Go! Go! Break Steady - a game produced by Little Boy Games and now available to download from the Xbox Live Market; curious name, curious game, but whats it all about I hear you ask? Well, essentially, the game at its root is a dance based one (but none of that bizarre foot stomping on mats thankfully...) No, here two very popular game play elements have been combined, and this rather strange fusion of types has resulted in a game with much unique charm and addictiveness by the barrel load.
As I mentioned, the game is centered around dancing; you make the dancer bust their funky mean jive by way of the first of these elements; the rhythm game. Now we've all probably played some form of rhythm game be it Guitar Hero, Rock Band or, heaven forbid, Britney's Dance Beat (not sure where that one came from to be brutally honest........) the aim being to press a button in a sequence and timing it correctly, Go! Go! Break Steady is no different in its application – sequences of buttons from your controller appear on the screen and you have to tap the appropriate button. Now this is where the game comes into its own, just dancing would be a tad boring don't you think? So, around your lovely cell shaded dancer (think current Prince of Persia or 13 on the old Playstation 2) is a large circle that fills with strange coloured critters called Beatniks (and I'm not talking about Ned Flanders parents....) Now as you 'dance' this circle is slowly being filled with these Beatniks, the aim of the game is to complete the sequences accurately and timely as when you do so, you in turn are given more Beatniks to 'fire' into the circle; once three Beatniks of the same colour are in a row they are removed from the circle, if any other series of three Beatniks crash into each other, they too are removed; hence the second element of the game – block removal games, or balls, balloons or the myriad of various variations on this theme. The level then ends when either you have removed all the Beatniks to make the circle disappear or the circle is fully completed with the critters. Or thirdly, you run out of time – yup, you only have a set amount of time to complete each level so choosing exactly where to put your Beatniks, as the time runs down and simultaneously the circle is refilling, is tough and a call you have to make very quickly.
The game itself is split into tournaments and further into different levels; these levels contain different types of music to dance to as well as the difficulty level being ramped up the higher you get – the sequences get more difficult and can appear horizontally, vertically, diagonally and even in a swirly pattern. As you unlock the next tournament, you get to play as a different dancer with different funky dance moves and so forth.
What I found appealing about Go! Go! Break Steady was the uniqueness of the game, the fusion of the two game types to create an original game has worked really quite well, and despite the concept sounding fairly complicated, it really isn't; it has that 'pick up and play' quality about it that means that within five minutes you'll be well versed with the controls and aims of the game and no doubt addicted as I was. It also makes a refreshing change from shooting things, zombies and guns. Another neat touch is that it comes with ten Xbox achievements to unlock which again adds to the overall package. Overall Go! Go! Break Steady is a charming, unique game with lasting playability that I would definitely recommend to anyone looking to take time out from their accustomed gaming genre.
Addition:
See Go! Go! Break Steady brought to life in Toronto Canada in the youtube video below!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLJGt72-QRM