I was going to Funan to get some stuff when I saw this banner for a game called High Street 5. The banner had an attractive lady drawn on it so that's what caught my attention :p Then I took a closer look and realised it was some sort of dancing game. I'm not into dancing, and I've not even played the famous Audition SEA. But since I was bored I got a copy of the DVD client at 2 bucks. (Alternatively, you can download it. It's free to play.) Here's a preview of the game:
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Startup pain and an unintuitive user interfaceInstallation was simple, but getting to actually play the game was a tad more difficult. First I was required to download a patch to version 0.12 when I tried to start the game. But the user interface showed some IE page with a message on it. No go trying to update it by clicking on the "Update Server" button either. I had to go to the website and download the patch. After installation, I had to reboot as there was still a connection problem.
Then when I tried to register an account in-game, Windows Internet Explorer popped up and I was directed to the website to register an account. That's not a seamless experience but it's still not very annoying.
The worst part is that the user interface is not intuitive at all. I couldn't figure out how to get started after registering an account. The instructions said something about clicking some part of the screen, so I spend a good couple of minutes figuring out where exactly that part is. Out of frustration I went to the forum and finally got some help from one of the posts there. Now, any game that makes me do that gets an immediate poor rating for user experience.
Finally I get to play
After getting into the game, there's the standard character creation, choose name, sex, physical characteristics, etc. The story is supposed to be that you are talent-scouted for some agency or something. Not exactly intriguing but who cares about the story in this kind of game anyway? After initial part of the story gets out of the way and you are taught the basics of the game (hit the directional, space and some number buttons at the right time), you get to choose certain locations to dance in,like the school, beach, etc. As you get better more areas will open up to you.
And it's quite fun actually to see your character groove to the music along with the rest of the players. Here's a replay of one of my game sessions. The parts when the character is just standing around are the parts where I missed :)
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Summing up
It's a simple and addictive game. Currently the selection of songs is somewhere ard 30-40 I think, so you'll here the same songs being recycled ad nausem if you do play long enough. Hopefully they will add more songs to the library else it'll get boring after a while.
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