B-Boy

4.0
Awful

Gameplay	3.0	"An interesting concept that ultimately falls flat."
Graphics	8.5
Sound	8.0
Value	3.0

By Sam Leitch

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Music games have been one of the more interesting genres this generation, as there are no limits for the imagination. This generation of gaming has seen games like REZ, Lumines, SingStar, Electroplankton and the ever popular Guitar Hero. The question is, can B-Boy prove as popular as Karaoke and Air Guitar at the next gaming night?

Sadly not it seems, which is actually a real shame. A lot of effort has obviously been put into making the game authentic, and it includes some of the songs that best represent the roots of the breaking movement. There is definitely a niche that this game could have filled quite nicely.

Once you power up this game on the PS2, everything does indeed look good. The presentation is crisp, the tunes are suitably funky and the animation is incredible. When you actually start playing the game you will be amazed at just how well legitimate moves have been motion captured. Your breaker spins and moves fluidly with transitions between moves that are flawless. It all really does look fantastic. First impressions in this case, though, are followed by an anti-climax.

The concept of the game is an interesting one. It aims to play out something like a fighting game. You string moves and combos together to hopefully beat your opponent, only you each take a turn and have to keep to the rhythm. The problem with this gameplay soon becomes apparent after only a few minutes of game time. Simply put, watching a computer AI break-dance is entertaining the first few times, but having to watch their routine every time soon gets old. Before long I simply didn’t care and just checked my e-mails and amused myself on MSN until it was my turn.

Playing against the computer is very lame indeed, but it does pick up a little if you play against someone else that has put the effort in to learn how to play. Unlike a computer player, taunting someone sitting next to you is much more satisfying, and you can laugh at them when they fall flat on their arse too. That said, the old Tekken or Street Fighter is bound to come out after a few rounds for the serious entertainment.

The actual gameplay consists of hitting the shoulder buttons to the beat of the music while selecting moves and working on your score. This basically plays off like stringing tricks together on Tony Hawk, if the whole game was one big jump and nothing else. It soon wears very thin, and even though there are a few ways to play the game they boil down to the same gameplay. Now would Tony Hawk be a very popular game if the whole game took place on one big half-pipe? Sure you could have some fun and try and get a high score but you would soon want to go off and find some lines and try and jump different gaps. If B-Boy was a mini-game in some other game such as Tony Hawk, it would be a great inclusion, but I don’t think the concept can hold itself as a standalone game.

A lot of people will really want to like this game, and I know at least a few gamers who have been waiting for a break-dancing game. When I first played this game I wasn’t expecting much - I would have been happy with some interactive light entertainment to go with some funky tunes, but for me B-Boy even fell short of that. If you are a big fan of break-dancing, give it a rental and see if you like it. Anyone else though is advised to move on and either buy Tekken or one of the better music games for the PlayStation 2.

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