If you first look at In the Groove (ITG), it seems like a rip-off of DDR. Roxor and Konami even went to court to discuss this matter, but that didn't stop ITG from reaching home pads everywhere. While DDR is the king of the arcades, ITG is the king of the home dancing games. But it still has some flaws. Gameplay The game plays exactly like DDR. You step on arrows, which makes you exercise. But the main difference is the modifier selection, which kicks DDR's modifiers out the window. In ITG, you can make the arrows spin, drift, rotate, boomerang, accelerate, decelerate, blink, move to the beat, and countless other weird odd things. You can even move the targets in different places! You can adjust the speed so it remains the same throughout a song with tempo changes! And the best thing, you can add arrows to make easy songs more challenging! But if you're in Beginner level, play DDR first, because while ITG has some easy tracks, it's all about the hard songs. Intermediate players probably won't like ITG because of the lacking of middle-level songs. Veteran DDRers will find this to be their homeland, even without an Edit Mode. Most songs on Expert go OVER 10, with the hardest dancing challenge ever created being Pandamonium on Expert, which even I can't get past halfway on the controller! If you are decent on Heavy, like me, you might find the Expert level too hard. Mines and hands are also here. Mines are these little red things that you don't step on. The problem is you have to lift your foot off a certain button to avoid the mine. Even if you're just holding a button with no arrows and a mine appears, it'll register and you lose some life, forcing you to return your foot to the center or hold it in the air, and those two moves are what most DDRers avoid. And on the Expert level, the mines look like they were put on without any thought or creativity. In other words, the mines are way too tedious and random. Sure, you can turn the mines off, but then the game won't record your score. Hands are when you have to step on 3 or more buttons at the same time. This is the complete opposite of the mines. This lets you excercise your upper body as well as looking cool. Or you can just cheat and use canes.... Graphics ZOMG. These are the greatest graphics in a dancing game ever. On the song selection screen, the cursor flashes to the beat of the song sample. In the game itself, you'll find every color in the rainbow and more mishmashed into a synaesthetic masterpiece that defeats DDR's 2D visuals by a mile. You might even have a seizure if you are prone to them. And the arrows move so smoothly it's like the creators spent weeks CGing them. The graphics are so underrated. Even if you don't like dancing games, you should buy this game just to look at the pretty colors. Sound All right. The biggest part of a music game. The music in ITG is very varied and awesome. They range from the gothic Not Worth the Paper to the industrial gabba VerTex to the Happy Hardcore songs by ^_^ to the nerdcore Penny Arcade Theme to the Matrix-style Incognito to the electric rock Bouff to the remix of the William Tell Overture to the Egyptian rave Anubis (Should become the Luxor Casino's theme song.) to my favorite song in ITG, The Beginning, and many more wonderous gems that await you. The results screen music, however, is the most annoying thing in ITG. And the You Failed bass riff is so irritating. Plus, I want to talk about the game's rating, which is, in my opinon, very off. ITG must have dodged 1,000,000 bullets to get an E. It should be a T because of the lyrics of some of the songs. The biggest expliciter (is that a word?) is Touch me, by E-Rotic. If you watched Chobits (My all-time favorite Anime series of all time!) you should be fairly knowledgeable on this subject. No 1 Nation's verses sound like they were written by Public Enemy, even though it's a song about all the different varied nations and freedom for all. Bubble Dancer just sounds plain creepy (She's singing about how much she loves bubbles and "liquid" all over her body.), while Land of the Rising Sun is almost the same thing. The song Mouth needs no details, and Charlene, while nice sounding, deals with rape and stuff like that. Value The many songs and modifiers will keep you busy until November when DDR Extreme 2 and Ultramix 3 come out. Depending on their success, you might stick to ITG longer or shorter. Recap + Varied music selection + Amazing graphics + Tons of modifiers + An artist who's alias is ^_^! + Very challenging even for veterans while still easy for beginners. - Few intermediate songs - No Edit Mode - Tedious mines ???? Everyone says there's censoring, but my copy has no censors. ???? Do all dance games get Es? This seems like the only genre where you can get away with an E no matter what you cram into it. !!!! Expliciter isn't a word.... In conclusion Paradise for DDR graduates. Buy, rent, or Don't Bother? Buy!
Here in North America, dancing games are a budding genre that is starting to gain popularity. It's an odd genre, in that hardcore players must spend hundreds on a high-quality pad before getting the most out of the games... Read Full Review
Step aside, DDR. In the Groove provides a sense of uniqueness to almost every aspect of the rhythm-based games. The first thing I noticed were the graphics. The colors of everything just work together unbelievably w... Read Full Review
