Hands-On: Boogie
By Chris Kohler EmailMay 22, 2007 | 5:19:59 PMCategories: Console Games
Boogie_bubba_karaoke_01Electronic Arts' all-singing, all-dancing rhythm game Boogie is playable at Nintendo's media event today. But what we saw might differ vastly from the final product, because EA says they're still making a lot of major changes to the gameplay.
Currently, the game's about shaking the Wiimote up, down, left, and right to the beat of a licensed song while a cartoon character gyrates on screen. If you shake the controller randomly, you'll earn a few hundred points for every shake. But if you move to the beat of the song (which resembles, in some way, dancing), you'll earn between ten and twenty times the points. So you'll want to actually dance well.
You might imagine that this will eventually become boring. You're right. This other guy and I were shaking our respective groove things to Daft Punk's "One More Time," but by about the four-minute mark, I don't know about him but my arm was certainly tired of shaking. But this is where all the rest of the gameplay will come in -- you'll take breaks from dancing to play mini-games. Once your power meter fills up you can activate it by pulling the B trigger, and then you'll have to hit a series of specific combos for more points.
Boogie also includes a microphone for karaoke. So if you want to sing "Brick House" or "You're The One That I Want" instead of just dancing to them, you're all set. And if one player wants to sing while the other dances, you're okay there too.
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There's a lot of character customization options which become unlocked as you play. You'll be able to dress up your character in all sorts of costumes, but they'll also learn more combo moves which you can execute during the songs for more points.
Visually, Boogie is solid. Spectators will really get a kick out of watching the outlandish characters gyrate, and of course you'll be up there gyrating with them in front of the TV set, so that will only add to the enjoyment of those around you. Boogie will include a video mode where you can capture your on-screen character's dancing, then go in and change the camera angles and effects. You can't capture your own image, but you can record your own voice in the karaoke mode.
Electronic Arts has been rather bold about showing Boogie in various stages of incompleteness ever since it was announced at GDC. The concept is good -- they just need to figure out how to best structure the gameplay so it really feels like a game rather than an interactive musical playset.
