Go! Go! Break Steady

Posted 4 years ago By - Brian Edey

There are not many unique games out on the game market these days; most are just clones of popular games, so it is a joy to play a game that is fairly unique in overall premise. Now rhythm games are not new, they have been around forever it seems, a hip-hop break dancing street title seems unique to me.

Go up against DJ Scruffy and the Beatniks, competing for prizes with great music, visuals and gameplay this title is one of the best titles on XBLA. Do you have what it takes to be the top break dancer?


Gameplay
Nothing can ruin a gameplay centric game more then crappy gameplay and with a timed button pressing and icon launching frantic puzzle game if you screw up the gameplay it is better that you don’t release the title. Of course the title has been released and lucky for the gamer the gameplay is solid and almost perfect.

The first part of the game is to press A, B, X or Y at specific times as a graphic of each button moves towards the center of the screen in time with the music, but it does not move in just a straight line, oh no, it can come from the left, right, top, left/top, swirling around, twisting and more. In a normal game that would not be too bad, but as soon as you are done hitting the buttons successfully, you are given at least 1 icon to launch into a circular group of similar icons of different colors. The idea is to match at least 3 of each color together, very similar to Luxor (awesome game) and then to top it all off as soon as that is done you are repeating the entire thing. Do this over and over and over again and you get an idea of what the game is.

In the circular area you are attempting to match colors and remove all of the colored icons, but there are also the odd random item such as bombs and coins which do their own special thing. Bombs blow up much of the area, thankfully and coins are collected so once you have at least 3 you unlock a prize.

One of the gameplay modes in both of the single and multiplayer is endurance which is a riot and can be more fun then the regular tournament mode. You will easily waste more time in endurance mode then anywhere else. You will love it.

Multiplayer co-op is both offline (on your couch with your friend) or over Xbox Live, is both fun with Endurance battles or boring Co-op (switching back and forth).


Graphics
I simply loved the graphics style. The first time I saw the graffiti style and fully animated characters I was reminded of one of my favorite games Jet Grind Radio, even though they are different in overall art style there is a nice similarity. Clean, crisp graphics, well animated, plenty of special effects, the game does it all very well.

But it does not do it all perfect, on some of the harder levels, with plenty of action happening across the screen with twirling buttons to press and icons to throw with your character busting a move, it is a little much. Maybe it is my old eyes, but wow there are not many more games that busy.


Audio
Well a music rhythm game does need to have good music, if it does not the game is deader then dead. Luckily this game does have good music and I do not like much hip-hop music so that is saying something, but I must also add that a few hip-hop fans I have spoken to are not fans of the music in the game, so in the end how much you enjoy the music is really up to your taste.

The rest of the audio from the sound effects and the little voice work is all excellent, fitting to the theme of the game and something I enjoyed.

My only gripe was after a few hours of playing the game the music became a little much, but for a downloadable arcade game to have a few hours of play time in one sitting I was not going to complain to the developers.


Value
While the co-op did not do much for me, it adds to the game, plus there is a ton of levels, plus difficulty, characters, wow, there is a ton of value here.

Bottom Line
If you like rhythm games, this is a buy, but if games like Boom Boom Rocket was not your cup of tea, seek your game else where.

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