If you're "all thumbs," as far as rhythm goes, you can reduce the number of buttons to four. In addition, you can also slow the game down until you get the hang of it. You can increase the number of buttons to five or six and eventually unlock eight. With more buttons come more notes. And with more notes comes the potential to score more points. These points are used to help you in various ways. They can be used to purchase features that will increase your score, or they can be used to unlock new characters, songs, and skins. Adopting an RPG-style element, you'll actually level-up as you progress. The game keeps track of your progress, stats, and points, and it scores you accordingly.

The Portable mode gives you various challenges such as completing a series of songs in a row, or activating the Fever mode a certain amount of times. A Freestyle mode is offered, which allows you access virtually any song or button configuration and just have some fun with the game. A head-to-head, ad-hoc, two-player mode will let you take on pretenders to the rhythmic throne. You can also just kick back and watch the videos or listen to the songs without having to exhaust your mental energy or digital dexterity.

Production-wise, DJ Max: Fever is not much of a looker. Aside from the videos and moving icons, there isn't much going on. The backgrounds are void of interesting detail and animation, but at least it doesn't distract from the notes and icons which can be a little difficult to see at the best of times. There's no tutorial with the game, and that may not be much of a problem if you're familiar with such rhythm games. But, you can still expect a little bit of experimentation at the outset, especially when it comes to identifying the corresponding buttons. It's nothing a little internet surfing won't remedy.

DJ Max: Fever is not a better mousetrap, it's just a good mousetrap, and it's managed to hook a rat like me. I hate to end this review with a pun, but due to the rhythm genre and the insane difficulty level, this game is hard to beat.

By Cole Smith
CCC Senior Writer