Boom Boom Rocket review

I apologize to all my readers for not posting anything for over a week. I had a bout of pneumonia recently and no one wants to read articles written by me while under the influence of a fever and cold medicine. After that, I was slacking off for a couple of days while playing games on my new XBox 360 that arrived while I was sick.

This actually brings me to the topic of this post: "Boom Boom Rocket". "Boom Boom Rocket" is similar in concept to "Dance Dance Revolution", "Guitar Hero", or "Rock Band" in that colored symbols travel across the screen and the player’s goal is to hit a corresponding button on the controller (with optional support for a dance pad or guitar) when they get to the top of the screen. This game – included with the XBox 360 Arcade – provides hours of frustration, I mean enjoyment. BBR, isn’t really a new concept as several other games feature the same goal; however, the fireworks that explode when the "notes" are hit correctly is a nice addition. Also, the ability to unlock new, impressive firework shapes by completing the included songs in easy, medium, and hard difficulties increases the playability. The shapes themselves help to break up the monotony of looking at standard circle and scattered explosions.

The real reason that this game is being discussed on a music related blog, is that – like other games in this style – music plays (no pun intended) a major part. The songs included should all sound vaguely familiar as they are all reworked dance mixes of popular classical pieces such as Beethoven’s "Fifth Symphony" and "Wagner’s "Ride of the Valkyries".

For the most part, these tunes are quite good blends of the two vastly differing musical styles; honestly, I was amazed that they didn’t sound like sheet music, scissors, and glue were given to a kinderg?rtner for a couple of hours. I have not downloaded any of the non-free songs, but I suspect that they are of a similar quality. I highly recommend not just chucking your XBox Live Arcade disc in the garbage and actually try this – as well as several of the other included games.

8 Comments

  1. keanxy says:

    I really feel sorry that you got pneumonia. I haven’t played console games for many years not but I like to own a playstation or xbox 360 or any cool game consoles in this present. Games with great sound background is really cool.

  2. cball says:

    Thanks for the comment. I have just gotten back into console gaming myself; the last system I bought before the Xbox 360 was a Nintendo 64.

    I am really impressed with the how far modern game designers have come in terms of focusing on the music scores.

  3. Actually so far I haven’t noticed the fireworks being out of sync with music. I havent played all tunes yet though so it might be that I haven’t gotten to them yet. I am pretty good at rytm (been singing in choirs for as long as I can remember) and music and one thing I like with it is that I can score well by listening to the music and hitting the buttons with the rytm.

  4. cball says:

    I agree, the music and rockets seem to match up well.

  5. I have it and I like it. Although it is making me feel old, because I don’t like the music and it is freaking hard on, erm, hard.

  6. cball says:

    I could see how many people wouldn’t like a mix between dance and classical. Fusion styles, in general, are for small niche markets.

    I am divided on this and like some of the songs, but would rather not listen to others.

  7. Rocket uses floating points which mimic the motion of sky rockets at night. These arcing prompts also come toward the cue line at various speeds, which makes it that much more interesting to watch, and much more difficult to play

Leave a Reply