EyeToy Groove Review. Jane Fonda for the 00s

Author's Rating:

Pros: Takes 2 minutes to learn, tones up under-arm jiggle. FUN!

Cons: Takes awhile to load (waits between songs), no legs involved, good bra required

The Bottom Line: 
will thank you

Author's Review
Groove is a dance game and is the first "real" / "full length" game from Sony for the Eye-Toy on PS2.

Best thing since thigh-busters. It's entertaining and you'll be unintentionally exercising (you'll know when waking up the next morning with sore calves, arms and shoulders). When was the last time a video or PC game was actually good for you?

I've only just bought Dance Dance Revolution. I'd say DDR is a more effective form of exercise than Groove (since you actually need to jump around as opposed to only wriggling and moving your arms about) – provided you can keep going long enough to finish each set before the game kicks you out. Groove is easier to keep going on for the full length, but on average, if played to the end, songs on DDR are longer and, consequently, more exhausting.

Ideally, for an all rounded workout, it'd probably be best to do both as one works out your arms and upper body, while the other focuses on your legs and cardiovascular. If you're seriously unfit and obesely overweight go for Groove (and please consult your physician before beginning any exercise program).

Yeah, I do realize how retarded those last two paragraphs are. At any rate, although DDR is better exercise, Groove is more fun, because:

1. The music – DDR either remixes songs to all hell, or uses crazy beats all over the place techno-nightmares. Groove uses the original song, which is a million times more enjoyable

2. The background – DDR uses cheesy dancing anime or really bad karaoke style videos. Groove uses .. well, a video of you!

3. When drunk (ie as a party game) you are less likely to fall and break your nose playing Groove

4. Peripherals – to play DDR you need a dance mat, and unless you buy a super-mondo expensive one, they suck and can only be used for DDR (or as an incontinence pad for your pet). Groove's Eye toy has multiple uses and it looks much better on your tv. Hopefully, Sony will eventually put forth new games for the Eye-Toy, making it more than a one trick pony (or one trick bunny army as per Kris).

The Long of It

How to Play

The game opens with a short introductory video of funky pink cardiganed grannies demonstrating how to use Eye Toy. While very amusing and well done, it gets tiresome, especially since you cannot turn it off and have to sit through it every time you turn on Groove. You can catch this video on www.eyetoy.com. Incidentally, this is the same visual video introduction as on Play, but not the same voice.

There are a few gaming options on Groove which include:

* Group Battle – up to 4 of you dance individually. Winner gets a gold crown and number of games scored are incremental

* Tandem Battle – 2 of you dance together on the screen. One hits red targets and the other hits blue. Similar to a tug of war scenario, there’s a winner when one of you manages to "out-hit" the other for a period of time. Very nutso when you first play as there’s flying targets seemingly everywhere at once.

* Solo Dance – Self explanatory. High score tables are only applicable to this option and are for each dance and each level (meaning each song has 4 high score tables).

For multi-player games you have to take photos of each player – which are used to indicate scores and who is up to play. Zoolander poses work well, I've found.

There are other options like "calorie counter" and "tandem dance" (where two of you simultaneously dance, but not competing). There's also a "chill out room" which is very redundant.

There are a total of 24 songs:
Current (ish):
Deeper Underground - Jamaroquai
Praise You – Fatboy Slim
Music – Madonna
Dancing in the Moonlight – Toploader
Move your Feet – Junior Senior
Cheeky Holiday – The Cheeky Girls (Note:- this is also one of only 2 songs on Groove in which, when playing, you may actually look like you are doing the actual dance of the song. In YMCA’s case it’s because of the song’s era. In Cheeky Holiday, it’s because the song sucks).
Overload – Sugababes
Canned Heat – Jamiroquai
Starlight – Superman Lovers
Don’t stop moving – Living Joy
All I want – Misteeq
Gotta Get Through This – Daniel Bedingfield
Keep on Movin – 5ive
Addicted to Bass (remix) - Puretone

Retro Groove:
Jungle Boogie – Kool + the Gang
A Little less Conversation – Elvis vs JXL
Lets Groove Tonight – Earth, Wind + Fire
Dance to the Music – Sly + the Family Stone
Rubber Neckin – Elvis vs JXL

Funky Songs apparently very commonly used by drag queens:
We Are Family – Sister Sledge
YMCA – Village People

Instrumental:
Jumpin – Liberty X
Hustlers Groove – Apollo 440
Superstylin – Groove Armada

It's a fairly good mix (even though I'd never heard of a few of them before) – and I took a while to get through all of them. Each one averages around 3 minutes. Judging how tired my arms get after each song, not having full length songs was probably a good idea. Be warned that Jungle Boogie is longer than the others.

There are 5 levels:
1. Dynamic – combination of Easy to Hard levels, the routine differs each time
2. Easy
3. Medium
4. Hard
5. Create your own dance routine

2-4 are standard routines while 1 varies every time.

You’ll be prompted before each song by a blue outline of a person with very short arms to adjust the camera.

There are 6 bubbles in a circle formation around you. Blue mouthless "faces" (circles with 2 semi-circles for ears) appear from the middle of the screen and spin into the bubbles. You have to hit the faces as they hit the bubbles. There are also stars which require you to do swinging arm movements with "Sparkly Fingers". Lastly there are Blue faces with tails (long or short) which require you to Sparkly Fingers in the bubbles for a certain amount of time. Sony loves Sparky Polastri a lot it seems.

Should you fail to hit too many or hit them too badly, your grade falls from A to E. E grade prompts a loud alarm sound. If you don’t get your act together the game ends.

Every song has a Freestyle segment in which you're free to jump around … sorry, I mean Dance as you please. Keep in mind you're being recorded as video in this segment. Funnily enough, you will inevitably not actually look like you are dancing when the strobing lights are gone and there's no music. If Sony found some way of collecting these videos, I expect they'd have a really good blackmail business going on.

How you score:
A cumulative score is created using:

a) how well you hit the targets (full on "perfect" and the blue mouthless face becomes a yellow smiley. Hit enough of these and you’ll get a rainbow effect on the screen. Hit, but not perfect is a purple face, while fail to hit is a phantom black frowny face)

b) how much you move during the routine

c) how crazy you get during the "Freestyle" part

During the game you’ll be told to "pose" once, when the camera takes a photo of you. This photo, as well as the video taken during Freestyle, is viewable after you see your score. Trust me. You do not really want to see your photo. If you happen to open it by mistake, thank your lucky stars no-one can instantly touch the right area to activate the "save option" (you have to wave for a second). What this means is if someone tries to save the picture you have time to wrestle said person to the ground and beat them senseless with, say, the PS2 console lying unused on the ground, before exiting the save picture option. More exercise!

Will I be able to go on the Wade Robson Dance Project after mastering Groove?

Um, no.

What could be better:

The time taken to save high scores (requires a couple of steps as well – first it asks if you want to check memory, then it asks if you want to save), and the time it takes for songs to load during play time is a bit of a downer. When I’m alone (i.e. using Groove as exercise, sad person that I am), I do some pushups, squats or lunges. It’s boring just standing there.

I suppose if it was a group of people you’d be chatting or getting drunker.

I’d also imagine that the technology will eventually get better and the camera will become more powerful. As it is, the picture quality is not quite top-notch.

Incorporating legs. Groove only requires you move your arms, so you end up dancing like Sting on the bottom and epileptic Village People on top.

In other words, ideally there’d be some sort of combination of Groove and Dance Dance Revolution. So we can look like frantic epileptic bunny armies.

What fun.