I Played "In The Groove"

rampage · Administrator Joined: 24 Jan 2002 Location: Redmond, WA

(as posted to my blog at http://rampage.theficus.com/archives/000329.html)

So, when I was at Illusionz the other day I decided to check out the DDR knockoff "In the Groove." Here's my observations.

The good:
The UI is great. Slick, clean, high framertate. The songs are very good, and the steps are well done. Everything about the experience is slick and smooth. There are 50 million playmodes - this is good and bad (see below).

The bad:
REVERSE WAS THE DEFAULT PLAY MODE. Because I didn't notice this, I managed to waste a credit on my first game since I can't read reverse well. I'm sure less forgiving players would just say "screw this" and move on. There are 50 million playmodes, and most of them I had no idea what they were. A nifty development would be a 'tooltip' of some kind to explain what exactly you're selecting. There's not enough musical variety. Everything kind of sounds the same. More genre-defying music would be good instead of the same-old generic housey-slash-trancey-slash-ravey stuff. The difficulties felt off -- a ITG 7 doesn't feel like a DDR 7, more like a 9. If you're catering to DDR players, make sure the experience is as similar as possible.

The ugly:
I HATE THE ARROWS! They look like cheesy rubber-stamps from Photoshop. In addition, their scrolling is VERY irritating. It has a kind of convex refracting effect as it goes up the screen which I found distracting and unnecessary. Perhaps the UI is too slick for its own good? The display was crap. The colors were dark and washed out. However, I'll give the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't the game's fault but instead faulty hardware.

Commentary:
Now, all that aside, I hope that Roxor Games has good lawers. This game is a RIP-OFF of DDR. You can put any spin or polish you want on it, but it is what it is, and that's a blatant rip-off. It's a clone of DDR with new music and a different UI. A representative of the effort says they have consulted with their lawers and that they are "in the clear," and to that I say, I hope you have damn good lawers, because I think they are blowing smoke up your buttocks.

CStarFlare · Maniac Member Joined: 24 Jan 2002

Since we already have a ITG review thread, it'd be nice if all the ITG reviews could go there.

rampage · Administrator Joined: 24 Jan 2002 Location: Redmond, WA

That's a single person's review. If we want to start an "official" thread let's do it, but I don't see enough of a flood of these to warrant a single posting point.

Gwok Dash · Trick Member Joined: 05 Aug 2002 Location: Somewhere

Scary. An Administrator conflict.

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Coming up with another one...

CStarFlare · Maniac Member Joined: 24 Jan 2002

Actually, I'm only a mod, and rampage is an admin.

So I=outranked.

Anyway, I figured that even if we don't have a lot at the moment, that we'd probably be getting more soon as more people get a chance to play ITG, and that it would be best to keep them in one place now rather than dealing with it later.

It may turn out that we might not get many/any more of these, so this works, too.

rampage · Administrator Joined: 24 Jan 2002 Location: Redmond, WA

Not like anybody seems to care about my comments about ITG anyway.

Syxx · Trick Member Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Location: Chicagoland

Well not many people really care about this game...

Hey, 83 views isn't THAT bad.

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whites

Catastrophe · Trick Member Joined: 04 Mar 2002 Location: Worcester, MA

Theres really two things holding ITG back right now:

1) Theres only one copy of the game in existence, and most players can't access it.

2) Apparently, the music is good but lacks DDR's variety.
( but as I said in point one, only a few people know from experience anyways )

And about those legal issues. It was fine until they put in a public arcade and started charging credits for it. Well, by fine I mean that if you keep it private then you haven't blown your 'personal use' cover yet. Now that thats gone Konami can sue if they want but they might not. They might just be waiting to see if this project starts distributing copies of itself.