Nokia's latest first party title, Dance Fabulous, is a strange bear. It's clearly aimed at the casual games market, with a very good "pickup and just play through a song" feel. But if you want to do some hardcore gamer dancing with your Avatar, through the entire works of Johnny Cash, then Dance Fabulous also has stuff for you as well. Add in the admittedly tenuous connection of Nokia's Music Store and Nokia are hoping that their gaming efforts will drag customers to the Music Store and vice versa. It's a good approach that shows off S60 as a platform, and not just the next-gen N-Gage system.
I'll come on to the extras in a moment, because all of this is immaterial if the core game is rubbish. Thankfully this isn't the case, Dance Fabulous mixes up a huge number of genres to create a game that should have a very broad appeal.
It's an interesting mix of RPG (collecting 'extra' items for your dancer), the musical rhythm genre (it's got 'dance' in the title after all) and the fighting/combat arcade styles of game play (the free-form nature of the controls). This last one may sound unusual, but in fact it's the core of the game – and when you see that the team behind Dance Fabulous also worked on the fighting game One, you'll nod in quiet understanding.
Starting the game, you create your own Dancer 'character' (avatar). There are a huge number of customisation options to change your look and style before you head off to the various dance floors. Once you've chosen one, and selected the music to dance to, you're in control. Using the cursor pad, you can do basic dance steps and moves with a single direction push, then string together two or more keypresses for more complicated moves... and make sure to keep your dancing varied or you'll be penalised.
Make the good moves though, and you collect stars – enough of them in the game will unlock a bonus level where you're asked to make specific moves by virtue of 'indicator arrows' falling down the screen.
And as you progress through the game, you'll earn more items of clothing, jewellery and accessories to customise your character – and the compulsive game player in me is wanting to have a massively full wardrobe.
It's a very simple game to play, partly because there's no “you must do this” coming from the developer – you can make your own dance moves and routines and explore big combinations of multiple keypresses. It's more a case of feeling the music and what to do next, rather than have it laid out in an instruction manual. This makes it a great casual game, but the addiction of collectables, be it accessories, dance floors or difference styles of dancing means that if you've got any inclination to collecting everything in a game, then you'll be dancing around and around for a very long time.
But the key feature of Dance Fabulous is the one that guarantees the longevity of the title on your phone. The music that you dance to. Every copy of Dance Fabulous comes with a handful of songs by new artist Cindy Gomez, but after that you are on your own. Literally – as you're able to dance along to your own music collection. Fancy taking a spin with the latest chart hit? Not a problem. Follow it up with some Iron Maiden? Knock yourself out. If the track is on your phone then you can dance to it.
Couple this game with the Nokia Music Store, especially if you're one of those with a Comes with Music device, and you've got a game that grows and changes with your every mood swing. Nor are you restricted to music from Nokia's service – as long as it plays in Music Player application on your phone then you'll be able to bop along to it in Dance Fabulous.
One of the advantages in this approach, where you dance along and are measured on how well you react to the beat, as opposed to generating notes and moves that you need to follow (the guitar hero mode of playing), is that the game flows much more freely and (apart from the short bonus sections) you don't have to trust the program's engine to pick up the tiny beats, kicks and riffs that are present in every tune and which are notorious for not being picked up by other 'automatic' beat programs.
What the engine does pick up is the underlying beat of a song, which is far easier to spot. How well you interact around these beats, with your dance moves, is what determines your score. And, just like the beat-em-up fighting game, there are secret moves and combinations that will gain you more stars and look super impressive on the screen (Digital Legends are, I think, drawing on their experience with 'One' here).
The weakness of the beat sensing engine is evident when it comes to generating the 'hit this direction' buttons in the bonus rounds, but thankfully this isn't really a problem in the 'core' game. I'm not sure if any game that generates rhythm on the fly (as opposed to the hard coded pieces of music in, say, Rock Band) has managed to crack this, so Dance Fabulous isn't really performing any less well than comparable products.
Dance Fabulous gives you a game with a huge amount of customisation, from the individual dancers to allowing you to build up a troop of dancers. This allows you to choose blinged out characters for some Run DMC, a more feminine touch for a Bette Midler classic and then a denim clad rocker for a quick blast of Stratovarius. But it also gives you a great way to enjoy music – some of the best gameplay times of Dance Fabulous have happened to me when stuck on a train – and it shows that games don't have to be in-depth or complicated to capture your imagination and your free time.
So while I think the hardcore gamers are going to skip over this one, for everyone else this is a slice of something unusual – a new style of game which is easy to pick up and play, that's gentle enough to be relaxing, but which also has a challenge that suits whatever level you want to play it at.
Very much recommended.
-- Ewan Spence, July 2009.