In the Groove Arcade Review

[genedefect]

This is brief review of my experience with In The Groove running on a former Disney Mix DDR machine at Illusionz of Issaquah, WA.

So upon hearing that they had this setup down at Illusionz, I figured why not, I will go give this a shot.

When myself and a friend showed up, the machine wasn't running, but the Music Director for it was on hand and quickly got it booted and running. He was extremely helpful and was willing to answer any of our questions.

It was noticable right away that "In The Groove" was trying to tie it self to DDR as much as it was trying to differentiate themselves. They seem to understand that they have to keep existing players happy, while possibly opening the genre up to the larger market as a whole.

To start the review, I will point out that this was an "Alpha" build of the program and was running on and Athlon 1ghz, which they were planning on upgrading that night due to some of the perf issues.

UI

Over all the UI is extremely clean. When in the game itself, the arrows are very easy on the eyes and move extremely smooth. The UI is as transparent as possible, they don't clutter up the screen with bars everywhere just for the sake of it. All you see is you "Life" meter, Percentage rating for how your doing, Arrows, and a combo counter. That is it. It is very clean.

The game selection portion of the menu is almost identical to DDR, just changed to being more verticle rather than horizontal in layout. But it has all the same options, Solo, Vs., and Doubles. According to the rep on hand they have plans to add a "couples" mode, similar to a mode found in Pump It Up. Where you play a game like vs, but each of the 2 players get a different set of steps that are complimentary to each other.

The Song selection UI, while it works, I was not impressed with. Too few songs were displayed, and it made you go blind. It is extremely bright and hard to read. It wasn't as clear for difficulty of songs. It offered up to equivelent of a 13 foot rating, but this was so far from the meter ratings that you had to virtually look all around the screen to find all the info you needed. The songs scrolled smoothly, but it felt like they were trying to hard to make it look cool, and it was really hurting in the functionality department as a result. One last note, it shows the difficulties for all ratings all the time, rather than just what difficulties you currently have chosen. Also, the meters are not transparent, so if "Heavy" has a lower meter in one catagory than "Standard" is is extremely hard to tell.

Starting a Game and Game Options

The game begins pretty much the same way as DDR, with start time from song selection being about twice as long as DDR, but we are talking maybe a second or 2 tops wait.

To get into the game options menu, you have to hold down the select button, or you can press it twice. Pretty straight forward

It has a lot more options, I do not remember them all, but suffice to say, it fills up the equivelent of 2 options screens.

Odd defaults which may be irritating to some coming from DDR, it defaults to "Reverse" arrows, and Arrows that scroll somwhat from the background to the foreground. THe 2nd option is pretty cool, and actually somewhat nice. The First, at least to me, is something that needs to be changed...

Other than that, once the game is started, it goes. Pretty straight forward.

Timing

The arrows felt spot on for timing. No lag in terms of steping to registering. Even after it had a few frame drops, they would remain spot on (unlike several other Konami games like Pop'n'Music, where if you get a framerate issue, you loose music, arrow sync)

It felt right. Only complaint. I will be honest, I stink at accuracy on arcade machines compared to Home. Yet I did fairly good on accuracy. I have a feeling it is only as sensitive as home mixes. This would be disappointing if it is the case, when you consider tournaments.

Song Mix

Like nothing you have heard before on DDR. Now, that is not a bad thing, at least to me. It was reallly good music, except it seemed to be lacking in the "Love" song area, which could turn off some players. Great beats, great sounds, a decent mix of On Beat songs and Off Beat ones.

Arrows & MINES

So, I have to give the makers a lot of credit. They did something that DDR fans have been wanting for a long time, that Konami hasn't. Came up with a new gameplay mechanic that does not invole more arrows. They are Land Mines. Think, don't have foot on Arrow. While I hope they don't put any of these in the Easy songs, some in 6+ footers are going to rock. They add a whole new dimenstion to the game. Only complaint so far, they were bigger than the arrows, and hard to "read" alongside arrows. They were a solid color, where as I feel they should be colored to match the arrows for the beats they are on. Also, there should be a landmine equivelent of the freeze arrows. Rather than just stacking a line of them on the same arrow. This will make all the difference.


Well, that is all I can/feel like writing up right now. I have arranged some more time on the machine this weekend. If anyone here has any questions, feel free to ask, and I will do my best to answer now if I can, or get the info this weekend.

[I AM ERROR]

can you get a complete song list?
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[genedefect]

I will try, but understand a lot of them are aparently made not licensed, kinda like how Konami does.

So I guess you could call them "Roxor originals"

But either way, assuming enough time, and patience, I will try to type out a list from this weekends play session. It will not be a complete list of songs, because I was told only about 2/3rds of them are in at this point.

[chrisdanford]

Here are all the songs installed on the machine as of Friday:

Atom Bomb - Fluke
Boogie Down - Invurse
Charlene - Missing Heart
Crazy - DJ Doo
Da Roots - Mind Reflection
Dawn - KaW
Delirium - Smiley
Disconnected - Inspector K
Disconnected (hyper mix) - Inspector K
Do U Love Me - DJ Doo
Don't Promise Me - Reflection Theory
Driving Force Classical - Digital Explosion
Fly Away - Missing Heart
Fly With Me - Nina
Hand of Time - Reflection Theory
Happiness Comes - Reflection Theory
Hardcore of the North - Digital Explosion
Hip Hop Jam - Indiggo
Kagami - KaW
Let My Love Go Blind - Nina
Mythology - Digital Explosion
Normal - Anet
Perfect - Sammi Morelli
Queen of Light - Missing Heart
ROM-eo & Juli8 - Nina
Solina - Evolution
The Beginning - DJ Doo
Turn It On - Georgetown
Utopia - Smiley
VerTex - ZiGZaG
Walking on Fire - Evolution

[The Game II]

I have probably asked this before. I have heard the music is a great mix, however, is it something that, along with the steps, will get a freestyler-only person to play?

--GCII
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www.getyourtournament.com
I'm back with Get Your Tournament!

[chrisdanford]

We hope to have good doubles steps, we're really just beginning work on them. Also, we hope that edits will be much more common than with DDR. Our editor combined with a more open memory card format and all machines having card slots should lead to more people sharing and playing edits. If you have any suggestions on what freestylers would like, please mail me with ideas.

BTW: If anyone is interested, I took a few quick digital camera videos of the game today. http://www.stepmania.com/stepmania/itgpics/10-26-03%20Iz%20(Chris)/

[masta]

Seems cool.

In delerium I suppose your supposed to hit those arrows with your hand during a double freeze?
That could be kinda funny to watch someone do:)

And what the hell are those things that look like landmines?
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The Power of the FLUX will guide me to my destiny.

[jtrobot]

[Phrekwenci]

[Arch0wl - GG]

Oh man.. if only I could make some of those steps.. you seem to have your stuff together stepwise vs konami

[Mysterio]

Hmmm...intriging. I will say that the perspective of the arrows coming twoard or away from you (depending on direction) is not cool, well not intially.

Perhaps an option for "normal" arrows?
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[quote:ed89271168="Frozen CaffMaj 4 Extreme"]just because i play ddr, does that mean i'm going to go randomly stomp someone to death?[/quote]

...but Rhythm and Police is no longer crazy!

[genedefect]

Yep, you can set the Arrows to "overhead" in the options. That is usually what I do.

The machine now claims to be 50% complete, and when I played a few games this weekend I didn't see any framerate issues like before. Also they fixed the freeze arrows so they make sense now.

This is coming along really good. I still play more on DDR Extreme, but that is mostly due to the wide variety of songs at this point.

[Rage*]

any chance of pictures?
i wanna see the marquee and interface.
charlene and queen of light are great songs
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[Syxx]

Aww man I wish I had photoshop right now.
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whites

[Plaguefox]

Photoshop? For what?

[Syxx]

So I can edit a picture of a DDR Machine with the header scribbled out and "IGNUORE DIS PAART!!" written instead.

Oh well, someone else can do it.
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whites