Game developers are always looking for new hook. Something that will set their game apart from the competition and really turn a gamer’s heads. Last fall Sony released their new peripheral, the EyeToy to a surprising amount of success. While peripheral are usually low volume sellers, Sony managed to sell over half a million of their innovative little webcam to the masses. The game shipped with Play, which showcased the motion capture technology that the EyeToy uses to translate your movements into actions on-screen. The games while simple were actually quite fun, and pretty much anyone who played it enjoyed it. Heck, even my mother got into Wishy Washy! The only limiting factor to the EyeToy was the replay value. Sure, the games were fun, but because they were so simple they got old pretty quick. With the release of Groove, Sony aims to recapture the interest in the EyeToy, and with backing from their huge music division they give it a pretty good run.
If you gave Beat Freak or Disco Stars a try on Play then you’ll be familiar with the gameplay in Groove. It builds upon the beat-matching, circle-touching skills you used in those games but takes it up a notch. There are several modes of play in Groove; Single player, multiplayer and even a chill out mode where there are no real objectives.
Single player is pretty straight forward, where you pick a song and dance along to the rhythm and hit different colored icons at 6 points on the screen. There are several variations of icons that will pop up on the screen that you’ll have to interact with. Some will require you to keep hitting them as long as possible, some of them travel across the screen and you have to follow them. If you’ve ever played games like Dance Dance Revolution you’ll be well versed with the beat-matching genre. One of the great parts of these games is how involved you really get into them, feeling the music. Groove attempts to do this, but being that you’re only using your upperbody for the most part, it doesn’t have quite the same effect. You score points by hitting the different icons in perfect timing with beats, but you also score by having a better “groove” while the action is going on. If you sit there like a lump on a log waving your arms you won’t go very far.
There are several difficulties Groove, but if you’re a seasoned veteran of the genre, then you’ll probably find yourself going automatically to the hard level, and even this doesn’t really challenge the best of the best. The sessions themselves are pretty short, and only play 2 minutes from one of the 29 songs you can choose from, all from popular Sony Music artists. While the music is good, one thing that Groove lacks when compared to DDR or others in the genre is the huge complexity, cool effects flashing on screen. In DDR you can get huge combos with your moves and can bring about some pretty great effects, and really rev up an announcer that eggs you on even more. Groove doesn’t have this, and the game ends up feeling a little flat when compared to its competition.
The best part of Groove would have to be the multiplayer mode. With this mode you can play with 1 or more others and compete against each other. All the same gameplay techniques remain the same when you’re doing this, but there are different styles of play. There is the option to play with many different people at the same time. The person who is going to be active next will have their snapshot displayed on screen right before they have to start. This means a hurried rush to the screen so they can participate. When played with 3 or more people this starts to get pretty fun. In a party situation it could be a pretty neat little feature.
The last game mode is the “chill out” mode. In this you can watch some of the music videos which go along with the songs you’ve been dancing to. There’s also another feature where you can go and do some dancing to the music tracks of your choice while different effects are featured on screen. This is one of the coolest things in the game in my opinion, but it’ll have you scratching your head wondering what kind of drugs the developers were on when they were designing that mode. Even though I was born 20 years too late for the late 60’s, I think I now know what it would have looked like to be tripping on acid. Rainbows, different colors, blurry effects… if you manage to keep dancing in this mode without stopping at some point, starring at the screen, and saying “What the heck is that?” kudos to you.
|
|
Groove also includes a video messaging feature, where you can leave a short video message for someone at home. While not the most useful thing, if the person you’re trying to reach goes to the PS2 first before checking anything else in the house this could be just the thing you were looking for.
Although it’s not going to satisfy the hardcore beat-matching gamers, Groove does bring another dimension to the PS2 and the EyeToy. It could be quite a fun game to have playing in the background for parties, but for what age group I’m not so sure of. The songs range from overplayed radio hits of last year, to overplayed classics such as “I Will Survive”, but overplayed as they may be, they’re popular. If you already have the EyeToy this game can be had for a quite reasonable price of about $40. If you want to pick them both up at the same time you can grab it for $70.
