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Platform: Playstation 2
Genre: Party Game
Publisher: SCEA
Developer: Sony, London Studio
ESRB: E (Everyone)
Released: Q2 2004

 

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EyeToy Groove

Score: 8.0 / 10

 

Pros:

- Your friends will look foolish

- Good assortment of tunes

 

Cons:

- Song list should have been longer

 

Related Links:

Review: EyeToy Play (PS2)

Review: Mario Party 5 (GC)

 

"...should really appeal to fans of rhythm games and fans of watching their friends look like idiots."

 

I'm a huge fan of the Eye Toy peripheral for the PS2. I loved the mini-games included with the first release, Eye Toy: Play, and I have enjoyed the tech demos released by Sony and others over the past few months. The only real complaint I had about the Eye Toy was that there wasn't a “full” game available. Eye Toy: Groove addresses this complaint. Groove takes the Beat Freak mini-game of Play and expands it into a full-featured game that expands the Dance Dance Revolution concept into a whole-body affair.

 

eyetoy groove review           eyetoy groove review

 

The basic idea of Groove is pretty simple. To the beat of a chosen song, various symbols emerge from the center of the screen and the player must intercept them when they cross a certain point on the screen. This can be done with hands, elbows, knees or feet, and often requires a good mix of the above. Momentum is lost when the player is a little late or a little early, and even more so when they miss altogether. Miss the timing too many times and Game Over.

 

I'm not the king of all rhythm games, surely, and I found the game truly challenging on the Dynamic setting, though it is a bit too easy on the lower settings. All of my friends seemed to be about my level of talent, and I'd love to see someone really good go at one of the harder 

songs on the highest difficulty. I imagine the body parts would really be flying. Raising my 

knee to hit one corner of the screen while using both hands to hit two other sections, all in time to the music, was pretty much beyond me, but I had a consistent blast while trying.

 

Chances are that the people watching me attempt it had even more fun. That is possibly the true joy of Groove, as it was with Play before it: getting to watch your friends (or students in my case) make absolute fools of themselves. Groove even adds a multi-player mode that lets two (or more) friends play 

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the game at the same time, each with responsibility for a set of symbols. This is truly hilarious to watch. And, did I mention that Groove allows you to save videos of the silly behavior to a memory card?

 

Groove has a decent compliment of major-label artists included in its song list. Both recent dance hits and timeless classics are included. None of the songs are true duds, but camp favorites, like YMCA, certainly stand out and are more popular with informal gamer types. Despite a pretty good mix, I would like to have seen at least double the number of songs, if not more. Rhythm games depend a lot on the song variety and Groove is a pretty light package compared to the Dance Dance Revolution releases.

 

Still, at around thirty dollars MSRP for the non-EyeToy included version, Groove is a good value that really expands the life of the Eye Toy itself. I still prefer Play because sometimes I'm not in the mood for a rhythm game (heck, I'm hardly ever in the mood for a rhythm game), and Play offers amazing variety and heightened goofiness. Groove is better produced and more focused and should really appeal to fans of rhythm games and fans of watching their friends look like idiots.

 

- Tolen Dante

(June 30, 2004)

 

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