The most fun I had playing games at E3 this year was at EA. This is rather unusual as I'm not a Sims gamer and there was no Harry Potter title available. But, as I've written previously, there was Smarty Pants, My Sims and there was Boogie. Dancing! Dancing without a dance pad and no darned arrows to hit. I could not wait to get this home to my kids. EA had to go and release the title while I was overseas so I've just now had the opportunity to sweat off a few pounds (I do live in Phoenix).
I have a bruiser of any 8-year old boy. He is big for his age. Most people thing he's twelve or so. Then he acts his age. It's fun. Yeah, fun. To add to it, his favorite activities aren't classical "boy" activities. He likes to sing and dance and play imagination games. This kid who is built like a football player is either going to be a dancer, writer or under-water basket weaver. Eh. He's fun. He really is. Boogie was made for him.
I take him to the local game store the day I return from Europe; trade in everything I have to get the game and he wants Naruto. Huh? Sorry kid, we're getting Boogie. Tears ensue.
We get the game home, I turn it on and let it run for a while…he comes out from hiding and says, "Mom, I think I'll try it." Score!
First, you get to make your Boog. You see, each of the characters is actually an alien that has come to Earth to dance. There's a great single-player story mode that you can play to better your skills, learn their background and see all the unique dance moves the various Boogs have. Someday? I'll get to see it.
Anyways, my son creates his Boog. He picks the Earth girl Lea because her outfit has the best bling. I kid you not, he said that.
It launches into the tutorial. To dance, shake the Wii-mote up/down or side-to-side with the rhythm. Ok. To do combos match the arrows. Ok. Strike a pose - not really explained well, but we get past it. Then the karaoke tutorial begins.
"Mom, can I dance now?"
"Sure, just end the tutorial and go on."
This is where we have a problem. You see, you can't break out of the tutorial. It wants to give you an overview of the ENTIRE game in less than five minutes. Basic dance moves, advanced moves, karaoke, cutting videos - all in five minutes, you can't try any of it again and you can't stop it. My son drops the Wii-mote in frustration (I always love that) and leaves the room. Where's the game I saw at E3?
Apparently, the game is there but hidden behind a TERRIBLY conceived (and incomplete) tutorial. If you get this game, read the book. Go ahead and do the tutorial - well, you don't have a choice but to do it once - but read the book. There is a better explanation.
Ok. I'm tired, jet-lagged, my kid is annoyed and I know this is a good game, I've played it. I finish the tutorial, pick a song he'll like and start dancing. Now the game I remember starts to shine.
The key to Boogie is it to remember it is not a game. It is about dancing. If you play it to nail the beat and earn score, you'll do terribly. Just waving your hand up and down or side to side won't result it much more than basic moves from your character and the smallest of scores for movement. Start to dance, really dance, and your character goes crazy, you rack up the points and tokens. You are rewarded for the effort of movement.
My son spent the first hour just finding the rhythm of moving his arm. He didn't want to sing, he wanted to dance. The John Travolta "Saturday Night Fever" pose seemed to work best for him. Me? I do best when I'm all over the room. Once we settled in to the idea that nailing the beat exactly wasn't as important as moving with the beat the fun started. Hips started moving; we moved our characters across the floor; then we started twirling. My score started to climb…his skyrocketed…and we'd yet to try a combo.
Part of the fun was just seeing what we could make our characters do. Lea dances like a teenage girl would and she produces lots of hearts and colors (he likes that!). I played with Bubba. He's a blubbery alien who - when he really gets moving - tends to dance by falling flat on his behind and jumping up again. Occasionally, I could get him to jiggle his blubber. Time for combos!
All important is the boogie meter that fills up as you progress through the song. As long as there is some power in it, you can attempt a combo. Combos are pretty simple. Up Up Down Down or any combination thereof. The nice thing is - just completing it will earn you additional score and a unique move from your character. My oldest boy does this as fast as he possibly can. Completing it in time earns you serious bonus score and additional power for another combo - my dancing fool of a younger child does this. Because you're in the groove and dancing it takes some getting used to when attempting to complete the combos…you've got to break your swing. But, as I've witnessed, it CAN be done.
There is also lip-synching mode that comes in (that wasn't explained in the tutorial) which uses the nun-chuck and can earn you bonus points. You simply press the Z-key and it goes face-on to your character while they sing. We found it interesting, but not nearly as much fun as moving.
Strike-a-pose is another option if you have the nun-chuck attached but it wasn't explained well in the tutorial (it is in the book!). While you're dancing, at any time you can stop your character with the Z-button, move his face with the analog stick while aiming with the nun-chuck towards targets on the screen. Each time you do, you "strike-a-pose" earning extra points and therefore tokens. One of the characters, Kato, a lion and you get some great poses with his tail.
The singing? Well…we're not really enjoying it for several reasons. First, the songs are great to dance to because they're pop songs from the last 4 decades but that means that except for a dinosaur like myself, my kids simply don't know them. They have to learn them first. Also, it doesn't appear to judge based on your change in pitch from your baseline but on actually matching the pitch. My boys may be young but they have moved past the soprano stage in their growth cycle. Also, you will be happily dancing and you get a 5-second warning that it's time to sing. It just breaks up the momentum.
You can easily play without the karaoke, and we do. I just wish it were better implemented. If it just picked up change in pitch instead of matching pitch that would be enough.
The final feature is the video editor. I haven't really decided what to think of this. My personal guess is that it was added to appeal either to older kids or adults as you can take a dance/singing session, add up to 100 edited cuts of a session with various effects - solar, tiled, decals, etc - or add text and then produce a "video". It's a lot of effort and once you're done, well…you've got an edited video. Perhaps it's just me and my boys. We just don't see the utility or fun in it.
Oh, tokens! I've mentioned these a few times. When you play you earn score. The score is basically meaningless except that there are "high" scores for each song on each level of difficulty so you can keep track of that. But you earn tokens based upon that score. In versus mode, the tokens are pooled. In fact, throughout the entire game the tokens are pooled - tokens are not assigned to any one character and I have to say I like this VERY MUCH. Anything to reduce competition and encourage cooperation is great! I had to explain to my older son that there was no way to "win" the game before he would try to dance and not get the highest score and therefore the most tokens. Only then did he find it fun. I wish more games were designed around this concept.
With said tokens you unlock new stages, additional songs and customizations for your characters. I've got a new top hat for Bubba, Lea has new bling (of course) and Kato has a great new Gi. Also, my kids now know the joy of Brick House and Pop Music. *heh* We unlocked the Dojo stage and it has become a requirement that the first song we dance to is "Everybody Loves Kung Fu Fighting" in the Dojo because by some weird kid logic my youngest says the Dojo being Chinese, the song being Japanese (yeah, I know) makes them go together.
I unequivocally recommend this game. But, three times I've watched "hardcore" gamers try it and three times I've listened to them tell me the game is broken and doesn't recognize they're hitting the beat. All the while my youngest is racking up points. My oldest son began playing the same way - he treated it as a game. Once he loosened up and started dancing (and laughing and having fun), he too saw the same results as my younger boy.
Some "games" are not meant to be about hitting the target in the center. Some are about the experience of shooting the bow. Some are about being outside in the sunlight. This is a dance game that isn't about landing on the arrows in time. It's about getting up off the couch, finding your own rhythm and dancing.
I'm a mother of two boys, ages 7 and 10 and live in the chaos that ensues. I've a permanent disability that keeps me homebound, so books, kids, games and books are my constant companions. Oh, and books, too. *grins*
My children both play games so I often play them first, getting to know exactly how something may effect my sensitive and easily stimulated older child vs. my stoic and imperturbable younger.
I like games for games; for the pure enjoyment of them and believe that no game is wholly bad, though some are real stinkers.
I also have the dexterity of a camel in mittens so find playing FPSs difficult (and I also don't like the gore) and RTSs at times can stump me. I just can't seem to move quickly enough to keep up with them. Some of my favorite games are arcade games and I'll spend 3-5 years on the same 5-6 levels because I just never get any better. But, I have fun.
