Your thoughts on dancing/rhythm games

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A few weeks ago, my treadmill broke down and I had no money to fix it. I needed something to exercise with, so I decided to pull out my old In the Groove game to play (basically a DDR clone). I was pretty good at it back in the day, I could do 9 and 10 footers, but not much beyond that.

Anyway, I started looking online to see what new games have come out, and I learned that the dance/rhythm genre is not what it used to be. Guitar Hero's gone, beatmania's completely forgotten, DDR's a niche to say the least, and Rock Band isn't exactly flying off the shelves. It seems like only yesterday that everyday people knew about these games, bought them, and probably brought them to parties to drunkenly fail at.

In their place are a few casual games like Just Dance or Dance Central, but I really don't consider games like that to be "rhythm games". Maybe I'm being narrow minded, but games like that really only have casual appeal in my eyes, and I couldn't see someone going to a "Just Dance" tournament or something. It seems like motion controls are the future of rhythm games if they want to be relevant again, but honestly, I wish we could go back to plastic controllers and pads. :/

What do you think about the rhythm genre and where it's going? What rhythm games if any do you still play? Where do you think rhythm games will be five years from now? Can rhythm games survive as anything more than a novelty? Did you ever like rhythm games in the first place?

 

[LilithSlave]

Been a fan for years.
Love their soundtracks.

Yay, a topic that's not about Mass Effect or any other wRPG, for once. The sheer amount of Mass Effect topics right now is making me nauseous.

 

[Strain42]

I've been really into Beat Sneak Bandit on the iOS lately. It's a game where you can only move by tapping in rhythm with the music.

 

[roushutsu]

I like rhythm/music/ dance games. I wasted so many quarters on DDR machines alone.

I do think that there's future potential for rhythm games, but right now someone's got to come up with a new concept surrounding. DDR brought dancing to it, and Guitar Hero/Rockband simulated playing in a band. Personally I'd love to see some games build off the battling music approach like in Gitaroo Man. I think that could be interesting.

 

[LittleBlondeGoth]

I got given a copy of Dance Central, and it's surprisingly good. The Kinect is very accurate at picking up what you're doing, you just need a fair bit of room free to do it in. I consider it a rhythm game, and once you ramp up the difficulty, it's nice and tricky. Check out some of the choreography on Janet Jackson's 'Control' for example, or 'Toxic' from DC2. It's actually very intricate.

The Wii dance games don't appeal to me for some reason, probably to do with having to wave a nunchuck in the air and hope for the best. And DDR never appealed to me either. With DC, I'm actually doing the whole dance - the head, arms, body, legs, all of it.

 

[Panayjon]

I have no musical affinity, can't keep a beat, always sing off-key etc. but I love me some rhythm games. For some reason even though I suck at them, they're a great source of enjoyment for me. Much to the chagrin of my friends.

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds was never sung quite so poorly before, until me.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Loved the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. Very good games to have whenever you have a few friends over. Hated Activision's business strategy of god knows how many games in a year, that ultimately killed it.

Haven't played Dance Central but it looks like it would be good fun as well.