With its technicolour cover and loud arsenal of dance hits, Boogie might have drummed up a crowd on the Wii. You might have seen a display version in your local game store, attempting to ensnare fans of both the massively successful Dance Dance Revolution and the long-standing karaoke saga SingStar. Unfortunately, the buzz surrounding Boogie didn't last and those who played it on the Wii found it easy, slightly clunky to control and horribly repetitive. Now EA have released Boogie on the PS2 and surely things can only get tougher? After all, the game's selling point was how it used the Wii's motion controller to make the on-screen 'boog' dance. Admittedly they didn't pull it off too well, but surely it won't be as much fun with the PS2's outdated analogue sticks? And with SingStar secure in karaoke fans' hearts, is there room to Boogie?

Those of you who have played the Wii version of Boogie will find that very little has changed on this PS2 port. For those who haven't yet experienced the game, here's a brief explanation of how it works. You choose one of several lively 'boogs' and then attempt to turn your character into the latest all-singing, all-dancing, crowd-pleasing superstar. There are basically two modes of play - dancing and singing - both of which shall now be evaluated fully.

The singing parts are remarkably similar to SingStar. Your chosen song fills your speakers, while the screen is populated by a series of bars. With the lyrics displayed at the bottom, the aim is to sing along in time with the music, thus filling these bars with points. It doesn't work too badly and the game incorporates some of SingStar's finer points. For example, you can control the level of the microphone, so the more self-conscious players don't have to fear the sound of their own voice pouring through the speakers - and with over forty songs available, with hits from the Seventies to the Noughties and each decade in between, there should be a song for everyone to enjoy.

Unfortunately, there are a few glitches and setbacks. Firstly, there's no option to play a 'short' version of the songs. With SingStar, rather than sitting through the whole four-minute song (it can seem a lot longer when the mic's in your hand), you had the option of performing a ninety-second verse-chorus clip. Boogie doesn't give you this option and, unlike SingStar, there's no opportunity for two-player singalongs, be they duets or competitive, which is quite a disappointment. Since the game is compatible with the SingStar mics, most players will already possess two microphones and will be a bit surprised that they can only use one for Boogie - as observant types will notice, Boogie does advertise itself as a two-player game. Unfortunately, this refers only to the dancing mode and this strikes me as a little odd; why is only half of the game open to two players? Finally, the points are far too easy to rack up; an over-sensitive mic and a poor pitch detector means you just have to hum along and you'll be getting top scores. Any true karaoke fans will find themselves frustrated when their high scores are toppled by half-arsed humming.

Boogie's dancing mode doesn't score many more points either. As one of the songs plays, the objective is to dance along to the rhythm, aided by a rhythm meter at the bottom of the screen, which in my experience rarely corresponds to the rhythm of the song, while the aim is to tap the right buttons at the right time. This is the game's first major fault: the button tapping part. As you can guess, tapping a button or tugging an analogue stick is much less fun than leaping around the room while thrusting a Wii remote in all directions. Without even a scintilla of body movement, it soon sinks in just how repetitive this game is. The combo moves (orchestrated by holding down L1 and pulling both analogue sticks in a given direction) are also much easier than they were on the Wii, so the game soon comes to be dominated by long strings of combos as the scores shoot sky high.

The two player dance-off mode is equally unimpressive. This time there are two boogs on screen and the objective is to score more points than your opponent - essentially tapping the buttons faster than they can. For some strange reason however, the rhythm meter is moved to an entirely different place on the screen for the dance-off mode, meaning that it can be more disorientating than fun. The game is slightly enhanced by the appearance of power-ups and extra-point-coins across the screen; by reaching these before your opponent can get there, you can freeze him or her for twenty seconds, or double your score for all combo moves. At least this adds a little bit of competition to the game.

Elsewhere there's a video editor mode where you can string together dance combos before adding a series of music video effects. While this might entertain younger gamers, it really is nothing special. Like the Wii version, the game still feels half-finished. There isn't a game mode that combines singing and dancing either, which is a shame; a two-player mode where one player adds the vocals while the other busts some moves would have been infinitely more fun than the current button-bashing battle. Boogie still looks great, with some imaginative backdrops and well-rounded graphics, but unfortunately none of the songs are recorded by their original artists; they still sound okay though - much better than I can do on the game's karaoke mode, anyway.

It's a real shame that for every flicker of promise Boogie shows, there are twice as many setbacks just around the corner. For a karaoke/dancing merger, this is nowhere near as fun as it should be and for all the noise it makes, EA's Boogie just doesn't have the substance to succeed.

Reviewed by Robert Jackman for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).