The video game Grease definitely
targets the casual gamer and more specifically, the female gamer.
Based on one of the world’s most popular musicals starring John
Travolta as Danny and Olivia Newton-John as Sandy, players can now
relive the musical and to an extent, the dancing, shenanigans and
action in this romantic story about a good girl falling for a bad
boy. However unlike most singing games, Grease actually
incorporates a variety of mini-games into the mix from car racing,
baseball and even dancing. Although not a Grease fan, what is
cool about this game is that all the characters from the movies are
here such as Frenchie and Rizzo. Very surreal!
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As a single-player experience, it is a
little boring but where it does shine is through the party mode that
allows up to 8-players to join either the T-Birds or the Pink Ladies
to win a variety of prizes in the game and prove who is the best
dancer, singer or even weirder, pillow fighter. The karaoke part of
the game is the main draw card however and it contains 16 official
songs from the movie which are as follows;
1. Alone at the Drive-in
2. Beauty School Drop Out
3. Born to Hand Jive
4. Freddy My Love
5. Grease Is The Word
6. Greased Lightning
7. Hopelessly Devoted
8. It’s raining on Prom Night
9. Look at me I’m Sandra Dee
10. Rock N Roll Party Queen
11. Sandy
12. Summer Nights
13. There are worse things I could do
14. Those Magic Changes
15. We Go Together
16. You’re the One that I Want
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Another interesting aspect of the game
is that it also supports the Wii Balance Board which is not
mandatory but does add a twist to the gameplay. Although it uses
balance for dance, it’s more of an afterthought as opposed to
riveting gameplay but the more games that use the Wii Balance Board,
the better. In terms of mini-games, some are musical related and
others are not such as drag racing, baseball or the dancing which is
more balance and coordination.
It's a very weird game because no
singing game has ever tried to incorporate mini-games into the mix
like this title and although it works, it seems like it is trying to
please too many people at once and considering that this game is
based on a movie from the late 70's, who exactly is the target
audience? In terms of the controls, although quite simplistic, they
do manage to mimic what it is targeting and for me baseball and the
dancing were actually the highlights.
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Graphically for a third party game,
it's not bad, even though it is a little too cartoony. The best
point of the graphics is that the characters actually look like
their movie counterparts and Danny looks like Travolta as do the
other characters in the game. The backgrounds are a little
simplistic but it's actually quite slick. The star of the game is
the music which is crystal clear and is very hard not to start
bopping when it starts.
Final Thoughts?
This game is for casual gamers, it's
that simple! The gameplay works as there are only a handful of
mini-games but I have this nagging feeling while playing it that the
developers didn't know who to target. If you want to just sing, you
do have that option but if you want to relive the story, than you
really need to get involved in the mini-games. The developers tried
something different and ironically, they succeeded!
