Dear Rhythm Games:
Look, I was with you for DDR. I really was. I was a huge fan in high school. Hell, I even used it as an exercise tool. I was so engulfed by the idea that I didn’t find a large, fat man, suffused with sweat, pounding away on those arrows, ripples of fat jiggling like so many bowls full of jelly, completely repulsive. For the love of god, I even tried that bizarre…hand-waving game you shoved out into my local arcade. I mean, when you got right down to it, it was just Track & Field, wasn’t it? With that huge mat that never really worked? Right?
When you introduced me to Guitar Hero, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to play pretend guitar. And when I was introduced to Elite Beat Agents and its cousins Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Ouendan 2, I was in heaven. Princess Debut? Rhythm Heaven? Sign me the hell up. If I had enough friends who wanted to play, I’d be all over any and all Rock Band iterations. Especially those sexy special edition instruments for the Beatles iteration. During my brief trip in Japan, my fingers itched whenever I passed an arcade that displayed Taiko Drum Master. Hell, Samba de Amigo even fascinated me, in a distant, “I-don’t-own-a-Dreamcast” sort of way.
But there comes a time when you need to admit, as a genre, that it’s time to back down. You need to admit that there is a wall, and that you’ve reached it. And “Just Dance” is the arm banging against said wall, fingers uselessly clawing at the boundary. Just Dance, I can already tell, is going to be gasping for air in no time flat.
Just Dance, your set list includes The New Kids on the Block and The Spice Girls. You’ve got “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and “Ring My Bell” sitting right next to each other, twiddling their thumbs and casting awkward glances out of the corners of their eyes. For the love of god, you’ve even got the audacity to present “Eye of the Tiger,” as if the rhythm game genre hasn’t been steeped in it enough. And you are honestly expecting people to prostrate themselves in front of the television, in a group I remind you, dancing to a song that they hated when it was popular, and enjoy it.
Really?
Really?
I mean, seriously. I thought that Disney: Sing It was the worst this genre could present. I thought Boogie was bad. I thought that bizarre Wii game that demanded you play “air guitar” with your wiimote and nunchuck was where we, as a culture, collectively sat up at the table and announced that we were done. And, yet, here we are.
I will admit, the entire process is fascinating, in a terrible sort of way.
-Annie
I’ll be honest: I’m a Harmonix fanboy…well, “fanboy” may not really be the right term, but definitely an ardent supporter: somebody very optimistic about the company and its future. Of course, as someone with a great emotional investment in the company, I was more than willing to drop some hard cash on the keyboard bundle for Rock Band 3. Hey, it may be an expensive, untested investment based entirely on faith, but it’s a proper two octave keyboard with MIDI support: how cool is that?