In the Groove

"Roxor is single handedly taking the dance game generation forward"

In The Groove is finally out for PS2. The last American dance game to be published was...DDR Extreme, last year. As the American market (as well as the Japanese market) for DDR games continued to look dimmer, Roxor appeared in shining armor and saved the day. Metaphorically, of course.

So is In The Groove a replacement for DDR, seeing as Bemani is far more interested in pouring its resources into Pop'n Music and Beatmania IIDX? Maybe. Konami halted the DDR series for a while, and Roxor is trying to pick up where they left off. ITG can be nothing but good for the market, and it's already shown, since Konami is now pushing DDR Extreme 2, the first American PS2 DDR game not to be based on an actual arcade mix (although you could say that the console versions weren't modeled after the arcade mixes in the first place). But it's still hard to say which will remain supreme: ITG or DDR. Only time will tell.

Aside from economics, In The Groove has plenty to bring to the table to satisfy the ever-insatiable DDR fanatics. I don't think it can yet be said that ITG will easily replace DDR. I still would rather play DDR Extreme JP than In The Groove, but Roxor has plenty of time to improve. Remember, this is only the FIRST mix of In The Groove, and they have already pushed ITG 2 into the arcade market. Now, to analyze the aspects of In The Groove's gameplay.

Of course, the first thing you will notice is the stunning graphics. Roxor is a novice company, but their artists did a fantastic job rendering the menus, and especially the background movies and the arrow effects. I'll be damned if someone tells me this game looks worse than any DDR mix ever did. I have no qualms about the graphic presentation whatsoever.

Of course, the most important part of any Music/Rhythm game, and especially a dancing game, is the songs. And the songs are great. The majority of the songs are, as expected, electronic music. Quite a bit of trance, hyper trance, and experimental electro music is present, among some house gems, eurobeat, and several rock and metal songs. Some of the songs are even covers or remixes of popular songs (Torn stands out in my mind), but certainly the music isn't for everyone - although I think most would agree that many people get into the Bemani series because of their love for electronic music. The songs are created by a mixture of many different artists - many of them I have never heard of, but other artists are known because they have made other songs for DDR, or Stepmania (KeeL, the Naoki of ITG, has many good songs on this mix under different names). The sound quality is excellent as well. I wouldn't say its anything under 160 kbps, although it could be more.

Out of all the aspects of In The Groove, the gameplay stands out foremost. Of course it is almost identical to Dance Dance Revolution, but it has improved greatly. Roxor is a down-to-earth company who knows what its like to actually play dancing games, so they listen to what the consumer wants. And what the consumer wants is a lot of goodies. Roxor included tons of new modifiers, many of which you'd be familiar with if you played Stepmania. There are new speed modifiers (including C300 and C450 mods!), effect mods, arrow mods, and basically anything you can imagine. Along with that, Roxor implemented mine steps and hand steps, something Konami was too afraid to do. They don't detract from the game at all - in fact, they make it far more versatile and interesting. Even if you are dead-set against hand steps and mines, there are options to remove them, and many of the songs don't use them anyway.

As for the difficulty of play, it is extravagantly difficult. Song difficulty ratings go up to 13 now, instead of 10, and God bless the man who can full combo any song above 12. I myself am an especially skilled DDR player, and the songs rated 12 and 13 are far too ridiculous for me to even pass. This is what the expert players wanted though: more difficult songs. And they definitely got it. There are only a handful of songs which are that difficult however. Many songs stay in the 9-10 range, which is reasonable for me. It's tough to compare the difficulty of ITG to DDR, since ITG songs range from 2:00 to 2:30 in length, while DDR songs range from 1:30 to 2:00 in length. I've always considered DDR songs too short and thought that longer songs would make the game more enjoyable, but I'm not so sure. The extended length of the ITG songs makes them far more difficult to play, and they require substantially more endurance and stamina. As for the newbie aspect of the game, I haven't played any of the easier songs, but I've seen many "Novice" difficulties rated 1, so there is a good share of easy songs for the inexperienced player to attempt.

I've pretty much covered the whole of the game, but there are other things that you may hear from other reviewers. The most common is complaint of the long load times. It's a bit of an exaggeration considering the time between the end of a song and the results screen is four seconds, but it is a bit longer than you might expect at first. It's not a big issue. One thing that is a big issue is a bug which causes the game to freeze up if you choose to sort the songs by "TOPGRADE". Fortunately you can recover from it by loading the game without your memory card inserted, and then load your data from the options screen and change the sort method before you return to the main menu. Although this is a pretty big issue to miss (I wonder how long they tested the final product?), you have to remember that Roxor is a novice company and this is the first game they've put out. I haven't played it, but I hear that In The Groove 2 has resolved quite a few issues that were present in In The Groove. As far as I'm concerned, Roxor can do nothing but improve itself and its games from now on.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/16/05