{"id":922338,"date":"2026-07-25T06:15:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T11:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/25\/rhythm-heaven-never-misses-a-beat\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T06:15:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T11:15:02","slug":"rhythm-heaven-never-misses-a-beat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/25\/rhythm-heaven-never-misses-a-beat\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhythm Heaven never misses a beat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rhythm Heaven<\/em> isn\u2019t Nintendo\u2019s best-known series, nor its most prolific. Prior to the launch of Rhythm Heaven Groove<\/em> on the Switch this week \u2014 it\u2019s out on July 2nd \u2014 there were only four previous entries, one of which was exclusive to Japan. The most recent came out more than a decade ago<\/a>. Even still, there\u2019s a case to be made that this is Nintendo\u2019s most consistent franchise. There are few guarantees in life, but a new Rhythm Heaven<\/em> being great is one of them.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re unfamiliar, Rhythm Heaven<\/em> is sort of like a music-focused version of WarioWare<\/em>. That means it\u2019s a collection of short and bizarre minigames, except these ones all test your sense of, well, rhythm. In Groove<\/em>, for instance, there\u2019s a stage where you\u2019re controlling a car\u2019s brakes and gas, and another has you helping a crab throw macarons. But all of these actions need to be done on beat. Most of the levels seem simple, given that they usually only require one or two different buttons, but keeping the rhythm can be a challenge.<\/p>\n

What makes the games work is a combination of great, catchy music \u2014 the series is produced by Japanese singer-songwriter Tsunku \u2014 and weirdo minigames. Groove<\/em>\u2019s levels will have you doing everything from chopping vegetables tossed your way to helping frogs make big jumps. I always find myself tapping and singing along to help get myself into the right mindset. Even now as I write this, the beeping track from the car level is stuck in my head.<\/p>\n

Groove<\/em> may be the first new Rhythm Heaven<\/em> title in quite some time, but it\u2019s not some kind of drastic reinvention of the formula. The structure remains largely the same: you slowly unlock levels, and they get progressively more challenging. Each level is grouped into a series of four, and when you complete all of those you\u2019re presented with a remix stage that blends all of them together. These can be particularly tough as they force you to jump back and forth between actions while dealing with an ever-changing beat. This generally works well, though the structure can be a little restrictive. If you ever find yourself really struggling with a level \u2014 it took me forever to get the hang of a can-smashing minigame \u2014 you can\u2019t progress until you figure it out.<\/p>\n

That said, Groove<\/em> does offer some things to do outside of the main levels for those times when you\u2019re stuck. There are musical toys you can play around with, which include bouncing a puffer fish on a tennis racket, along with a miniature musical RPG called Beatspell<\/em> where you hit buttons to the beat to perform spells. I particularly enjoyed the RPG \u2014 I wish it was longer \u2014 but these modes do require progressing through the main game to unlock them. Eventually, I had to suck it up and learn to smash those cans.<\/p>\n

My biggest issue with Groove<\/em> is that when playing on my TV, no matter which controllers I used, there was a slight delay for button presses. The game does allow you to calibrate your controllers with the TV to try and address this, but no matter what I did, I couldn\u2019t get things to work properly. It may sound like a small detail, but any delay, no matter how slight, makes a huge difference in a rhythm game. I kept regularly failing levels I could beat handily in handheld mode, where the game worked perfectly fine for me.<\/p>\n

Hopefully the TV issue gets fixed in a future update. Otherwise, Groove<\/em>, like the rest of Rhythm Heaven<\/em> series, is a near-perfect collection of bite-sized rhythm action. I always think of these games like albums, and Groove<\/em> is a familiar yet new offering from one of my favorite bands.<\/p>\n

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