile venture that gets you back into the groove of Rhythm Heaven's magic, even if what's here isn't exactly game-changing.
Details: Over 80 Minigames and Inventive Scenarios
Any Rhythm Heaven game is only as good as its featured minigames, and in this area Groove mostly fires on all cylinders. With 80+ to play in total providing you also include harder variations on existing ones, there's much fun to be had in helping, say, a bodybuilder bounce lemons off his pecks, converse with an alien in an ancient language, and so on.
There's plenty of inventive scenarios to play through as part of Rhythm Heaven Groove's clearcut playlist structure. Several times I was surprised by the sheer amount of invention the game offers in terms of how each minigame is designed and formatted.
Are some minigames better than others? Certainly. It's also not lost on me that, for as lavishly each is dressed up and designed, rarely do any ask you to do more than tap the A button, a directional button, or, when a game is feeling particularly generous, holding a third button down for a certain length of time. True, the way you interact with each music minigame might not be all that revolutionary, but the real genius and challenge comes from how well you respond to each one's specific visual and audio cues in order to stay on beat. A feat I was regularly reminded while playing isn't as easy as it first seems.
Whether it was catching random pieces of fruit and veg flying in during Slice N Dice Kitchen, avoiding wiper swipes as an alien married couple in Wiper Bosses, or booting the ball precisely in Football Dreams, Rhythm Heaven Groove regularly finds ways to amp up the challenge neatly - even if it means anticipating where the flow of music will go next as opposed to merely corresponding to it.
Do a good job by rarely missing a note and you'll receive a gold medal, but it's in the final Remix challenge that smashes the previous four minigame types together in one giant montage sequence where the true magic of Groove comes together much like in Rhythm Heaven games prior.
Impact: Multiplayer and Secrets Enhance the Experience
Rhythm Heaven Groove turns out to be a pretty good Rhythm Heaven game, then, yet there are plenty of surprises and secrets to discover too. One of the extra modes is called the Rhythm Toy Box, which sits outside of the main campaign mode and is far more playful. It's here where you can engage in games that aren't just tapping along to the beat, whether it's feeling the vibration of your controller to pick out the correct on-screen clapping rabbit culprit or making your own beat using the in-game soundboard.
Sadly it's Beatspell, as Groove's big new single-player standalone mode that doesn't quite come together. Positioning itself almost as a traditional turn-based RPG of sorts, you take on the role of a magician working through several chapters and defeating enemy monsters by casting different spells that can only be done by inputting certain beat commands. It's perfectly fine as a distraction from what the main game offers, but as a full-fledged RPG with rhythm elements that gives you the freedom to cast your own spells? Beatspell has the makings of a cool concept within it, but it is no doubt undercooked and not sophisticated enough to linger in your brain for long.
Thankfully, alongside the 80 or so solo minigames, Rhythm Heaven Groove makes a strong play for serving as your next game night fix alongside Mario Kart World and Super Mario Party Jamboree thanks to its suite of similarly barmy multiplayer focused games. There really is a decent mix of both co-operative and competitive games on offer here, most of which fully lean into Groove's expectedly madcap nature.
The much publicised Cake Wait, where you must be the closest to the timer when snatching a slice, is surprisingly addictive, for example, while taking turns to pluck an onion's hair follicles as your tweezers rotate around its face to the beat had me and friends cackling while gathered around my Nintendo Switch 2 in tabletop mode. Would it be great if there were just as many multiplayer games as there were solo? Sure. But those that are here make a strong impression.
It might not do too much to stray from the music minigame formula it helped popularise some two decades ago, but Rhythm Heaven Groove is still exactly the kind of grand return for this beat-bopping series I was hoping for. While its RPG mode doesn't do much to make you want to embark on the sidequest and a few minigames ask a lot of patience from you, there's plenty more good levels here that will have you toe-tapping than bad ones.
Keeping in mind the avalanche of secrets and surprises found in and around the menus, and this is one rhythm-based odyssey worth taking. Whether you're a solo player or prefer playing with friends, Rhythm Heaven has indeed again found its groove.
