Does the concept jive or does it have two left feet?
August 19, 2007 | 8:53 AM PSTBoogie ooogie woogie! EA’s brand spankin’ new franchise hits the Wii with an original game targeted right at the ever expanding casual game market. The concept is simple, move your Wiimote in time with the beat or sing along to a pop song. Does the concept jive or does it have two left feet?
The first thing you’ll notice about Boogie is how cohesive the theme is. It is easy to tell excellent thought and care was put into the menus, characters, and style of the game. The retro 70’s feel, with a modern twist, is spot on and lends to a party atmosphere. Using the Wiimote, you navigate the funky menus with relative ease. There are a slew of options to choose from: Story, karaoke, dance, and create-a-video, among others.
The story is light and fluffy and centers around the main characters of the game. Not to be taken seriously at all, you see how the different characters interact and what their motivation is for busting a move. This mode mixes the dance (hand waving) parts of the game as well as some karaoke stages. You can blow through the mode rather quickly and unlock a few songs and costume pieces in the process. Truth-be-told, Boogie was never intended to be a single player game and the story seems like a throw away being as short and easy as it is.
You’ll get more life out of the other modes with one caveat – you need to be in a party setting. Waving your hands around in a goofy fashion can only be personally entertaining for so long. When more people enter the room, the laughs will not stop. Spazzing out while using the Boogie power, you can’t help but have a smile on your face. Timing movements with the beat makes the game simple to learn. Knowing that just moving with the beat would make the game boring, using the nunchuk, there are “solos” where you have to time the Z button to vocals. Did the developers see that the waggle got boring and tried to spice it up? “Dancing” is simple and streamlined, however, during longer songs, you’ll notice that the fun factor sags towards the end.
Boogie is packaged with a USB microphone that plugs into the Wii. This is where the karaoke comes into play. If you select the sing-along option, you have to do your best to match vocals with what appears on screen. There are a few options you can tweak to help you out -- if you are an American Idol reject. The song selection is eclectic and you might be surprised at a few of the newer tunes in there. One thing that was odd was the varying quality of the song covers (a few are just down right horrible). You’ll still get a kick out of this mode but you can’t help but feel other games have done this mode much better.
The outstanding feature of Boogie comes from an unlikely source. The video editor will provide a nice big time sink to dink around with. After you record some dance moves, then sing a performance, Boogie allows you to wrap it up in a pretty package. Make cuts, see different camera angles, apply visual filters, and add words to what you recorded and play it back for all to see and subsequently laugh at. The interface for editing is intuitive and user friendly. The video editor doesn’t replace the lack of a solid single-player but this unexpected mode is a real delight. I can see YouTube stars rising right now.
Boogie suffers from repetitive gameplay. Don’t get the wrong impression, you change the gameplay with your arm movements but that can only be so much fun for so long. Boogie should be played in small, short, casual bursts. Going in playing this game like a gamer aiming to beat Halo on Legendary with not dying is only going to lead you to disappointment. I feel that Boogie fits the current line-up of Wii games nicely. You can pick it up and play on a whim and set it down just the same. Boogie is at a great jumping off point, the franchise has the bricks laid down for the next time a disco fire breaks out. Right now, the so-so karaoke and gameplay that sags doesn’t make Boogie a must own. I'd recommend you try it because of the outstanding effort to make a consistent, compelling theme.
The first thing you’ll notice about Boogie is how cohesive the theme is. It is easy to tell excellent thought and care was put into the menus, characters, and style of the game. The retro 70’s feel, with a modern twist, is spot on and lends to a party atmosphere. Using the Wiimote, you navigate the funky menus with relative ease. There are a slew of options to choose from: Story, karaoke, dance, and create-a-video, among others.
The story is light and fluffy and centers around the main characters of the game. Not to be taken seriously at all, you see how the different characters interact and what their motivation is for busting a move. This mode mixes the dance (hand waving) parts of the game as well as some karaoke stages. You can blow through the mode rather quickly and unlock a few songs and costume pieces in the process. Truth-be-told, Boogie was never intended to be a single player game and the story seems like a throw away being as short and easy as it is.
You’ll get more life out of the other modes with one caveat – you need to be in a party setting. Waving your hands around in a goofy fashion can only be personally entertaining for so long. When more people enter the room, the laughs will not stop. Spazzing out while using the Boogie power, you can’t help but have a smile on your face. Timing movements with the beat makes the game simple to learn. Knowing that just moving with the beat would make the game boring, using the nunchuk, there are “solos” where you have to time the Z button to vocals. Did the developers see that the waggle got boring and tried to spice it up? “Dancing” is simple and streamlined, however, during longer songs, you’ll notice that the fun factor sags towards the end.
Boogie is packaged with a USB microphone that plugs into the Wii. This is where the karaoke comes into play. If you select the sing-along option, you have to do your best to match vocals with what appears on screen. There are a few options you can tweak to help you out -- if you are an American Idol reject. The song selection is eclectic and you might be surprised at a few of the newer tunes in there. One thing that was odd was the varying quality of the song covers (a few are just down right horrible). You’ll still get a kick out of this mode but you can’t help but feel other games have done this mode much better.
The outstanding feature of Boogie comes from an unlikely source. The video editor will provide a nice big time sink to dink around with. After you record some dance moves, then sing a performance, Boogie allows you to wrap it up in a pretty package. Make cuts, see different camera angles, apply visual filters, and add words to what you recorded and play it back for all to see and subsequently laugh at. The interface for editing is intuitive and user friendly. The video editor doesn’t replace the lack of a solid single-player but this unexpected mode is a real delight. I can see YouTube stars rising right now.
Boogie suffers from repetitive gameplay. Don’t get the wrong impression, you change the gameplay with your arm movements but that can only be so much fun for so long. Boogie should be played in small, short, casual bursts. Going in playing this game like a gamer aiming to beat Halo on Legendary with not dying is only going to lead you to disappointment. I feel that Boogie fits the current line-up of Wii games nicely. You can pick it up and play on a whim and set it down just the same. Boogie is at a great jumping off point, the franchise has the bricks laid down for the next time a disco fire breaks out. Right now, the so-so karaoke and gameplay that sags doesn’t make Boogie a must own. I'd recommend you try it because of the outstanding effort to make a consistent, compelling theme.
