Britney's Dance Beat
Review
The world's most
sensational pop star comes up sweet but short in her PS2 musical debut.
What's funny about
the whole Britney Spears phenomenon from a writer's perspective is that
there really isn't much substance to write about. Britney's whole appeal
is very, very, very visual, very visceral, usually colored by flashes of
red, some wild, fleshy curves, and a quick flip of the hair. She's young,
hot, and sexy, all right. There are no two ways about that. But like I
was saying, it doesn't make for too much long-term substance.
But hey, that's just
my humble opinion. Apparently, the rest of the world is in love (or in
lust) with her, so I must pick my words wisely. Britney's Dance Beat is
kind of the same way -- big on flash, low on substance. THQ wisely snagged
the videogame rights for Britney Spears and has employed the experienced
hands at Metro Graphics to bring that good 'ol Bust-a-Groove magic into
play again with Britney's music. The game is sweet but short and, well,
if you don't like Britney Spears, you better stay far away from this absolutely
over-idolized, obsessively focused Britney Spears love-fest. (All of you
folks by the name of Dave Z., please step forward.)
Gameplay
The game is good as
far as it goes. It's got five of Britney Spears' most popular songs, a
solid musical scheme on which to play, and it's remarkably challenging
and I'll even go so far as to say, addicting, as a two-player game. Given
that it's priced as a $39.99 game, that's a pretty good value.
The five blockbuster
songs include "...Baby One More Time", "Oops!...I did it again", "Stronger",
"Overprotected", and "I'm a Slave 4 U." For most Britney fans that's more
than enough, even though those songs are already out. Or is it? For everyone
else interested in playing a good dance game, well, that's pretty slim
pickings.
The premise is that
you're a potential dancer in Britney's dance troupe. If you can pass the
auditions, then you can join the tour. Lucky you! You can pick from six
generic dancers, all of whom look overly hip (cool, bad, slick, wicked,
whatever you want to call them), each from a diverse ethnic group. There's
the cute Japanese Elisa, happenin' African-American Rob, long tall (perhaps
Hispanic?) Leana, white-as-they-come Dan, the lovely Latino Enrique, and
booty-powered Nubian princess, Carla. It's a star-studded cast, to be sure,
and hey! We are talking about being able to dance in Britney's rip-roaring
dance troupe here! Right?! Oh my God! Get serious!
Back to the subject,
then...Players enter into one-on-one competitions with another dancer,
and if they win, they move onto the next competition. Easy, right? The
first five auditions play the short version of the songs, and the second
set of songs (the same songs, of course) are the full length versions,
which seem like they're about five minutes. The last four to five auditions
are progressively more difficult then the first five, and the game throws
you some relatively serious competition.
The setup is interesting.
A transparent dial with a single hand moves clockwise in a consistent motion
and one of the four face buttons from the Dual Shock (triangle, square,
circle, or X) appears to the beat of the song. You must tap the right button
at the right time to connect and players can get a Miss, Good, or Perfect
rating, depending on their timing. The object is to build as many combos
(uninterrupted connections) as possible. By doing so, players move a red
meter along a horizontal bar to the left or right, depending on how they
perform. To win, you must have the red meter on your side of the bar.
What's neat is that,
much like in Bust-A-Move before it, Britney's Dance Beat enables players
to attack each other. By stringing together high combos, you send over
a little evil star that messes with the face buttons, or the placement
of the face buttons, on the opponent's dial. One must be fast and dexterous
to do this in the later levels. In the two-player mode, this setup provides
a phenomenal amount of challenge and some great competitive moments.
Once you've performed
well, you earn backstage passes. Backstage, you'll watch virtual tours
of Britney's warm-ups before her concerts, or watch video collages of her
behind backstage doing silly things. Oh, such fun! Also, you should be
aware that the game is compatible with most dance pads, so you're not restrained
to solely using the Dual Shock. In fact, you can connect two dance pads
for dance competitions if you're um, game enough...
As a full and complete
videogame, compared to other games in the genre, Britney's Dance Beat falls
short. Quite short. In fact, everything about it is short. The song list
is very slim, and the dancer selection is lacking, too. I mean, why aren't
there 10 Britney songs in there? Five doesn't even fill up an entire album.
Any other dance game has at least 10 entirely different songs, each from
different artists. And that brings us to the real double-edged sword for
Britney: It's all about Britney. You get her, but you don't get anyone
else. For some folks that's just fine, for others...Well, listening to
the same five songs over and over again is just weak. This game lacks quantity,
variety, and most of all, depth.
You get three modes
of play, Audition, Practice, and two-player. Then there's Video Vault,
Preview, and Options. Audition, which is the meat of the game, delivers
a whopping five to seven hours of gameplay maximum for a single player.
David Smith, who's a pro at these games, beat the entire game in less than
one hour. I beat it in less then three (it's not entirely my forte), so
the remainder of the game's replay value lies in the two-player mode. The
game is priced at a pretty sensible MSRP $39.99, but at least a few stores
we called are selling it for $44.99. It's probably worth $39.99 (if you
have the Britney love), but it's not worth $49.99.
Graphics
Metro Graphics always
delivered excellent motion-capture work in the Bust-A-Groove series, and
along with House of Moves, Britney's Dance Beat doesn't sway in quality
one iota. The dancers all move nearly human-like (hey, they're not perfect),
but they dance fluidly and smoothly, and the rhythms are unbroken and mostly
natural.
With reference to the
backgrounds and other visuals, Britney's Dance Beat is decent looking.
The dancer models look good and show off nice textures. There's some good-looking
hair, and cool details, such as swinging bracelets, chains, and other items,
catch the eye. The game features tons of collages of Britney dancing in
real-live concerts, and once you earn enough combos, you move into a bonus
stage wherein a polygonal model of Britney appears and shakes her stuff.
It's quite horrifying, actually. The model looks decent but doesn't come
close to the real thing.
A few other things
are worth noting. During auditions, players can see Britney's videos of
the same song playing on the wall behind the dancers. It's nice to see
them, but they aren't even synched up with the actual song, which seems
wrong.
Otherwise, Britney's
Dance Beat is really average looking.
Sound
Britney's Dance Beat
sounds great, but strangely there wasn't any special emphasis on offering
high quality sound. The five songs are crisp and clear sounding, and with
headphones on, they delivery better than average quality. But technically,
the game is in plain old stereo and doesn't use any special mixing effects
or placement, so you won't be hooking this up to your stereo for a full,
wild Dolby 5.1 blow out.
Closing Comments
In short (the key
word in this review), Britney's Dance Beat is a novelty item. Strangely,
most dance games fit that description, but THQ's dancer is a niche within
a niche title. There are five songs, here kiddies, count 'em, five. And
there isn't anything but Britney, Britney, Britney here. Naturally, since
it's called Britney's Dance Beat, you shouldn't expect anything else, but
when you put this up against Parappa the Rapper 2, Gitaroo Man, or even,
strangely, Rez, Britney's Dance Beat comes up short. It's short on songs,
it's short on musical variety, backgrounds, dancers, and its even a little
short on Britney. You don't even get to select her for most of the game.
Britney's Dance Beat
is good game for what it is, but you'll finish it easily in less than five
hours (and that's being generous). I highly recommend renting this, if
in fact, you're interested at all. One short note: I have grown to withstand
Britney's halting, overproduced songs, and through much repetition, I guilty
admit that Stronger has become my favorite. Poor pathetic me, tapping my
30-something foot to Britney Spears. I need a life.
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