Pumping Irony

You should be dancin’ yeah!

Ok, my Bee Gees moment is over, you can thank the appropriate deities now.

Cameron first brought up Acclaim’s Dance! Online yesterday at Random Battle but I was thinking the Closed Beta NDA still applied. I had to apply to closed beta a couple weeks ago and was sent their restrictive NDA, however Google etc. say Dance! has been in Open Beta since April. So… WTF?

So yeah, I’m doing the Dance! beta along with comparing it to Audition. Both are rhythm games much like the Dance Dance Revolution (Dance! even has a dance pad mode) or Guitar Hero series. The actual control scheme for each is very different however. Dance! is very similar to DDR or GH where the icons scroll up and you press the appropriate key at a specific time. Audition on the other hand shows you the entire combo sequence for the dance step and you have to match it and press the space bar to execute the move at a specific time. Similar in concept, very different in execution.

My only experience with rhythm games is Guitar Hero II (well, and Boom Boom Rocket on XBLA but that lasted less than two minutes before I deleted it) so I prefer the dance controls of Dance! Online. Although both games only run at 800×600 currently (and badly need to be allowed to run higher!) I’m gonna give Dance! the better graphics award. Not because it actually has better graphics, but because Audition has that big-eyed cartoon anime art style which can be ok but it’s just not working for me here. All in all though, both games are surprisingly fun if you’re in the mood for some hectic finger-twisting casual gaming to a wide range of dance-able music.

Tags: Audition, Dance