I have confidence in my ability to dance. After all, I took lessons for 15 years, was part of a performing division, won awards, and represented the USA in Australia during the World Expo.
Likewise, I am not a shabby singer. Or at least I wasn’t in my youth. I got the solos in church choir, I was a Chamber Singer in high school, and I don’t do too horribly at my husband’s staff retreat when everyone does karaoke. (I still tear up a little when I think of my husband’s VIP boss sitting in a corner singing karaoke alone when the rest of us had moved on to other things. He stopped when we brought him a birthday cake.)
When the Parent Bloggers Network asked me to review Wii Boogie, I completely did a dance and whoop of joy. “This will be fabulous!” I thought, envisioning myself busting serious moves and singing the night away. I am already a Wii addict, so why not add another title to my obsession?
Well, here’s the deal: I am not good at Boogie. At least not yet.
Honestly, I tanked at the tutorial. I couldn’t get the hang of it. I had to try on several separate occasions before I figured out what I was supposed to be doing. My little character bopped around awkwardly and counter-the-beat.
After fiddling around with some buttons, I learned how to manipulate the various game settings. Now I can switch from dance to karaoke to shopping to video-maker without a problem, but initially I was stumped.
Here is a clue for those as doltish as me: there is a USB port in the back of the Wii console. That is where the microphone plugs in. Not somewhere in the secret front-compartments, and not in some extraneous computer (as the graphic seems to imply.)
To have full abilities at Boogie, one must have a nunchuk and microphone. However, even if one has the generic Wii-mote, there are plenty of fun things to do.
The tutorial briefly introduces dancing, karaoke, and video-making; however, the majority of what I learned involved just playing around. It took several tries for me to figure out what the tutorial was trying to tell me to do, so for me just trial-and-error worked much better.
There is a story-line that can unlock different stages and songs. I haven’t done much down this avenue yet. Another way to unlock songs, stages, and purchase clothing for your Boogie character is to earn tokens through dancing or singing. After my first few songs at karaoke, I had earned enough tokens to unlock two popular songs.
Admittedly I am horrible at lyrics. I can pick up choruses pretty well, but usually cannot make out the words to songs. I love music, I just usually don’t have any clue what the song is about. Imagine my surprise when I started singing “Brick House” and for the first time read/sang the lyrics. There I was, jumping about, my rather well-endowed situation jiggling around as I blushed at the teleprompter. Dandy.
Surprisingly, I’ve earned gold medals in my karaoke and dance performances. This is odd since I keep missing moves, and between the “decent” and “excellent,” I get a lot of “BAD!” as I sing. Likewise, I get “OFF BEAT!” when I dance, even though I know darn well I am doing fine. But I just need to get the hang of this particular system. As I get better, I can see where this could be an enjoyable time-siphon. Seeing how I’ve been sweating buckets, I definitely endorse it as good exercise, too.
But this game isn’t just about me. I wanted my kids to try it out, too.
They aren’t yet really into the slouching-street-guy or curvaceous-girly-girl culture yet (and I will reserve comment on whether I want them to be ever,) nor do they recognize the songs available on the game, but they both got into “A B C,” and had a blast making a music video.
I know that we’ve only scratched the surface of what this game is capable of. There are more scenes to unlock, more clothes/hairstyles/accessories to have, additional songs, and all of these can be done in “easy” “medium” or “hard” levels. Party-mode enables multi-player games and videos. I guess my guys will be joining a Boy Band sooner than I would have imagined!
This really is a fun product, even if it took me some time to recognize how to play!
