Like DDR? Hate getting off your lazy ass to move your feet around the living room? Have we got a game for you!

Presenting Boom Boom Rocket for the Xbox Live Arcade. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Zig,” (it’s okay, you can call me Zig), “you’re into sports and shooters and stuff. What’s with a rhythm game all of a sudden?” Well, my fellow gamers, sometimes I like to rock to the beat like anyone else, and when I’m too poor to buy Guitar Hero, I go for the tiny doses of awesomeness that is Boom Boom Rocket.

For the measly price of 800 Microsoft Points (which I think works out to be around 16 trillion Yen), you can start exploding fireworks to techno-tastic updates of some classical music faves. All these flashing lights and bright colors are sure to make you feel more cheerful after a long day at work. And if not, just pretend that instead of fireworks, you’re exploding some annoying customer’s head. Works like a charm. Of course, you could always just go sit at a bar and drown your sorrows in a pint or four, but again, we’re going for cheap and not much movement here, so indulge me.

As the headline up there implies, this is a Dance-Dance-Revolution style mini-game without the deformed power pad. Instead of shakin’ your groove thing on the dance floor, you simply press the A, B, X, or Y buttons in time with the similarly colored arrows (or letters, if you choose) on the screen as they approach the boom line. Then sit back and be amazed at all the pretty colors.

Don’t get too relaxed, though. This game has some challenge. The accuracy rating is a bit unforgiving - you really have to nail the button-press just right to get a perfect - but the score multipliers you get for racking up streaks definitely feed your competitive side. With online leaderboards and wonderful achievements like the Johnny Three-Fingers award, there’s plenty to keep you busy in this game. If your poor little fingers get tired, you can put the game in Visualization mode and watch as it explodes fireworks for you in time to your favorite blowing-shit-up music (My choice? Any variation of the Halo theme. Feel free to experiment, though).

There’s even split screen multiplayer, only when the developers were creating that part, they must’ve forgotten that split-screen game types usually have some sort of delineation between one side of the screen and the other. It’s quite easy to get confused as to whose firework is going where and mess up the timing a bit, but it’s easy enough to take in stride since it’s really a simple game overall.

In short, if you’re a music fan, a firework fan, or a lazy DDR fan (and hopefully not epileptic), you’re sure to get a kick out of this game.

Grade: 8.8

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Game Chat, Lemon Drops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.