B-Boy, as with breakdancing, is a battling game. A fight between skilled gymnasts who have chosen not to learn, or have simply forgetten, the rules that would otherwise keep their bodies out of acrobatically harmful situations. Unlike what some may first expect, B-Boy is not just a rhythm game. The gameplay presents itself as a cross between a fighting game, rhythm game and a Tony Hawk-like trick performing extravaganza.
That looks like it kinda hurts.
To begin with, you have the ability to customize your character before taking them to compete against other breakers. How you play the game is also reasonably customizable, allowing for multiple varieties of play types. One of these is a battle mode in which you can pit yourself against dancers, either one-on-one or two-on-two. These characters hail from all over the globe and are, as far as we know, all famous breakers within the scene. Some of the more well known of these include, Crazy Legs, Camel and Mouse. Overall, there are to be over a dozen breakers to compete against.
There are various arenas on which your break battles will take place. Some of these include a city park, a gym, and the subway, along with many more. All up, there are about 20 stages to choose from. Competitions take place during either night or day, which somewhat sets the mood of each battle.
In the default mode, each dancer takes turns at performing moves by pressing a combination of buttons and stringing them together, whilst attempting to transfer fluidly from one trick to the next. Each player gets 30 seconds to throw in as many moves to their routine as they can (the time per round varies over play modes). There are a vast array of moves, which have all been motion captured extremely well. Moves such as the headstand, windmill, three-step, baby freeze, babylove, and top rock are all there. Each routine is judged and the player who wins two rounds wins the overall battle. Along with simple battle mode, we hear there is also a career mode, in which you attempt to raise your crew to the top of the breakdancing hierarchy.
Hey guy, quit stalling.
Some moves are simple button combo pressess while others, such as stalls and headstands, require the player to use a gauge which appears similar to that when manualling in Tony Hawk. After getting a string of combos, we hear that your player will be able to perform special moves, although we are yet to see any of these.
The animation of the characters are quite realistic, and any static screenshots that we could present to you would not really do it justice. The movement in what we’ve seen so far looks very fluid and represents the developer’s intense research and love of the art-form. All the moves are presented very accurately and from what we've seen, none of it looks at all clunky. The graphics are reasonably good too and although not overly impressive, do a decent job of presenting the breakdancers and environments. Coupled with great liscensed music this should make for some reasonably authentic battles and allow even the most doubley left-footed dancers a chance to strut their stuff via the controller.
It will be interesting to see how the gaming community recieves this interesting and innovative game that brings a number of elements together. Rest assured, as soon as we get our hands on the final build, we'll be letting you know how it goes right after we've finished busting some sweet moves down at the park on our freshly polished lino squares.
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