06/15/02

Britney's Dance Beat

System: Playstation 2

Genre: Dance... Puzzle... whatever...

Guilty Parties: THQ

Discs: 1

Memory Card Count: 51KB

Supports: Dual Shock 2 controller, 8MB memory card

Average Price: I dunno. Probably like, $50 or something like that.

When I first heard about Britney’s Dance Beat, I was expecting to be able to play as an atomic ray-gun slinging Britney Spears, fighting against a race of swamp-dwelling voodoo ninjas. But this apparently isn’t the case. No, in this game you don’t even get to play as the smoldering teen temptress. You pick the role of one of six aspiring dancers and compete in a duel of the dance to work your way up to becoming the back-up dancer for Ms. Spears herself. But that’s not all! If you manage to complete crush the dreams of the other hopeful dancers under your heel, you can earn “backstage passes” to open up exclusive videos. For the most part, they’re your typical “behind the scenes” stuff, but the game also features videos in which you control the viewpoints and camera positions all in real time.

But you think can’t hang with the real Britney on the dance floor? Well, you probably can’t, but Brtiney’s Dance Beat lets you at least try on the PS2 Dual Shock. The best way to describe the gameplay is a cross between Dance Dance Revolution and Bust-A-Groove. A circle sits in the middle of the screen and a bar sticking out from the center spins clockwise around it. Different buttons and directional arrows sit on different positions of the circle, and when the bar meets up with them, that’s when you hit the corresponding keys. Simple enough, right? For the most part, yeah. But as you get further down the road, it gets more and more challenging. For instance, steps could suddenly switch positions or change to a completely different button a half second before you reach it. This happens frequently when your opponent builds their dance combo by multiples of ten. Just wait until you see what happens when you start getting strings of combo in the 100+ range. Ugh, that’s when things start to get ugly.

The graphics work for what they are. All you need to watch is a circle with a spinning bar on it. But in the background, you have your respective dancer and your dancing partner cutting the proverbial rug with fully choreographed dance routines. The character models do look alright (although Britney does look sort of weird) and the backgrounds are bright and vibrant, but one thing I didn’t like is that the characters didn’t have enough personality. When you make a mistake, they don’t do anything that screws up their routine in any way what so ever. They just keep dancing. Like, remember in Bust-A-Groove when you messed up and your character would hilariously stop and regroup themselves? That doesn’t happen here. It’s like they never stop... like they’re freakin’ robots of something. So you can play like complete crap and still look good, so to speak. Hell, you might as try and hook your PS2 controller to your VCR and try playing Darrin’s Dance Grooves the exact same way.

And musically, it’s called Britney’s Dance Beat for a reason. All of the music featured in the game comes straight from her. You can choose from six songs, like Hit Me Baby One More Time from way back in the day up to current stuff like I’m A Slave 4 U. But like most types of music, you’ll either love it or hate it. And by the time the game ends, you’ll probably end up hating it since it does get tiring hearing the same six songs over and over again. Plus, chances are you’ve heard them on TV or the radio too much already, so if you already hate them, your urge to kill will most likely rise to dangerous level before the game is over.

Even though the dancers look kind of creepy and the music does get tiring after a while, the actual gameplay is quite fun. It always keeps you on your toes and it’s fun to get another player to revel in your unmanliness with you.

Graphics: 6 out of 10 (the animations are nice and fluid, but the character models for Britney and the other dancers don’t look right at times)

Sound/Music: 6 out of 10 (Everything you hear is Britney Spears related. The music is all her’s and even the commentary telling you how good you’re playing is voiced by her too. Freaky.)

Control: 8 out 10 (Pretty dead on for the most part, but The Reverend Mofat Jones was complaining about timing issues. I didn’t have much of a problem, though. I think the Rev. just can’t hang with this.)

Fun: 7 out of 10 (I was pleasantly surprised with this game. I thought it was yet another cash run by THQ, and even though it kind of is, it did turn out to be a fairly decent music title.)

                                         
-Carlman