A couple of months back I stumbled upon this game that I didn’t know existed for the PS2, so it only cost my 10 bux—with the game pad—instead of the new release price of like 50 bux. Being a huge collector of the Dance Dance Revolution games, I’m always excited to add a game with new songs to my arsenal.
Well, this High School Musical game is very different. Instead of the usual DDR scheme of left/right/up/down arrows scrolling up from the bottom, side by side so your eyes can easily keep them in scope, this game is set up so that there are ‘brackets’ to the North, South, West and East of the television screen. Green balls appear from the center of the screen and move towards the four different brackets—which means, in order to hit the up/down/left/right steps on your dance pad at just the moment when the ball hits the bracket, your eyes seriously have to jump ALL OVER the screen. This isn’t so bad in easier stages (Sophomore and Junior years—don’t know why there’s no Freshman year), but by Senior stage, your eyes are doing some serious Marty Feldman Young Frankenstein Igor shit.
Eventually, you do sort of get used to the alternate screen layout, but you’re definitely at a disadvantage when too many balls are releasing from the center of the screen at once. Your timing gets thrown off as you try to look from one side of the screen to the other quickly to determine exactly which ball is closer to the bracket towards which it is heading. Argh! On top of this, there are no ‘half note’ colors or syncopated color variations, the way the arrows in DDR are distinguished. You simply have to guesstimate when the green balls are going to hit the brackets. Ridiculous. There are, however, purple balls that leave the center at the same time, moving in different directions. These signify that you have to jump on two direction arrows in unison, a concept similar to the DDR series. And finally, there are occasionally these “wildcat” balls that give you more points, and from what I could tell while playing the game, if you don’t hit each one in the series at exactly the right moment, they convert back to plain old green balls, forfeiting you the bonus. For added fun, there’s an outline of a star in the upper left corner of the screen that fills up with color as you get continuous combinations of steps right. When the star fills up completely, an ‘X’ and ‘O’ symbol appear very subtly under the star. This is your chance to simultaneously jump on both of these corresponding keys on the dance pad (sort of like an extra dance step in the middle of your game) to start a timer that runs down as you continue doing your dance moves for added bonus points.
The graphics are great in this game—song are from all three films (29 songs in all, playable in every difficulty level) and are presented along with a rather faithful video game version of the cast singing and dancing to the song just as they did in the movies. It gave me a good chance to get to know the songs better, because I only watched each film once on cable and although I own each soundtrack, I’ve only listened to each one once! For shame. Take away my gay card. But really, doesn’t buying this cheesy game make up for all that??? But back to the game. The big problem with the game is the dance step programming. It’s TERRIBLE, most often lacking any sense of actual flow like real dance moves. This game couldn’t possibly have been programmed by anyone with a sense of rhythm and dance aesthetics. DDR, even when it follows, let’s say, instrumental nuances or vocal syncopations instead of the songs’ beats, does so in places that make sense and are clear accents in the structure of the actual song. In this game, it’s very often completely random very often and lands on illogical, non-rhythmic syllables in the vocals! Plus, the pacing of the dance steps is often just ‘off’ and not fluid. You find yourself WANTING to move to the groove of the song, but suddenly getting tripped up with your foot hovering in the air as you try balancing one leg waiting for that next lagging dance step to hit at one of its bizarre moments. Seriously—what songs were the programmers of this game listening to, because it sure wasn’t the songs in the game.
Even with all these obstacles, the game is still actually quite easy even at its most difficult level, simply because it’s pretty forgiving, essentially because it was made for 14-year-olds, not 41-year-olds…. As a result, even in Senior level, it simply isn’t much of a workout and you don’t break a sweat like you do in DDR games. And once you’ve worked your way through the Senior year (you have to play easier levels to unlock the more difficult levels), all you can really do is continue to play the 29 songs on Senior level for any sort of challenge. So if you want to dance to some High School Musical songs but retain that traditional DDR feel, you’re better off buying the Disney edition of Dance Dance Revolution that was released for the PS2.
