Boogie

"The best word to describe Boogie is..."bad"."

Introduction - Honestly, going into Boogie for the DS, I wasn't expecting much. The console versions got less than stellar scores, and the DS version didn't look much better. Well, I suppose it's good that I wasn't expecting much, I guess, because this game is most certainly not good.

Gameplay - 3/10

The most important part of the game…The gameplay. So, how does it fare? Not well. At all.

The basic premise is that you generally use the touch screen to create your own dance moves to go along with the beat by moving the stylus around in various directions, doing the moves when the Beat Meter reaches full, to score maximum points. Throw in some minigames within the songs, and you should be having a good time. In theory, at least.

The most glaring flaw with the gameplay is the difficulty. In easy mode, you can, quite literally, set the game down, get something to drink, come back, and still have over 75% of your health remaining. That's definitely an issue. Though hard mode makes this flaw a bit better, it's still an enormous fault.

Just how easy is it? Ok, in any difficulty mode of the game, you can set the game down, rub the stylus from side to side on the screen, and win the song.

The second main flaw with the gameplay is repetition. Though the free style of the game is enticing, after actually playing, you quickly realize that you're simply repeating random motions in random directions and scoring points for it. There is virtually no variety within the main parts of the song, as every song is the same as every other song as far as gameplay goes. Trust me, it gets old, fast. Ok, sure, you have other modes, but in those, you're simply being told HOW you should go about completing boring repetitive motions, which is even worse.

Ok, so the little in-song minigames could add some fun, right? Wrong. Though they add a bit of variety, these minigames really serve no purpose other than for some points. They don't help or hurt you, and are often times more annoying anything else, and will usually cause you to simply put down your DS during these segments.

Overall, the gameplay is a total mess. The ‘free' style of the game is fun for a little while, but quickly degenerates into senseless screen rubbing.

Story - N/A

Honestly, I stopped paying attention to the story after the first few lines of dialogue. The story just seemed far too ridiculous and pointless to be worth paying attention to. However, since I did not actually watch the scenes, I cannot rate the story.

Graphics - 8/10

For all of the game's flaws, I will give it that it has decent graphics, as far as DS games go. Watching your character dance is actually pretty good looking and smooth. Even the facial expressions at least look decent.

The backgrounds on stages look quite nice, as well. Though they really don't serve any purpose, they can set a nice mood for a song. However, I can't help but suspect that these flashy backgrounds are just meant to try to distract you from the gameplay…

However, the only real flaw with the graphics is the map screen in story mode. Sure, it's only a minor thing, but the entire map looks very lazily done and extremely uninspired.

Sound - 5/10

One of the more important aspects of any rhythm game is the sound, particularly the song selection. Though Boogie does have a nice range of songs to choose from, there are only a small handful that could be considered anything better than “ear bleedingly bad”. Most of the time, you're better off muting the DS and winning the songs by rubbing randomly and hoping for the best. Honestly, one of the worst song selections I've seen in a rhythm game in quite a while. However, the fact remains that there are “real” songs on the DS, which is a plus, if nothing else, and a few of the songs are pretty good.

Play time/Replayability - 2/10

The game's career mode is, as expected, quite short. That's to be expected with any rhythm game, especially on the DS. The real question is, does this game make you want to keep playing after the story?

No, not really. The only reason to keep playing is to listen to the songs again(Though I don't think that I could even, in a million years, understand why you'd WANT to), since the game plays IDENTICALLY for every song in the entire game.

So really, if you keep playing for the gameplay, you may as well just play the first song over and over. You're getting the same effect there.

Final recommendation - If you buy this for yourself, you haven't read this review. If a friend of yours buys it, he or she is masochistic. If someone else buys it for you, they hate you. Just pass this up, it's really a train wreck of a game with some pretty packaging and nice graphics.

Individual scores:
Gameplay - 3/10
Story - N/A
Graphics - 8/10
Sound - 5/10
Play time/replayability - 2/10

Final score - 3/10(Not an average)

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/07

Game Release: Boogie (US, 11/27/07)