Any hardcore player should be pleased, and the game is as good as any to start with, too.
User Rating: 8.9 | In The Groove PS2
Here in North America, dancing games are a budding genre that is starting to gain popularity. It's an odd genre, in that hardcore players must spend hundreds on a high-quality pad before getting the most out of the games. This really limits the growth of the genre, but that hasn't stopped Roxor Games from making their first console release: In The Groove. In The Groove is immediately comparable to the Dance Dance Revolution series. Not only is it a dancing game, but it uses the same 4 panels in the same positions as DDR, which means any existing DDR player can play In The Groove without having to relearn the game or buy a new pad. Just like in DDR, there are 4 stationary arrows at the top of the screen, and more arrows move up from the bottom. The player must hit these arrows as they hit the stationery arrows at the top, which is identical to DDR's play. While easy to learn for any DDR player, In The Groove manages to differentiate itself with a number of additions. For one, the arrows are 3D and metal (by default), making the game more sophisticated from a technological standpoint. The way the arrows "come at you" as they reach the top of the screen actually has a purpose; you can see them from further away than you can when the arrows just go straight up. The difficulty in In The groove is also different from DDR at both extremes. Firstly, ITG's "Novice" difficulty is comparible to DDR's "Beginner", but Novice is even easier, giving first-time players a fighting chance, though it's always tough to get into dancing games. Fortunately, ITG has a small tutorial mode that is much shorter than DDR's, but about as informative. More importantly for hardcore players looking for a challenge, the dancing gets frantic in the Expert difficulty. Whereas ITG's Easy, Medium, and Hard difficutlies roughly correlate to DDR's Light, Standard, and Heavy/Challenge, the Expert difficulty is in a league of it's own, featuring stepcharts that are rated 9 at the least, with some higher than that. DDR's scale goes from 1 to 10, and ITG's ratings work similarily, but don't stop at 10. Songs that rate 12 on ITG's scale are much harder than anything you'll see in DDR, and the steps are also well designed; they go with the music and a synced to the beat. Some of the stepcharts in the easier difficulties don't quite stack up to DDR's in terms of quality. It seems that more focus was put on the harder charts in the game, but that's not to say that the Easy and Medium charts are poorly made. They just feel a little bland, in that after playing a few, they begin to feel samey and boring. Still, they do their job in helping players learn the game and improve. However, players who like to play across two pads in Double mode get the worst of this, as even Hard and Expert charts in this difficulty, while challenging and somewhat fun, feel similar to each other and tend to use a few patterns over and over again. Most of the variety in the game can be found in the standard 4-panel mode, in the Hard and Expert difficulties. And unlike DDR, you'll be seeing more than just arrows floating up the screen on some of the harder stepcharts. Indeed, mines also make an appearance. Just resting your foot (or anything else) on a panel as a mine passes by causes it to explode, reducing your score. Some of the crazier songs in the game are just riddled with mines, requiring some skilled footwork to work through them. Any dance player is used to seeing two arrows lined up with eachother, requiring them to jump to land their feet on both panels at the same time. ITG ups the ante with "hands". Sometimes, 3 or more arrows will be lined up with eachother, requiring you to drop your hands on the dance pad to hit all the arrows at once. Don't get overwhelmed, though. Hands are surprisingly easy to get the hang of, and while they sometimes look ridiculous, they're used sparingly and effectively. The songs in ITG can be played one-at-a-time in Dance mode, or in a string of 4 or 5 songs, one after another, in Marathon mode. Either way, by hitting steps accurately, you can build up a combo, which carries over from song to song in any mode, allowing for high combos to be reached, provided you don't miss any steps. While Marathon mode plays similar to DDR's Nonstop mode, it is differentiated in that most marathons throw pre-determined mods at you as you play. These mods can also be used in normal play through a menu similar to DDR's option menu, except here, there's a lot more to choose from, and you can pick multiple mods from one line at once. Mods can speed up the scrolling of the arrows, make them spin or move in strange patterns, fade in/out, move in opposite directions, and (trust me on this one) a whole lot more. In other words, they're out to make your dancing experience just a little bit harder. Or, depending on the mods, a whole lot harder. One more mode available here is Battle mode. In battle mode, 2 players (or 1 against the computer) choose a song and compete to be the best dancer. A meter at the top shows a "tug-o-war" between the two opponents. When one player does better, the meter will fill up with his/her colour. A good performance will also throw afformentioned mods to your opponents, making it all the harder for them to hit those arrows correctly. No dancing game would succeed without good music, but ITG has a little for everyone, or at least most people. Most of the songs here are from lesser-known artists, so you probably won't recognize many of the songs, though you'll bel ikely to find a few that you like. The music here spans multiple genres, though much of it falls under the "computer-generated" school, so you'll see a lot of eurobeat and such. The only well-known songs are a cover of "My Favourite Game" by Natalie Browne, and another of "On a Day Like Today" by Obsession. For the most part, the music is very listenable, and has the kind of fancy rhythms that a dance game needs. In The Groove has great record-keeping. By entering your name at the end of a set of ITG songs, your scores (which are percentages such as 89.56%) will be entered into the high score menu. A Scoring Summary will take all the high scores and determine your average score for all of the stepcharts in the game (there are two summaries, one for Single play and one for Double play). By providing you with an average score, there's more of a reason to press on and get higher scores. When all is said and done, ITG is a very solid addition to the dance genre. Not only does it work on pre-existing pads made for DDR such as the Red Octane Ignition and Afterburner (Red Octane is the official publisher of ITG, and have changed the look of their pads accordingly), and the luxurious Cobalt Flux, but it also carries a number of innovations such as mines, 3D graphics, new mods, and the insane Expert difficulty. Any hardcore player should be pleased, and the game is as good as any to start with too.
