As much as Brittneys Dance
Beat has its obvious shortcomings, nothing I say is going to keep it from selling like
hotcakes. No one stumbles upon this game by accident (unless someone buys it for them as a
gift), and those who are going to purchase it know what it is that theyre buying:
one hefty dose of the teen diva herself, Britney Spears. And perhaps I may get hate mail
for years to come, but this game is less about the actual art (of gameplay) and more about
the artiface and the extras. Thats not to say that it doesnt do a nice job for
what it sets itself up to be, but I think its time for dance games to march to a
different paradigmatic beat, and Britneys doesnt happen to be it.The premise of this
game is that Britney is looking for new dancers for her world tour and the auditions are
on. You can choose from six characters (three girls, three guys) and can play in single or
two-player mode. Kudos to the game for giving us a nice multicultural selection of
characters (though all of the female characters names end in "a," which is
annoying) and for giving us both genders. I was pleasantly surprised at this games
ability to have cross-gender appeal, and seemingly not just for ogling our teen
idols well enhanced/rendered chest and bare mid-drift. There were plenty of guys in
line at E3 for this title, and it wasnt just for the droolfest. I think having male
and female dancers broadens the appeal and capitalizes on younger, dual gender audiences
via the wave of boy-band popularity.
You can
practice as much as you want before you actually audition, and its helpful to do
this while you steadily increase the difficulty level (shown by four incremental bars).
There are ten auditions total, with five using only half-songs and the other five using
the full score. The way this game is played is fairly standard. You are given a metronome
circle which counts off the beats (generally in 4/4 time, with a standard eight moves per
cycle, just like real choreography is broken into) and you must press a combination of
buttons plus directional pad in the time and sequence they are shown on the sweeping dial.
This is made more difficult because as the computer pulls off more uninterrupted combos,
it changes your sequencing. This makes the game more challenging, but also insures that
your eyes cannot really leave the metronome. That means that if you want to see the cool
choreography, you have to watch it in the Preview Mode of the game, rather than seeing it
during gameplay.
I enjoyed
the choreography that this game employed, using some cool movies from Britneys own
repertoire along with some old developer favorites. However, with just five songs, and the
fact that all of the characters perform the same dance for each song, I was left wanting
even more. But the motion capture did a great job, and the characters are all nicely
rendered and visually pleasing. As far as graphics in general go, this game is solid, but
nothing that really pushes PS2 programming. Our dancers compete in backgrounds ranging
from sixties-style lounges and hip clubs to aquariums and Chinese courtyards, but the most
interesting backdrop in each is always the bigscreen showing Britney videos. It was
disconcerting to note that the videos did not synch up with the songs, which made me
wonder if it were some postmodern statement, some diabolical plot to keep us from singing
along, or just plain sloppy. Im not sure what I decided. Perhaps it was to simulate
a concert in which the lip-synching doesnt match up. The world may never know.
This game
employs some of the old dancing standby annoyances, such as Britneys encouraging (or
sometimes demoralizing) commentary on your dancing abilities. The effect is softened only
slightly by the fact that our Southern Belles drawl is particularly noticeable,
which is always cute. The other characters have minimal voice responses after auditions,
so that gets old fast, but I was impressed at the hopeful and imploring tone they captured
for Britney when she asks "Dont you want to try again?" after you get your
butt kicked. I actually found myself compelled to push the button, even if I wasnt
really interested. Hows that for psychological torture? As far as music goes, the
game features five hit singles: "Baby One More Time," "Oops!...I did it
Again," "Stronger," "Im a Slave 4 U," and
"Overprotected."
The major
sell for this game is not the gameplay. That itself is short. Very short. What really
powers this game is the unlockable features. You earn six different backstage passes to
unlock Behind the Scenes Videos and Immersion Video features. The behind the scenes are a
must for anyone obsessed with Britney. The immersion video shows concert and rehearsal
footage that you can pan 360 degrees to view and zoom in and out. My big gripe with the
immersion section is the film quality (maybe thats realism, but hey, Im a
technophile at heart) and the fact that the zoom is incredibly limp. My old 35mm can do
better than that. Perhaps they were trying to keep the perverted audience from
capitalizing on this feature (you know who you are), but I would like to think that if the
purpose of this is to get the "front row seat" appeal, you ought to be able to
zoom in at least that far. But, to be less critical, the subject matter is pretty
interesting from a fan perspective. These two features and basic fan appeal are what earns
this game a four star ratingnothing else.
Besides my
bitch about the shortness of this game, my biggest problem is the fact that it does
nothing to break out of the current dance-game paradigm. Perhaps this discussion is a
little esoteric, and if you want, you can skip down a paragraph, but this is important to
me with so many games following a pattern that simply doesnt work well for this
genre. Having button pushing that doesnt have any relation to actual choreographic
moves stinks. It also makes sure that the last place your focus is on is your dancing. It
took me a while on this game to realize that Britney comes out and dances for a few
seconds during an audition duel because I hardly ever got a chance to look up from my
metronome unless it was my competitors turn, and then I had to keep an eye on it
because I didnt want to miss my return entrance. There are plenty of games which
rely on combo moves and provide plenty of different styles (Im thinking of the
Tekken series here) and theres no reason that dance games cant employ that
type of tech. You could respond to visual cues rather than sign cues, and it could also
open up the ability for freestyle rating of moves of your own personal choreography
(Im thinking Tony Hawk here). There are so many ways dance games could evolve that I
think getting stuck in the metronome/wheel paradigm is like refusing to invent the
airplane because a bicycle works just fine. I also think this is an issue because the
Dance Pad does not work well for this type of game design. Youre only looking at
frustration if you buy one thinking it does. I think it could become the most
fabulous addition since sliced bread, but the current game design just doesnt let
it. Making the leap from virtual to actual is going to have to be given more thought; the
assumption that the transfer of input from controller to Dance pad is direct and should
work without some modification is ludicrous.
This game is
a great addition to any fans library. Those who are looking for the latest and
greatest in dance will want to check this out via rental. The game is short, but visually
pleasing and the extras make not only the icing on the cake, but really the cake itself as
well. The choreography is pretty, and the broadening of character choice is nice. The
biggest drawbacks to this game are its incredibly short nature (but I guess if you get it
just to unlock the extras, that isnt a problem) and the fact that it functions on a
paradigm that doesnt really suit the subject/medium. But still
even with all of
this
the sales of Britneys dance beat will not suffer. Not really.