Boogie (Nintendo DS) Review

Those coming off the back of the Wii version, thinking that a portable edition may seem like a good idea, should definitely think twice before making the purchase. Whilst singing and dancing using the free microphone and Wii motion sensing was quite enjoyable, the DS version cuts out the vocal talent aspect, skimps on the sound quality of songs due to the smaller media storage, and throws in a very awkward touch-screen control mechanic that almost ruins the game entirely. Players will be asked to tap on the screen at various times, as well as swipe the stylus in one of six different directions during the main career and freestyle modes, but the accuracy of your swipes must be pixel perfect at times or else the game simply misinterprets the move and thus penalises the gamer. So the whole experience becomes highly frustrating after a short time, before the tediousness of it all takes over instead.

It does try to spice things up, with different characters having varied moves, some mapped to the D-pad as well, but there is nothing in particular that actually grabs the player's attention, even when factoring in the plentiful supply of customisation options, and thus the whole idea of the game becomes tiresome very quickly, especially when the difficulty level is so low that a trained chimp could bumble its way through without hassle. Other than the main dance mode, though, there are mini-games that crop up during songs, which prove to be a serious random screen tapping annoyance-filled events that you really do not want when in the middle of doing a dance routine since they can throw your rhythm off considerably and prove ultimately exasperating. Throw in the pointless addition of a '3D' mode that just makes the game look even blander than before (using the free glasses that come with the game) and there is barely anything to truly recommend about Boogie DS at all.