Grease: The Video Game (Wii) Review
It seems like something that would work perfectly, especially with today’s video gaming climate. A game based on a well-regarded musical which includes not only original songs, clips from the musical itself and more gameplay; but also on a platform that suits social gaming perfectly, the Nintendo Wii. Grease: The Official Videogame is something that, quite frankly, I’m surprised hasn’t been done up until now. Unfortunately, it will disappoint most fans who are looking for a truly authentic experience.
Grease, as the name would suggest, follows quite closely the storyline of the film. Set during the 1950s, Danny Zuko meets Sandy Olsson, a cute and innocent Australian holiday maker. After their summer fling, the two coincidentally meet again during school, and Sandy, being quite excited at the ability to rekindle her summer love, attempts through many various ways to get Danny’s attention again. Of course, Danny treats Sandy much worse in front of his other friends, and eventually realises the error of his ways. It’s a rather typical love story but you can’t really fault a classic like this for it either.
The game utilises a rather retro looking style in presentation, although the graphics themselves are unfortunately quite poor. Character models are stylised and are quite recognisable, but the environments and general gameplay really lack polish in terms of presentation. In between each of the levels, the game plays short film clips from the actual movie, which do a good job of adding to the game’s overall feel. To summarise, in regards to the graphics, what you see on the cover is exactly what you’ll get – a very generic mixed bag of graphical presentation.
Grease is essentially a mini game compilation hiding behind a thin veil. As such, the game provides several different types of playing the game, although the main attraction is definitely the Story Mode, which pushes through the game’s story with in between sequences filling in the gaps utilising clips from the movie. In addition to the game’s story mode, there are modes that allow players to select which of the mini-games to play. In addition to this, the developers have also implemented balance board support, as well as the ability to sing along and add to a player’s score for every sequence, which works sufficiently, though we had to go through three different microphone sets in order to get the feature working properly.
Most of the mini games boil down to the player waving their Wii Remote in a certain direction that corresponds to the dance moves from the classic movie. In addition, more specific motions occasionally appear on the screen in which players must mimic them as many times as possible to garner extra points. To top this off, should players wish to use their Balance Board instead, the implementation of this feature allows players to dance by distributing their weight in specific directions instead. This works quite well, much better than I had anticipated, although I preferred the Wii Remote simply because it was just more intuitive to use. Additionally, the game had a lot of difficulty recognising some of the Wii Remote motions, causing quite a bit of frustration with the group I was playing with.
In addition to the standard dancing mini games, Grease also implements some games that require Danny to perform certain sporting events to impress Sandy, fix the Grease Lightning, race Grease Lightning, and of course do a dance off to remind Sandy why Danny is the man of her dreams. These utilise the Wii’s motion controls quite well, though don’t really bring any depth to the game, instead mixing things up a bit.
What is probably the most confusing thing about Grease is how hit and miss the game’s motion controls are. On one hand, some of the segments works exceptionally well, while on the other some don’t seem to work at all. This disparity really removes from the enjoyment that players will get out of the game, no matter how much of a fan they are. Similarly, the game doesn’t really know its own limits, with some of the games actually asking the player to input motions that are too fast for the game itself to recognise, creating a literally unwinnable combination of dance moves. Still, the rather small depth makes it perfect for people of all ages.
Of course, being a musical, you would expect that the soundtrack and voice work in the game would be rather important in creating the authentic Grease experience. Unfortunately, the game falls flat quite a bit in this regard, and this is extremely disappointing. Not only are the actual songs themselves rather poorly performed covers, but the voice work of the characters isn’t really implemented either (though we understand this would’ve cost quite a bit). That being said, even during the film clips from the movie itself, there is unfortunately no audio at all. This is a bit perplexing and makes the game feel like a bit of a cheap fan project rather than an authentic “official” game.
In terms of value, the Grease game is pretty tight on the entertainment. Containing no more than 11 mini games, Grease fails to hold the user’s attention for longer than an hour. In fact, for those who skip through the game’s film clips, the Story Mode can be bested within 40 minutes. This is, of course, a game that is meant to be played over and over, but with such little variety it would be hard for anyone to return and enjoy it regularly. The robust multiplayer options, which allow players to choose whether to sing against each other in teams co-operatively, competitively or going solo are to be commended, however. For those who might not be keen on their friends, each game has a rather clever “sabotage” option that mixes things up a bit, and might encourage people to return to the game with a friend.
Grease is, overall, a rather bare bones package that was quite underwhelming for me and many of the people I played with, who were much bigger fans of the series than I. To be fair, the game does stay pretty close to the game’s source material, and all the songs are included, however it’s a bit of a shame to see them used in such simplistic ways. It’s way too hard to properly judge Grease for what it does wrong, because you can’t help but feel that the developers had nothing else to further extend the experience. Still, what’s been offered is incredibly underwhelming, though it’s something that is sure to interest fans. To make it quite blunt, those who are fans of the film should definitely try it out, when it drops in price. Those who aren’t have no real reason to try it.
Graphics 5.0
Generic and simple models set against strange static environments makes the game incredibly underwhelming visually. The cheesy 50s style GUI adds to the experience, though.
Gameplay 5.0
What is essentially yet another minigame compilation, Grease consists of very simply mini games that will usually result in most players flailing wildly. Balance Board support works quite well, as does the implementation of singing.
Sound 3.5
For a game that places a large emphasis on music, its disappointing to see a lack of voice acting, or even sound-alikes during the film clips. Similarly, the fact that all the tracks are poorly performed covers makes it barely acceptable. Kudos for the team including all the songs, though.
Tilt 4.0
Theres a few mini-games available, and a lot of multiplayer options, but most of them take less than an hour to get through, which makes Grease quite underwhelming.
Value 5.0
Despite its shortcomings, I had some fun with Grease when I played it with some of my female friends who enjoyed the film. Still, I cant see anyone playing by themselves getting anything out of this.
