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 Britney's
Dance Beat Review
Platform: PC
Rating: 2 out of 5 WoBbies :D
Reviewed by: Ruben Garay - World of Britney.com
System Used:
Toshiba Satellite 5105-S607
Pentium 4 1.7 Ghz
512 MB RAM
40 GB Hard Drive
GeForce4 440 Go 32 MB DDR RAM
15.1' Screen
Windows XP Professional
I was pretty excited when I got a copy of Britney's Dance Beat in the mail
to review from K.E Media in Denmark. After all, I knew it was one of those
games where you have to push buttons in a specific time frame in order to
make the dance moves right. I had seen the same type of style games in the
Arcades in Orlando although there you had to actually dance and step on the
arrows yourself. LoL, GO TRAVIS !!! haha..
The installation went pretty smooth and fast, it doesn't ask you for any
custom based installations, it's just a next, next, next Accept thing.
Basically anyone can install this game.
When I installed it and was ready to run, I was greeted by a bunch of logos
and intros from the game developers. I was then greeted by probably the most
realistically animated Britney Spears I had ever seen. She was not only
cute, but seemed so real, and it showed that the digitized version even had
feelings, she also moved, talked and even winked like the real Britney. Obviously the
body of the computer Britney had been enhanced, especially in the chest area.
The voice that came out of the animated Britney is supposed to resemble
Britney with a southern accent, but I would have prefered if it would have
been Britney's real voice there although they did a pretty good job
imitating it, whoever did it, either naturally or by a sound engine,
although sometimes it was just too much, such as when you're dancing, you'd
hear Britney scream out single sentences that just sound a little bit too
cheesy, such as 'Right On' or 'You Got It' and stuff like that.
The game principle is simple, you come in as a dancer who wants to audition
for her World Tour, which takes place in London, Paris and Tokyo. You start
out practicing followed by three auditions. The Practice mode and the
Audition 1 are the only options available when you start off fresh. You
select your dancer, either male or female, white, latin, black or blonde.
None of the dancer names match the real dancer's names for Britney's
original World Tour or Dream Within A Dream Tour, neither does their looks.
You have 4 songs that are played that you dance with, some of these songs
also have remixes, so there is probably about 7 songs to dance for. These
include Baby One More Time, Stronger, Oops I Did It Again and Overprotected
with their corresponding remixes, which are by the way, exclusive to the
game.
As you go from Audition 1 to Audition 2 clearing the levels, which by the
way are cleared by clicking a combination of arrow moves on your keyboard or
gamepad as the dance goes through it's different stages, you get backstage
passes that open exclusive videos on the game's 'Video Vault'. These videos
are exclusive behind the scene footage of Britney's Dream Within A Dream
Tour that show basically a bunch of dance rehearsals, bungee jumping, lots
of dancers, stage managers, security guards, dressing rooms, tour buses
etc..Very interesting footage,although barely with any speech, it's mostly
video sequences with a background music. Each video is about 3 minutes long
and there are about 8-10 videos.
As you clear all auditions, you proceed to the actual concert. What's
dissapointing is that when in concert just as with auditions your dance
character only dances with one dancer next to him/her and there is no trace
of a real stage or a real dance sequence with 8 dancers or more. You go
through 3 concerts in 3 different cities, including London, Paris and Tokyo.
As you advance the levels get harder and harder of course. When you've
passed and finished the whole World Tour, you get to dance next to Britney
Spears, which this time by the way, the Britney computer model used to dance
is in no way compared to the quality of the Britney that greets you at the
start of the game. Dancing with Britney is of course the most difficult
level of them all, as the keypad combinations required to dance get more
complex and run down the screen at a much faster rate.
When you've completed all of this, you are basically told by the Britney
voice that you're one of the best dancers in the world. This whole process
from Practice to ending the World Tour took me about 30 minutes to complete,
which makes me wonder if the $50 everybody is spending on the game are
actually worth it. It's not like you want to go back and do everything
again, cause it's all basically the same, the only reason why I would want
go back and do it again is to improve my previous score, but the game
experience has basically already been felt.
One thing I liked a lot is to actually be playing a game that has Britney
Spears songs and remixes as background audio. Too bad I wasn't even able to
focus on the guy dancing because I was too busy checking the left part of
the screen trying to see what dance move came next.
Were the dance routines accurate to the real ones? I must say, barely. Did
the dance moves exerted on the keypad go in beat and in motion with the
digitized dancer ? nuh uh....it didn't even make sense. What happens is that
when you get a set of keys to punch to do the dance, it makes the dancer
make a dance move, but it's not like in the arcades where the actual dance
you step on with your feet is the dance that is shown on the computerized
dancer.
When you've completed all levels, all videos on the video vault are opened
except one. And to get that one you must complete a Britney trivia that
consists of 25 out 100 randomly multiple choice selected questions. The
questions aren't that hard to answer if you've been following Britney for
the past 3 years, but it's fun to sit there and answer them cause it covers
lots of things that have happened in Britney's life and career and it
refreshes your memory as a whole about what the girl has been and gone
through.
The game developers knew that they would receive complaints if they made a
game that would get completed in 30 minutes. So they created a section of
the game where you can basically freestyle and create your own dance moves
to the Britney song of your choice. It also lets you save the whole dance
and watch it later. My opinion of this feature on the game is that it was a
complete waste of time and hard work. If you compare the difficulty level of
the Freestyle dancing with the most difficult part of the concert part of
the game, it's like going from difficulty level 1% to difficulty level 99%.
You get eight tabs that u can change in the screen that show different dance
moves as a box in the bottom goes down to up asking you to input the dance
move of your choice.
Unless you're a Britney dancer and know exactly the name of the dance moves
and how to execute them and during what time of the song, you will be
completely lost and bored during this section of the game.
As a conclusion, this game is something for all die hard Britney fans who
wish to own every single piece of merchandise that has been released by her
people. The game is fun and entertaining when you play it for the first
time, although if you're used to games and have good reflexes it will take
you anywhere from 30 minutes to 60 minutes to complete, compared to some
games that are available at the same price which can take you weeks to
complete.
The backstage videos featured at the game's video vault are really good and
interesting to watch. You get to see and meet a lot of people that you had
never seen before and it takes you behind the scenes of the making of the
whole DWAD tour which I thought was really interesting and totally worth it.
But if you're just a regular Britney fan or someone who barely likes her, I
suggest you go find another game. This game was advertised extremely well
and news about the release of this game was set about a year before it was
seen in stores. I personally expected so much more from it, I was like 'Ok
that's it?'.
Please bear in mind that what I reviewed was the PC version. The PS2 version
is different in the way that it has a little bit better graphics and that it
lets you play a two player game. I am sure the PS2 version is so much more
entertaining than the PC version so I suggest you go get the PS2 edition if
you do own a PlayStation 2. This game is also available for the Game Boy
Advance and it's a small game chip you insert into the portable game device,
which amazingly enough, sells for about $69, more expensive than the actual
PS2 game or the PC Version.
We are giving the game 2 out of 5 WoBbies :D.
In about 2 weeks World of Britney.com will be having a contest where you
will be able to win a copy of the PS2 and Game Boy Advance versions of
Britney's Dance Beat. This contest will only be open to Scandinavian Britney
fans (Sweden, Norway and Denmark). This will be done in order to promote the
release of the game in Scandinavia. Håll
ögonen öppna killar och tjejer från Norden ! :D |
Posted by Ruben
updated: 08-23-2002 10:15
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