High Street 5

High Street 5 is an online “dance” game. Notice how I put the dance in apostrophes. The gameplay is unique but it is not original. For an oldschool gamer like me, I know that the game mimics the game style of BUSTAMOVE. 

 

Unlike typical music games, the player is required to enter a sequence as shown on the screen and press an execution button to execute it. The sequence can start of as an innocent one arrow direction but can bloat up to a crazy 10 arrow sequence. If the player keys-in the wrong sequence, the player is forced to start the sequence from the begining all over again. Therefore it is crucial to get the sequence right the first time. Apart from this is the execution button. Similar to normal music games, a bar will show when the execute button should be pressed.

 

This concept is slightly more difficult than that of other traditional music games. It gets even more complicated when the sequence is long and the execution has to be done very quick. The result is the game becomes a “reflex” game. Players need to have a very high reflex to key in the sequence in an obscenely short frame of time.

 

I will admit that I suck at this game, even Ying Min can thrash the hell out of me in this game. Sucking isn’t the reason why I hate the game. I just don’t see a real point to it. Keying-in a sequence of arrows with superspeed does not produce any rythym. Even real dancing no matter how fast the movements are, they follow a specific choreography of what to do and when to do it.

 

If High Street 5 was a dance, it would be a dance where you do a gazillion gestures in one second freestyle.

 

Despite my harsh criticism on the gameplay I would say that it sports some nice graphics. It is possible to even learn dance moves by watching how the in-game avatars dance. 

 

Argh! I still can’t let it go! I feel the need to criticize it more! The songs that are played to “dance” with are from a list of songs that the channel has. This becomes very repetitive after awhile as the player will start playing the same song 2-3 (or more) times within an hour. It is possible to use an NPC to select the next song but still the game feels very random. I have to point out that I do know that it is possible to “freestyle” in the game based on the moves that a player has, in this mode there are no sequences shown, the player is expected to memorize their own sequences and play them accordingly. This just makes the game into some memorization game.

 

The game utilizes the ever so common f2p (free to play) system. Revenue is generated by realcash items. Realcash items allow the player to use better consumption items and buy premium dance moves as well as the ability to buy premium “clothing” for their avatars “forever”. Forever? The game producer is smart enough to design clothing that self expires. The basic set self expires within a week, a better set would expire within a month while permanant “forever” items that don’t expire require realcash.

 

Call me a sceptic but I don’t see how this game is going to thrive. I play music games because of the music, not because of the cool looking avatar and their dance moves. The only time I even felt like spending money on an online game was for o2jam, to buy premium songs, not some stupid cosmetic just to make my avatar look “nicer.” I’m glad I did not spend a cent on o2jam, reason being is that o2jam servers have closed down (except private servers which are free and allow full access to all songs and all avatar options at no cost). Heck DJMax online has also closed down. The final remaining real “music” game that is commercial and is online would be EZ2On. EZ2On is the spiritual successor to EZ2Dj, it has many EZ2Dj songs on it and I would be playing it only if I have a Korean Social Security number (Korean games make this cumpolsory for all their online games).

 

Another online “dance” game would be XDO or Audition. These games are way too similar to DDR. I find online dancing games kind of funny. I find them funny because I assume 95% of all the people who do play online “dance” games use their fingers on their keyboard instead of their feet on a dancepad. With this in mind, why should there even be any online dance games? Developers should just make more music games and don’t disguise them as “dance” games!