Indie dancing games suck. . . This game should be called "In The Dork"
Bad: Nerd factor through the roof; lame American style song selection; Kyle Ward is an untalented artist (just like fellow nerd DM Ashura); bland presentation and graphics; too many useless mods.
In the Groove (ITG) is a self proclaimed dance game created by dance game fans for dance game fans. The history of the game is derived from Stepmania, an open source Dance Dance Revolution simulator for the PC. 2004, a group fans were tired of waiting for a follow up to DDR Extreme so they took matters into their own hands. Thus, the In the Groove project was born. Picked up by a no-name company called Roxor Games, the ITG vision was put to fruition and the game was released in the arcades.The game was a success for its target fans of hardcore dance game players who have mastered Dance Dance Revolution or are expert Pump It Up players. While the game itself was never a commercial success, Roxor was happy enough to get word out about the game and gather an audience of hardcore players. However, one particular company saw the game's success and was more than eager to let its presence known. It was Konami, not out to give Roxor games a pat on the back on a job well done. Rather than to give Roxor lawsuit papers claiming that Roxor violated copyright law by altering DDR arcade machines into ITG machines. The outcome of the lawsuit has been settled out of court and Roxor has been killed by o mighty Konami. Rabid ITG fanboys have pouted and cried on dork sites like bemanistyle or ddrfreak. Some emo babies calling this "the end of dance games," nerds.
ITG is a DDR knock-off. It's a fact, is that bad? Not necesarily, the game does add a few twists on DDR's classic format. The game has more mods than any music game on the market. In fact, thats the only thing that separates the two games. It's also worth noting that the game is much harder than your average DDR mix. The difficulty levels pass the 10 unit mark on some songs featuring some of the most assinine step patterns outside of Pump It Up. This is why the hardcore fans love this game so much. It's not all difficult step patterns though. The game has easier step levels but the transition from Medium to Hard is far too wide. ITG's music is pretty poor. There are about 76 songs total and I only like 5 of them max. Taking a cue from the Ultramix games, Roxor has filled ITG with a bunch of no name generic dance songs. Who in the hell picked those 2 crappy Sammi Morelli songs here? She can't sing for crying out loud. Then you also got more stupid classical songs remixed for the idiot generation such as the William Tell Overture. The lamest E-ROTIC/Missing Heart songs are in here as well as Dancemania rejects DJ Doo and Crispy. Kyle Ward, ITG's in-house composer of choice, is an untalented musician. He makes NAOKI look like Mozart (NAOKI has versetality). This NAOKI counterpart of ITG has several aliases, all suck pretty bad. His brand of dance music ranges from generic drum and bass songs , generic speedcore songs, to generic happy hardcore songs.
The game's graphics and presentation are poor. The backgrounds look like WMA backdrops, the font used is just as bad as the ones from the DDR Ultramix series, and the menus look like they were all thrown in 20 minutes. The game's port job is faulty. The game slows down if there are way too many arrows or mods on the screen. How the hell is this possible? It's just generic video clips and arrows on screen, totally pathetic. Even worse are the load times, yeah they are long, very long for a game like this.
It's worth noting that the nerd factor for this game is through the roof. On the game's load screens, they tell you who did the step patterns, do you really think I care about that stuff? There is a song here about the nerd heaven called Penny Arcade from nerd rapper MC Frontalot. If you meet certain requirements after a round of arcade mode, you get to see the nerds behind the game as well as the step designers.
At this point, this game has sold poorly against the main competition. Why? because instead of making a game that both the hardcore and casual fans can enjoy, they opted to go for the other. The game enforces the stereotype that nerds have no sense in style, music, and presentation.