Attack of the shojo!
User Rating: 7.6 | Unison PS2
Another guilty pleasure of mine, but you should seriously heed the words of the Gamespot review. The gameplay really is shallow. But do these complaints matter when the rhythm and music genre is so geeky to begin with? So what separates this game from, say, travesties like American Idol or Britney's Dance Beat? Personality? Style? Beauty? Eye candy? None of this hardly matters if you're not into rhythm and music games to begin with. So where does this game fall if you are? Unison doesn't have bursts of insane intensity that DDR has. Nor does it have the style and elegance of Gitaroo Man. Nor does it have the giddy charm and improvisation of Um Jammer Lammy. What it DOES have, though, is some of the best, cutest, and most fluid animation I've ever seen in a music game. Which is a good thing. Being a lover of dance but having no training(DDR doesn't count), I have long wished for a game that celebrated the beauty of dance as an art form, and Bust A Groove was as good as it got. Until Unison came along. The graphics far surpass what is seen in Bust A Groove(which isn't terribly hard anyway) and may be on par with Gitaroo Man or Samba De Amigo. But since this game celebrates dancing, the graphics are going to need much more fluid animation than the average music game, and it is here that the game shines. The girls of Unison are so cute and curvy-licious, and when you see them shake their groove things(you really can see how tight their jeans are) you will either get dewey-eyed or something else I won't care to mention here(trust me. It's a guy's game). Fans of shojo anime will know what I'm talking about. The game uses tried and true dance techniques that you can probably learn from. Well okay, it's pop and lock dancing that teeny boppers and N Sync might use, so if you're not a big fan of boy and girl bands, this is obviously not the game for you. But the game itself uses an interesting premise to pull off all that cute dancing. You never touch a button and use both analog sticks to do the moves. There only four cardinal directions, though, with the occasional diagonal. It's all very easy, unlike games like Gitaroo Man or DDR. You could get a good amount of moves down right and then blow the rest and still get a passing score. It's also never complex. However there are still different difficulty levels. On the easiest setting, the dance moves come on the on beat and off beat and then gradually build up to occasional one-two hits. Then as you get into higher difficulty levels, you get an increasing number of moves, longer routines, and higher degrees of complexity, with the highest difficulty having rapid chains and semi circles. And where the other music games are being described as "Simon Says" games, they're really more games of reflex and timing. In Bust A Groove, you have to input the right arrow sequence and then press the right button on beat four. In games like DDR or Gitaroo Man, you have to react fast enough to the cues and still keep the timing. In Unison, you still need timing, but this game really is a "Simon Says" game in that you have to first practice your routine and memorize the moves before you get to do the "real show". The on screen direction cues are still there, but a good memory is still useful. But don't worry. You'll be concentrating on the characters instead of the cues because, unlike the other music games where button presses are arbitrary, the direction presses more or less correspond to what's happening on the screen. And since much of popular dancing consists of repeated chains, it shouldn't be too long before you pick up the "flow" of the routine. Soundtrack-wise, one has to raise an eyebrow. Some songs are oldies like Y.M.C.A. Others are modern hip hop and pop songs like Country Grammar. And then there's Barbie Girl. You'll either love the songs or hate them, but one has to give props to the creators for putting such naughty songs in. Country Grammar is edited, but Barbie Girl is one of the naughtiest songs I've ever heard. Story-wise this game is just as plain nuts as any Japanese music game like Gitaroo Man or Parappa the Rapper, with a healthy helping cheese and corn on the side. If you thought Space Channel 5 was rubbery, Unison just makes no freaking sense. The dance instructor is a weirdo with a big afro and an obsession with his hair, and the villain loves ducks. The voice acting tends to grate on the nerves, especially if you have an allergy towards "cutesy". But nonetheless, the characters can become charming and humorous if you let them. To sum it up, Unison is definitely a guilty pleasure. Most people should just stay away. It's not a must buy or a platinum hit. It's shallow, cheap, and corny. But it's also cute and fun as well and superbly celebrates dancing with a healthy dose of eye candy. I don't think it deserves the low scores it got. If DDR is a porterhouse and Gitaroo Man is a salisbury steak, then Unison is a strawberry shortcake. And as far as I'm concerned, that's a-okay.
