Reviewed: April 3, 2001
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Tecmo

Developer
Tecmo

Released: March, 2001
Genre: Music
Players: 3
ESRB: Everyone

7
8
9
7
7.8

Supported Features:

Unison was originally designed as a Japanese game based on Japanese pop-culture including all the crazy colors, costumes and anime-style graphics you would expect in a game such as this. The single player portion of Unison features a story mode with many cut scenes and lots of dialogue. I'm not sure if they had trouble translating the story and dialog, but the game seems pretty "whacked out" at times, kind of like a crazy mix of Superfriends, Charlie's Angels, Mod Squad, and any other 70's pop-culture show you can think of.

The game consists of several challenging levels tied together with a barely-plausible storyline:

Venture 200 years into the future to the vividly colorful, high-tech city of Twin Ships. Dancing has been prohibited and anyone caught will be immediately arrested and banished from the city. It's up to you to convince the local dictator Ducker to lift his restriction on dancing. But it's going to take the performance of a lifetime to show how great a world it can be when everyone is free to dance. Team up with the master- Dr. Dance, and be a member of the Ultra-hip dance unit Unison!

Dr. Dance is one crazy dude with over-the-top facial expressions and dialog not to mention an Afro that features more polygons and animated bounce than some of the body parts of the female fighters in Tecmo's Dead or Alive 2.

Learning to dance is almost like the old Simon games where the game would play a series of notes and colored lights and you had to memorize and repeat the pattern. When it's time to learn a new dance routine Dr. Dance will offer a tutorial where he does the dance and you follow along.

Once you think you have the hang of it you can practice on your own. I found the solo practice to be much more rewarding than trying to follow the Dr. as you get a rating at the end of each practice session and can judge your progress. Some of the songs and dance routines, especially in the later levels, can get quite long, so you have the ability to break the routine up into segments and learn each segment before putting them together.

Once you have mastered the routine you can then have Dr. Dance do a pirate broadcast feed to the network and display your talents to the citizens of Twin Ships. Based on your performance you will gain support from a certain percentage of citizens and hopefully by the end of the game will have lifted the ban on public dancing.

Dancing with a PS2 controller may seem impossible, but it becomes quite intuitive after a few lessons. Your control is limited to the movement of the two analog sticks and you must match the moves shown on the screen. It's easy to learn but hard to master as the moves become faster and more complicated after you get past the first few songs.

Not only is dancing about memorization, it is also about style and timing. If you try to simply follow the prompts you can probably get by with a C or even a B rating, but if you actually learn the moves and their timing with the music you can get the coveted A rating. Your rating is determined by scoring each move as Perfect, Good, Bad, Missed, etc. Perfect moves are only achieved by starting and executing a move at the exact same time as the prompt. In other words, if the prompt moves before you do then you will only get a Good score for that move. Combining several well-executed moves in a row will give you additional combo points.

There were some serious flaws in the interface of this game. Once you are in the story mode you are locked-in. You can save broadcast replays and your story position after each successfully completed level, but if you fail any one broadcast the game is over and you must either restart from scratch or load a game. I also found no way to pause the game. This was extremely annoying as I was about to enter my third broadcast and the phone rang. I'm scrambling to find a button - any button - that would stop the game. No such luck, as I watched my dancing career spiral into the toilet while I answered the phone and prepared to restart the game.

The backgrounds are all rendered in spectacular color and the camera pans and zooms around these 3D environments creating a fantastic and futuristic world that you really want to save. There are several locations you will visit frequently such as Dr. Dance's hideout and the evil lair of Emperor Ducker. Each visit is made unique with varying camera angles and funky animation.

Of course this game is about dancing and the programmers have nailed the dance routines down to near perfection. The girls all move gracefully with an assorted list of motion-captured dance moves you would expect to see from the Spice Girls or Brittany Spear's back-up dancers. The girls also have access to an amazing wardrobe of costumes ranging from innocent bunny outfits to sexy US flag outfits complete with bare-midriff.

The stage shows are unparalleled in beauty and scope of detail. Stages are enhanced with a huge variety of colored stage lighting, fog machines, lasers, and pyrotechnics. Dr. Dance gets jiggy in the DJ booth and sometimes appears to be trying to upstage our girls with all sorts of flashy moves of his own.

The main thing that really bothered me is that this game is so great to look at yet when you are actually playing the game you seldom have time to appreciate the graphics, at least while you are dancing. Your attention is always drawn toward the dancing prompts at the bottom of the screen. I had made my way through three dance numbers before realizing I had never seen my girls actually dancing.

Fortunately I had been saving replays, so I was able to enjoy the show, but there is no way to view these replays without quitting the current game and returning to the main menu. If you learn the routines and are confident in your ability to make the moves without the visual prompts you can turn them off. This makes for some really challenging gameplay and allows you to watch the dancers and not your "feet".

There are also plenty of hidden secrets and bonuses to unlock, not to mention this title makes a great party game whether you take turns playing the solo mode or team up for the multiplayer experience.

Unison features support for three players so you can team up with one or two friends and try to coordinate your moves to achieve the perfect dance routine. This definitely adds to the replay value and helps to make this one of the few party games available for the PS2.

Unison, like most any video game, relies on your ability to memorize patterns and perform complex coordinated moves with your controller. It doesn't make any pretense of hiding this gameplay style with elaborate boss battles or repetitious arcade levels. Instead, the patterns are simply put right out there for you to memorize and master one at a time.

This game is sure to be a hit for those who enjoy games like Dance Dance Revolution or Bust a Groove, and even if you are like me and have never touched a dancing game before, you might find the entire concept slightly irresistible, much like our three heroic female performers who are dancing to save the world.