Red Bull BC-One has in the past few years established itself as the gold standard of b-boy / breaking competitions, with top notch events, world class dancers, and film quality videos. Now the BC-One folks have added gaming to their offerings, with games for the Nintendo-DS, online, and now for the iPhone / iPad / iTouch.
I downloaded the iPhone version today, cause what b-boy who could resist at only $2?
I should have resisted…
Here's how the website describes the game:
Battle the best of the best, throw down the coolest moves and win the respect of the crowd. Take the lead with motion-captured moves from Roxrite, Lilou, Cico, Hong 10, Taisuke, Pelezino and Ronnie. Make the most spectacular moves using the special drag & hold feature on four rhythm channels and take it to the limit!
Apparently "taking it to the limit" means "play yet another red/blue/yellow/green button rhythm game that is exactly like Tap-Tap."
But in reality, the moves are completely pre-programmed and have no relation to the button mashing you are doing… except if you mess up too many times, then your b-boy crashes. The dance animations serve to simply distract you from the true nature of the game, which is hitting the right colored button in time to the music. In fact the graphics are so saturated and busy that many times I couldn't see the falling bars until they were right on top of the bar.
On the plus side, I love the music, which sounds a lot like one of my favorite DJs eDIT from LA. The idea of battling in rounds at regional competitions around the world is kind of sweet. Winning a regional comp unlocks a different b-boy that you can play as, which is neat the first couple of times.
But overall the BC-One b-boy game lacks any real connection to b-boying, get repetitive pretty fast, and lacks replay value. You will likely be more entertained by just going to YouTube and watching footage of past BC-Ones, or putting on a dope beat and practicing your own moves!
[For more info and to download, hit up this link.]