Boom Boom Rocket (BBR != DDR)

[Noyb]

Anyone try out the demo for this on Xbox Live? It's like unfocused DDR, with button cues coming from anywhere on the lower half of the screen instead of four straight columns. The presses are timed to aspects of the song like Elite Beat Agents, but seem more random than most good rhythm games. The demo songs didn't seem to get as hectic or fun as most music games, even the included hard song.

I'm usually a sucker for music games, but this doesn't seem worth the price. It costs 800 MSP ($10 American) for just 10 songs. Since EA is publishing it, I'm expecting that future songs will be overpriced as well. I was hoping that since the maker was Bizzare Creations, the publisher of the original great deal on XBL (Geometry Wars at 400 MSP), it would be at a fair price. I guess the title should have been Boom Boom Dollar.

IGN's review isn't that helpful, but is good for a laugh:

BBR is a musical take on Geometry Wars.

The fun part comes when you finally memorize the location of each face button.

[Marek]

Saw this at GDC during a Microsoft presentation. Another way to describe it is that it's like FantaVision (that PS2 launch title) mixed with meh DDR.

I still have to try the demo but I'm not really compelled to do so, especially as I have Guitar Hero 2 sitting in the disc drive.

[miffy495]

I got it, it's a nice distraction when I don't want/have time to trot out the X-plorer for an extended round of GH. The face buttons aren't particularly hard to learn the mappings of, if you've had either Xbox for a reasonable amount of time you should have no problem. I do find that for some of the 2-at-once ones I need to think about what angle my thumb should be on, but that's about as tricky as it gets. The music is hit and miss. I dig their take on Moonlight Sonata, for instance, but not so much the William Tell. Still, when you get a solid combo going and you send the game into it's freaky super-explosion mode it get's really trance-like. I'd almost call it Mizuguchi-lite, as if it were trying really hard to recreate the magic of a Mizuguchi title and falling just short. Not short enough that it's not worth trying, but short enough that I'm not going around reccommending it to everyone like I do Rez, Space Channel 5, Lumines, etc.

Speaking as a total rhythm game addict, it's fun, pretty solid at the higher levels, and a decent time if you're going for the unlockable fireworks. Otherwise, the demo is the way to go until you get a chance to play it for yourself on someone else's system.