Nitpicky Gamer: Dancing With the Stars

In every 'Nitpicky' review, I point out details in a piece of media that the majority of the world doesn't care about - but pisses me off. In this review, I didn't have to be nitpicky at all; this game sucks. I'm sure this never-should-have-been-a video game took the most of a month to make. It's perfect for a Mystery Science Gamer episode, though it would probably last a peak twenty minutes before those robots short circuit.

This game is bluntly underdeveloped. The producer probably asked for a working prototype then immediately put it up for sale in bargain bins everywhere. The game debuted with a $14.99 'Clearance' label. I'm trying to say I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. Is there any point to pointing out problems in a so obviously hacked-together game? Well, it doesn't matter, I'm going to beat the hell out of this horse.

--

I load Dancing With the Stars. Like most games, it begins by displaying each company daring enough to associate their name with it. I press the escape key to skip the credits, wary to see a company I have respect for or a company I've never heard of ruined forever. Instead of immediately taking me to the main menu, I get a pop-up box that asks 'Exit to Main Menu?' Um. Yes, please. Great start.

The main menu is a mix n' match collage of resolutions. The background image, a time lapse of two dancers, looks hi-res, or should I say: normal. But each menu item has an adjacent disco ball that looks like a miss-imported jpeg - completely fuzzy.

Seeing a disco ball in a brand new dancing game makes me wonder. Does anyone dance anymore? Is Disco the most recent form of popular dancing? It makes sense, I guess, since the most current form of dance is vertical dry humping.

Before I begin a new game, I check out the bonus videos. Various dances line the left side of the screen. This is pretty cool - I'm fairly excited to watch and learn about twelve different dances. The background is the same as the main menu. Red, remnants of flowing movement, probably a stock photo, but it works as a good dance background.

I select the first dance and a rigid white box is slapped on to the screen. No... 'box' infers depth. These are just plain white pixels with no visual connection to any other element on the screen. A medium-sized, feathered circle within this square spotlights two dancers. I don't know what to say, the quality speaks for itself.



An awkward narrator explains a tiny bit about each dancing style. I can't really concentrate; I still can't believe they just threw this junk on the screen. Why even use the white box, the video would have even better on the original background. Even taking a few minutes to design a stage for the dancers would have looked ten times better. Also, the video is too small. After thirty seconds, the asynchronous mix of dance, music, and narration abruptly cut off.

--

All right, back to the main menu. I start a new game. I am prompted to create a profile. Under the words 'New Profile' are a few sentences explaining my role in the game.

"You are a professional dancer and you make sure your partner performs well. We wish you best of luck and hope to see you in the final."

So, I'm the professional dancer and I will be training my partner. I'm the one playing the game, don't I need training? In any case, I sincerely appreciate the game developers wishing me 'the best of luck'. It will surely boost me towards the 'final'. (Final episode? Level? or maybe they are going for finale?)

I can choose between four difficulty modes: Easy, Intermediate, Hard, or Ultimate. Some games are too easy. Some are, you know, intermediate. Some games are just hard. Some games, though, are FUCKING ULTIMATE!

I am now choosing my contestant. Myself and everyone standing around is erupting in laughter. These are the worst character designs ever. Keep in mind, this game came out this year. Half of the characters look in-bred with Alvin and the Chipmunks. They all stand the exact same height and have the exact same Body Mass Index.






--

First off: choreography. The instructions contain must-know information like: "As the competition progresses, you will receive new dances to perform and eventually multiple dances."

Got it. In my first routine, I am supposed to create a routine worth 210 points. What the heck does that mean? Where did 210 come from? It's so... arbitrary.

I need to start with an 'opening move.' In the top right of the screen is a list of buttons. Wrong. Do not be confused. These are not buttons. They may highlight when your mouse passes over them and may indent when you click on them, but they are not buttons. They do absolutely nothing. Instead, I need to select a piece of the dance floor's grid.

When I select a piece of the grid, it turns bright red. No, not some bubbly, decent looking gradient, pure, ugly, basic-as-html red. Not only that, it isn't positioned correctly. How hard is it to color within the lines on a computer?

When I click on a square in the dance floor's grid, a menu pops up offering different levels of dance moves: opening, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. But, I can only use an opening move for my opening move. Why even have the other choices? If I hover my mouse over these other options, beginner, intermediate, and advanced, of course there are no moves. In fact it goes through the trouble to list 'NoMoves'. No space between the two words; it's a variable name for a null value. They could have just left the options off the list.

Not only that, but under 'Opening Moves', my two choices are 'Openingmove1' and 'Openingmove2'. How descriptive.

After choosing 'Openingmove1', a circle of blue squares slowly renders onto the dance floor. Slowly. Seriously, how long does it take to set a few pixels to blue? Most games nowadays render high quality, multi-polygonal graphics faster that this game draws a fucking blue square.

I am told that I can choose any moves listed under beginner, intermediate, and advanced, but harder moves may earn less points if my dancer is not skilled enough to perform them. So I choose all beginner moves. This brings me to exactly 210 points. Well, I guess that's where the number came from.

After completely laying out my routine, I take a look at my masterful choreography.


What the fuck did I do?

--

Next, I start training. Wait, what? I choreograph, then I train, then I dance? Shouldn't I train, then choreograph, and then see the results of my choreography? Why split it up?

I was then plastered with this boring, probably default, user interface.



Training consists of three mini-games. Each began with a set of instructional gems.

"From left to right across the top, the shoes are pointing left, up, down, and right."

"You can click on the shoe outlines with your mouse instead of your keyboard, but the speed of the shoes will increase as the game goes on, as well as the number of waves and the shoes in each wave."

The first mini-game models the typical rythm game, like Dance Dance Revolution. Numerous waves of shoes fly up the screen with no regard to the generic genre music playing in the background. I am instructed to hit the arrow key when one of the flying shoes crosses the appropriate 'left, up, down, and right' pointing shoe.

The second quote above explains that I can use my mouse instead of the arrow keys. It also explains that this is a bad idea because the shoes will eventually become too fast for a mouse to keep up. If it's such a bad idea, why is it implemented? (I know, I know, because they wanted to make a game playable with just a mouse. Who has a mouse, but no keyboard? I dunno.)

The game explains that I will be awarded a score of perfect, good, or miss for each shoe. What a selection.

I begin the first mini-game. I'm doing my best to hit the correct arrow keys for the appropriate shoes. But I have no idea how I'm being rated. When I press an arrow key - or click a shoe with my mouse - my only feedback is DING! That's right, one of the first sound files that shipped with the first computers. The ding. It sounds almost identical to the brain-chipping ding heard when I press a key I'm not allowed to press on my computer. You know, I'm at home on the internet, peace and quiet, filling out a suggestion box for some online retailer; I'm hoping to win a $500 gift card. I'm typing as much as you can, but the box only allows 500 characters. How do they tell me I've filled up the space? DING! Or, in most cases, since I was typing pretty quickly, DINGDINGDINGDINGDING.

Anyway, I don't see 'perfect', 'good', or 'miss' anywhere. In most games, the words jump out at me, blasting like fireworks and pixel explosions. Oh, wait, something just caught my eye. In the very center of the screen, away from all the foot action at the top, for a split second after each shoe passes over its silhouette, 'Perfect' in green, 'Good' in pink, or 'Miss' in black, appear; all in the default font TIMES-NEW-FUCKING-ROMAN size 12.

Did I mention that this took thirty seconds to load?



You know what I just realized? Bubble are floating around the screen.

--

Second mini-game. Another fuckin' doozy. In order to improve my contestant's posture, I have to balance books on my head. I need to keep my head in the green part of the rainbow that sprouted from my cranium.



Speaking of dancer, that isn't the celebrity I chose. That's me? the professional dancer. I thought the celebrity contestant was supposed to be practicing balance, not the professional.

In any case, I have to do this for a minute straight. A WHOLE 6O SECONDS. It only takes 5 seconds to figure out the incredible logic programmed into this mini-game. If my mouse is on the left side of the dancer, he or she will lean to the right. If my mouse is on the right side, he or she will lean to the left. So, I just move your mouse back and forth across the screen until the game grants my leave.

--

The third game manages to make something I usually enjoy not fun: a short-term memory test. Four to five shoes are randomly scattered around the center of the screen. One lights up, then another, then one more. I am told to click the shoes in the same order as I they lit up. Let me tell you, memorizing three shoes in a row is fucking tough. On the next level, I had to memorize four. Four. I almost started taking screenshots. In my later Ultimate campaign, on the very last level, I had to memorize six shoes in a row. Ho-Lee Shit.

The average person's short-term memory can hold seven to nine items. This isn't ultimate, it's cheese-balls. It's the Discovery Zone. It's tard school dropout. Forgive me.

--

After completing all three mini-games, I finally get to watch my couple dance. I don't have to do anything, they just follow the dance I choreographed an hour earlier.

Well, great. Judging by the performance, we're going to fail out. Their hands weren't touching, the guy was all in the girl's dress, and I think he put his hand through her stomach. After each move finished, my couple teleported to another part of the stage to begin their next move. Isn't that against the rules? We're going to get voted off first week.

After the Jumpers finished, the judges awarded my hard work: Three 8s baby!

--

Week 2
I now have to choreograph a dance worth 215 points. 5 points more than the previous week. Sigh.

And now I have to complete all three mini-games again, with minor changes to make them tougher. What exactly does tought mean?
Tougher adj. longer and more boring. When Samantha told Tommy he was tougher than Matt, Tommy felt confused.

More bubbles. More waves of shoes. More books on top of my head. I don't understand how adding more books makes my posture better. Sure, it's harder to balance a taller stack of books, but these ten-pound, hardcover textbooks would break a man's neck.

After that, I memorize a longer pattern of footsteps.

My couple then dances through my masterful choreography, I receive more crappy feedback from the judges, and once again, I'm awarded all 8s.

This time, on couple will be voted off. The dialogue is as follows:

"One couple will be voted off this week"
(10 second pause)
"The couple is..."
(Another pause)
Emmit...
(pause)
and Janine.

They have a sound clip with every guy's name and a sound clip with every girl's name preceded by 'and'.

I reluctantly trudge through the weeks until I win.

And now I get to lose. In order to complete my testing (did I mention I was a game tester?), I need to make sure 'getting voted off' works correctly. So, I started up the 'Intermediate' campaign and tried to lose. In retrospect, I should have just gone 'Ultimate'.

--

I got a perfect zero in the 'rythm' mini-game - I started it up, went and took a shit, came back, then waited for the last few waves of shoe imprints to finish their quest to the top of the screen.

I got a 50% on the balancing game. It's the worst I could do. Basically, every second my head is in the 'green' portion of the rainbow, I get plus points. Every second my head is in the red I get no points. I would just let it drop every time, but since it took a second for my head to tilt, I racked up a nice fifty percent.

By the way, it totally sucked because time would stop whenever the books hit the ground, I would have to click my mouse to reset my character to the original position and the click again to start. And time would stop every time. The sixty-second game took two and a half minutes because I was perfectly fucking it up. Seriously, it took willpower to keep myself from playing that game correctly.

I got another perfect zero on the third mini-game, intentionally disremembering all of my fancy dance steps.

I watch my couple take the dance floor. They dance the same every time. I can't tell if they are dancing good or bad.

Finally moment of truth. Get me off this show!

5 - 7 - 5.

What the fuck? I just failed everything the best I could. And I get better than average scores? I have to try again to fail out? I don't know if I can do this.

It took me 4 more weeks to fail out. I was rewarded with a Game Over (Thank God) screen and the credits.

--

I wrote down the names of developers and companies that worked on this game while the credits rolled. I need to know who to avoid. After a bit, I noticed that I had seen credits listed for three different studios that provided music. Why so many places? There weren't that many songs. Wait a second.

The credits were repeating. They just kept on going and I had missed the brief blank space between the end and beginning. Dumbass here had been watching the same credits repeat for five minutes. I knew there was no way over a thousand people collaborated on this crap.

--

I exited the game with five pages of notes on everything that sucked about it. Why even write it up? Because companies shouldn't release this kind of bullshit. How do you get someone to change their ways? You make fun of them, of course.