Pros: Fun, fun, fun
Cons: Some lagging after playing for hours, but not too much
The bottom line: If you have kids and want some family fun, give Boogie a try.
When my 9 year old son, then 8 years old, saw an advertisement for Boogie before it came out it instantly wanted it. I read up on it and thought it sounded kind of cute, so I figured that this is something the whole family could have fun playing. Luckily for my son, it was a pay week when it came out, so he didn't have to wait to get it.

What is it?

Well, basically Boogie is a dance and karaoke game. It comes with a microphone, so there's no need to have to go out and buy one. The dance isn't controlled by a dance pad like Dance, Dance Revolution games either, instead you use the wiimote and nunchuk to control the dancing.

When you go to play the game for the first time, you'll have to create a character. You get to choose from the five character varieties they have in the game and you can customize your character from hair to clothing, even accessories. Now, you won't have a lot to choose from the in the beginning, but as you play the game you will be able to unlock other items to customize your character with, along with other things.

Once your character is made, all your saved games will be under your character profile and you can even create new character profiles if you wanted to. As of right now, we have four saved and there is room for more.

Characters

Each character has their own storyline in the story mode part of the game. By completing the story mode of the characters, you can unlock things in the game, like background, songs, accessories, etc.

Julius - Julius is this big, green muscular guy. Popular in other galaxies, he got fed up with all the hype and everything that followed him that he came to Earth to relax. It'll be your job during his story mode to build his popularity up, because he just loves being in the spotlight.

Bubba - Bubba is a gas station attendant, who loves to dance. Bubba reminds me of Patrick on Spongebob, that's just the easiest way to describe him, it's not a perfect match, as Bubba is a little different in looks, but not much. During his story, you'll set him on his way to stardom.

Lea - Lea is the only girl in the game and a human. Lea is an aspiring pop star and it'll be your job to bring her to stardom during her story.

Jet - Jet reminds me of a wannabe hip hop star in his attitude. He is already the biggest pop star in the game, but with the new arrivals (other characters), it means competition. In his story, he knows he's good and you'll have to help him stay on top during his story mode.

Kato - Kato is some furry little creature who is a martial arts master. He's been training Bubba in martial arts and in his story you'll guide him on to find something he's been looking for.

Now, all of the above are really just stories that evolve during the game, you'll get different scenes with the characters that reveal more of their stories.

Main Menu

After creating your character, you'll be brought to the Main Menu, this is where you'll make all your game selections from when playing the game and where you can switch from different modes of play.

Story - In this mode you play out the "story" of the different characters. To play this mode you basically complete a series of challenges (dance and/or karaoke) that unfold the characters storyline. Here you will choose which characters story you want to do and play it. By playing this mode, you can unlock special songs, clothes and stages that you can't unlock with the tokens in other parts of the game. Not really wow, as the scenes are static, but they do reveal things about the characters you may never have known about.

Karaoke - In this mode, you just sing. You choose your song, stage, difficulty and just sing to try and earn tokens and a medal. You can earn lots of tokens during this mode and dance mode, get a medal and get yourself into the top scores of the game. I have to admit that most of the time we choose easy mode, which gives you the words to the songs. There is also a medium and hard difficultly and although I have not tried hard, medium does not show the words on the screen, so you'll really have to know the song. With the singing part, you have to know the words and hold the notes for the correct amount of time to get the high scores.

Dance - In this mode, you use the wiimote and nunchuk to dance to the song and try and get a high score, lots of tokens and a medal. Just choose your song and stage and you're ready to go. Doing the combo moves, which you can learn from the tutorial, help boost your scores.

Party - In this mode you can challenge a friend to a dance-off to see who's better. It's just like the dance mode except it's two player and it's best to have a second nunchuk so one player doesn't have an advantage, especially if you like to use the strike a pose part of dancing. Whoever gets the highest score wins. It's an okay part of the game, but we don't use this mode much, we'll usually just switch back and forth between profiles and challenge each other that way.

Video Maker - Here is an interesting mode to play, my son loves it. You can record your performance, whether it be dance or karaoke or both and make a music video with special effects that you can edit into it. When done, you can save it to show to your friends the next time they come over.

Shop - Here you can buy new songs, stages, clothes and accessories with the tokens you earn during the game.

Change Character - From here you can further customize your character with new stuff you bought, switch to a different character or make a new one.

Practice - This is the tutorial and/or practice area. First you can learn all the moves to get the higher scores and then practice in this mode. I think this should be visited at least once to learn the moves.

Options - In this area you can view the controls of the game and adjust the music and sound effect volume of the game. You can also adjust your microphone from how strong you want to be able to hear your voice, you can have it all the way to the singers voice, which you will barely hear yours, or you have have it all the other way where you will only hear your voice when played. I don't sing all that well, so I tend to have it on the singers side, but my son will play around with it and have it the other way sometimes and we usually have a good laugh over how silly we sound as compared to the singers.

Dancing

Dancing on this game is fairly simple once you go through the tutorial (practice) area. You basically move your wiimote around to create the moves of your onscreen character. During this mode you will have a Boogie Meter on the screen, once it's filled, you can press the B button and your character will do a special dance move that's unique to them, these special moves are called Combos. When you press the B button arrows will show up on the screen and you move the wiimote in the direction of the different arrows, in order and to the beat and your character will perform the move. When doing this mode, try not to do the same basic moves too often, it can lower your score, keep pressing the A button to switch between the three different styles that each character has while doing your moves so you aren't too repetitive.

Also during dance mode you have this thing called Strike A Pose. Now, I'll tell you right here that I'm not too fond of it and don't use it often, you can score some big points with this, but it depletes your Boogie Meter and I find I have an easier time just doing a bunch of combos to get the higher scores than I do using the Strike A Pose. To do the Strike A Pose, you press the Z button on the nunchuk and a target will appear on the screen, you have to tilt the nunchuk towards the targets to get to them, which isn't easy at all, at least it's not for me. During this mode you can also use the control stick to move your character's eyes and facial expressions, you can also use the C button to control your character's mouth. I never had much luck with this, so I just stay away from it and do combos.

Singing

Singing in this game really isn't that easy, as long as you know the songs and follow the onscreen notes you should be fine, but don't expect perfection just because you know the song, if you don't get the note at the right time, it'll score you off. You basically hit the note at the right tone, which is indicated by the bar onscreen and hold it for the correct amount of time. It's fairly simple, but can be aggravating at the same time, especially when you swear you hit the note at the right time, but it is a lot of fun and you can still rack up a lot of tokens and points without doing perfect.

Tokens

This is basically the currency during the game. As you perform, you can get tokens that show up on stage and you have tokens that you get at the end of your performance. You can use these tokens in the Shop to buy clothing, stages and songs.

Grahpics and Sound

Well, the graphics aren't the best, but this game is meant more to be interactive and fun, rather than stunning.. I would say it's on par for a cartoony type of game.

The general game sounds are typical of any video game. I was a bit disappointed with the songs, while there are a lot of songs in the game for you to choose from, they're not all done by the original artists and some just don't sound right because of it, especially "You're The One That I Want". Don't get me wrong though, it's not bad, I was just disappointed that they weren't all by original artists, but I don't think they ever claimed they were either.

There has only been a couple of times when we had problems with lagging on a song or maybe a dip in the vocals, but not much. It's reading all this from the disc, so I guess it's to be expected, especially when you're playing for a long period of time.

There are a range of songs in this game, from past to present, although I have heard complaints of some people that there aren't enough now type songs, still I think it's fun. I won't list all the songs, but you have a choice of many songs from YMCA, Celebration, Milkshake, ABC, You're The One That I Want, Let's Get It Started, Don't Cha, Dancin' In The Street and many more.

Conclusion

All in all, this is just a fun little game to play. I don't know if the microphone will ever become handy in any other upcoming games on the Wii, but my son just loves it. The dancing part is fun, but I think the karaoke part is the most fun part of the game, although it can be frustrating at times when you think you got it right.

I think one of the best parts of this is that you don't have to be a good singer to have fun, especially on the easy mode, you just pay attention to the words and notes and just have fun singing the songs. It's also funny when you try a song for the first time, swearing that you know the song and find out it's not the song you thought it was, but it's still fun. You're always determined to do better each time you try it so you keep trying over and over again.

As you can see the theme here is fun and if you have kids, it'll surely be a hit and even us adults can have fun with it too. Actually, the whole family, excluding my husband has fun with it, even though my 15 year old won't admit it.

While this isn't a game that's pulled out and played daily after the newness wore off, it is still pulled out often just to have fun, so there is a replay value to it.

If you have kids or are just looking for a fun family type game, this one will fit the bill, it's just fun to play for all ages.