Game Boy Advance
Britney's Dance Beat
| Graphics: Sound: Gameplay: Overall: |
7.00 7.67 6.33 5.67 |
| Votes: | 3 |
| Reviews: | 1 |
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| Reviewer: LewkForce | Date: Mar 20, 2024 |
| When it boots up, you're led into the title scene with a 10-second loop of the beginning of "Baby, One More Time" that doesn't quite loop correctly. So already, for a rhythm-based game, we're off to a fantastic start.
Graphics: 4 Honestly, most of the graphics and the menus look pretty nice. The visual indicator for the inputs is readable. The pictures you unlock are not bad, though compression doesn't do them any service. And that's about where the good ends. The backgrounds are okay, but the concert background was unbelievably lacking. Only a silhouette of "Britney" moved on the back screen in the concert background. But oooooh boy, that Britney model is something fierce. They just picked "Generic 3D Female Model" and put two or three different clothing styles that are similar to Britney on her, then posed her in a few dance poses for the Powerpoint slideshow that doesn't react at all to the inputs nor music. Sound: 6 The compression quality is actually quite amazing. Where it docks points bigtime is the timing of the sound. As stated in the introduction, the title music foreshadows a bit about the music in the game - it's just a *little* off. It's close, but in a rhythm game where precision is crucial 50ms to 100ms of give/take is just way too much. I wound up having to mute the in-game audio (yeah, in a freaking RHYTHM game) and go by the input visualizer to clear/attempt some of the levels because it was throwing me off. Gameplay: 2 There are two main game types - a practice mode and a "concert" mode. There's also a two-player mode, I don't know what that's about since I didn't look into it. Did they clone Britney or something? Not sure. Anyway, I went into the practice mode and it was balls easy. Aced all of the FIVE songs which are, admittedly for the time, passable as compressed rewrites of the original songs. This unlocked five Tour Book pictures. Okay, on to concert mode. The difficulty slightly ramped up for the first two songs but they were still easily aced. Then the third song, "Stronger" came up. And WHAT THE HECK WHERE THEY THINKING!? In my best attempt, I only missed 14 inputs (95%) and I'm still miles off from the passing score - and you can't continue with the next song until you beat the current one. Mind you, every other song was considered "cleared" with a 90% success rate. So why is it so difficult? Well, here's the thing about the game - there is no pattern for the inputs because they're randomized. And the layout completely changes every time you play the song. This means there's no memorization. Think of it as DDR, but every time you play not only is when you place your feet slightly different, but where you place your feet is completely randomized! Overall: 2 If you think you have the cajones to beat this, impress me by clearing "Stronger" in concert mode. In the meantime, I'm leaving Britney alone... I've been a musician for most of my life so rhythm games tend to be easier for me. Things like Rock Band or Guitar Hero come a bit more naturally. But with this, it feels like you have to be a concert pianist who can sight-read Stravinsky with 100% accuracy to even complete Britney's Dance Beat for GBA. |
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