Puzzle games have been merged with other games a fair few times. Puzzle Quest is one game that springs to mind, mixing the puzzle aspect with a sort of RPG style. The latest in the series of puzzle hybrids is Go! Go! Break Steady – a mix of puzzle game and rhythm game. But is it any good?
GGBS’s gameplay is centred around a hip hop breakdancing tournament, where a group of breakdancers must compete against the DJ and his “beatniks.” It’s a pretty toned down story; don’t expect any trash talking or anything else you would see in a real breakdancing tournament. Instead you have colourful cartoon characters dancing around the screen to a selection of pretty decent tracks.
Let’s look at the rhythm game side first. Icons representing the face buttons scroll onto the screen and you have to tap them when they reach the middle circle to pull off moves and earn points. They begin to scroll in from left to right (or vice versa) but then begin to start coming in from all directions and sometimes spiralling in. The response to when you tap the face buttons is very unforgiving. You must tap it at exactly the right moment to hit it. Another disappointing thing is that the tapping of the buttons never actually goes with the song in the background.
The puzzle side is similar to games such as Luxor or Zuma where you fire a coloured “beatnik” into similar coloured beatniks to create a group of 3. Simple enough really. The amount of beatniks you can fire is all dependant on how well you do in the rhythm section…in theory. In some cases, I found myself with only 1 beatnik – even after perfecting the rhythm part before it. By matching coloured beatniks with special abilities such as a bomb, you can whittle down the amount of beatniks pretty quickly to then be shoved back into the rhythm section; and the cycle continues.
There are 6 characters of increasing difficulty each with 5 stages. You can earn prizes by collecting coins during the puzzle section of the game. There is also a freestyle mode, where you set the music and difficulty, and an endurance mode, where you see how long you can last.
Taking the game online you’ll find a co-op mode, in which you and a partner work together to beat the DJ. The problem with this is that you and your partner need to both be very good at the game to perfect the rhythm part, then work through the puzzle part quickly. Other online modes include a Versus mode in which you take on an opponent to clear the beatniks first.
Go! Go! Break Steady is a flawed game and you will get fed up with it pretty quickly. The transition between rhythm and puzzle doesn’t really work as well as it sounds on paper and makes the game a heck of a lot less fun. It looks nice and it sounds alright, but those aren’t worthy of a purchase. Stick with something like Puzzle Quest or Luxor if you want a decent puzzle game from LIVE Arcade.
