Due to the firework detonation connection, EA’s first Xbox Live Arcade title has been receiving comparisons with Fantavision – one of the few PlayStation 2 launch titles that was worth having. It’s not entirely fair to call it a clone though – Fantavision had you twisting the analogue stick all over the place to link up three or more fireworks of the same colour before making them go pop.
Here, there’s no colour association – you just have to push the right button as the firework touches a bar running along the top of the screen. It’s a much simpler mechanic, and if anything it makes it more comparable to Dancing Stage and co.
You can choose between having the controls mapped out on the d-pad or standard buttons. Or if you’re super hardcore then you can entirely turn off the helpful icons that appear on the fireworks. The difficulty level is just right – easy mode won’t break you into a sweat, normal mode provides decent challenge and hard mode is hard going. Miss two or three fireworks in a row then it’s game over.
You’d expect a game with visuals as psychedelic as this to have a fast paced dance soundtrack. Not in this case – all the tunes are remixes of classical scores with droll names such as “Game Over Beethoven†and “Carmen Electricâ€. We’re sure there’s a cover of Madness snuck in there too. Good work!
We also like the fact that there’s a simplified kid mode – it doesn’t even matter if you hit the wrong button – and we like the fact that you can pop in a music CD and have fireworks popping in the background as an audio visualiser. We still advise downloading the demo first, simply because if you take away the pretty colours you’re left with a very basic game indeed.
And now it’s time for our main performance: the Vengaboys with ‘Boom Boom Boom Boom!’.
Boom boom boom boom
I want you in my room
Let’s spend the night together
From now until forever
Boom boom boom boom
I wanna go boom boom
Let’s spend the night together
Together in my room
Yeah!
Comments are closed.