High School Musical 3 fans can rock out in 2 video games - Military Video Games, computer games, games, gaming - Marine Corps Times

High School Musical 3 fans can rock out in 2 video games

With the Oct. 24 big-screen release of “High School Musical 3,” interest in the East High students Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay, Ryan, Chad and Taylor is hitting a fever pitch. Tweens and teens can satisfy that interest by playing two new video games that let kids relive the musical highs of this song-and-dance film.

Kids have two choices: “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” for the Nintendo DS and “High School Musical 3: Senior Year Dance!” for the Wii. Both feature songs from the movie in their game play and both are good, but the Wii game is slightly better. Here’s the scoop:

‘High School Musical 3: Senior Year’

This Nintendo DS game doesn’t really have a story line; rather it’s a way to play rhythm games while listening to nine songs from the “High School Musical 3” (HSM3) film. In addition, the game offers personality quizzes, similar to what you would find in a popular teen magazine, and uses your answers to align your interests to one of the characters in the movie.

The overarching theme for the game is that you are helping the Wildcats of East High create a senior yearbook. By playing the rhythm games and answering the personality quizzes, you unlock photos, autographs and memorabilia about Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay, Ryan, Chad and Taylor, which are needed to fill up their yearbook pages.

Most of the rhythm games have you rotate a pie-shaped piece around the axis of a circle. Your goal is to align the wide end of the triangle shape in the direction of a string of music that is weaving around the upper DS screen. If you do it right, you’ll earn points as the musical string moves over the pie piece to turn it green, and then continues to the axis point, where it is eaten by a smiley face. On the harder of the two levels, you must also push buttons as beads that are strung on the musical string pass through the smiley’s mouth.

In addition to the rotate-the-pie-piece game play, there are three other rhythm games involving tapping basketballs and dots, and rotating flowers. Plus, the game supports DGamer, a way to go online to chat with friends and exchange gifts. It also has a multiplayer BFF quiz mode, but both players must own the game.

While the pie piece game play is unique, the game suffers from not having a compelling story to motivate you to play. However, the game does act as a jukebox by letting kids listen to the nine songs (when they plug in headphones and close the DS.)

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Best for ages 8 and up

From Disney Interactive, $29.99 Nintendo DS.

‘High School Musical 3: Senior Year Dance!’

What’s cool about this HSM3 game is that it lets you groove to 29 song tracks from all three of the “High School Musical” movies. In this dancing game, you boogie while incorporating arm movements made while holding the Wii remote and attached nunchaku.

Since this Wii version doesn’t come with a dance mat controller (although the versions for the Xbox 360 and PS2 coming in November will have them), the screen creates an interactive dance circle. The circle has six hotspots, corresponding to upper right, upper left, middle right, middle left, lower right and lower left. Colored balls appear in the center of the circle and float out toward one of the hotspots. You earn points by flicking your wrist in the air at a spot that corresponds to the hotspot just as the ball crosses it. Game play also has you holding specific dance poses and performing moves like spinning or clapping.

As in the DS game, there is no storyline; you are simply earning things to fill a yearbook or new clothes and accessories for the avatars in the game. You can design your own high schooler and then have him or her dance with any of the stars of the movie. The dancers appear within the dance circle, so you see them as you play.

This game also offers personality quizzes that pair you up with one of the stars.

Fans of these movies will love being able to dance to the 29 songs with cartoon versions of the movie stars in recreated movie locations.

While the Wii controls work pretty well, they aren’t perfect. They sometimes fail to register your movements, and at times the nunchaku cord gets in the way. However, the scoring is pretty forgiving, so even when movements don’t register, you can still unlock the next set of songs.

A nice feature is that you can play with your best friend in either a cooperative or a competitive dance mode. Plus, there are three levels of difficulty.

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Best for ages 7 and up

From Disney Interactive, $49.99. Nintendo Wii (Xbox 360 and PS2 versions coming in November.)