The rhythm action genre was defined by Konami's Beamania division which is responsible for the highly successful Beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution franchises. Since Konami hit gold, a number of companies have followed suit with various incarnations of the genre. The latest comes courtesy of THQ and the princess of pop Britney Spears. The fact that Spears "spearheaded" the project is no surprise. The premise is to become one of Britney's on stage dancers. The end result is a half decent attempt to the genre with the added bonus of having Spears licensing the product. Without the license though, this game would be more of a bargain bin candidate.

The visual experience is quite good in many areas. The environments come to life with moving platforms and varied special lighting effects to replicate night clubs and concert stages. Some backgrounds a little strange, for example dancing in a Buddhist Temple with FMV Spears videos running on screens. The character modeling is a mixed bag. Britney herself is incredibly real thanks to some painstaking detail and time taken to render every inch of her body. The artists did a fantastic job to even get subtle facial expressions going without any flaws. The dancer models on the other hand are nothing to get too excited about. They lack the same intense detail as Britney and as a result in many cases they simply melt into the surrounding environment. All of the signature Britney choreographed moves have been included in the game. In addition there are a number of extra moves that have been implemented and look stunningly real. Of course you would think that the soundtrack would be given top marks but sadly for some unforeseen reason, there are only five songs in total to choose from. Even if they had added remixes of the five songs it would of broken up the early repetitive nature. My only thought on the five songs, is that Spears will do more games and thus why give everything away the first time out.

The gameplay is bit of a mixed bag as well. On the one hand THQ tried to devise a different way to present the gameplay. They came up with a variation of Tecmo's Bust-A-Groove mechanics with the addition of a circular display which adds something different to the mix. As the disc moves in a circular motion, players must line up the proper button and direction sequence as the spinner passes over a particular button press. As in past rhythm games, you are assessed for accuracy by being given a perfect, good, poor and missed score for each move. For the first few plays this takes some getting used to but once you have the knack of it, the real challenges start to begin. There are a number of neat combinations that allow you to throw off your opposing dancer. Once a player reaches 10 button combos in a row, their meter will automatically throw bad moves at their competitor. These bad moves will alter the level of difficulty by adding extra button command, changing a button command, or moving a button command to another part of the meter.

The rewards for making your way through the auditions is to obtain various backstage passes. Depending on the level of the pass, you will be able to view exclusive videos of Britney and her crew behind the scenes on tour. There are six passes in all to collect. The Behind The Scenes are neat little pieces on what goes on when the cameras are not rolling. The Immersive Video scenes are quite impressive. Here you get an up-close, front row seat to five of Britney's hottest songs performed during rehearsals and in concert. You can move the camera 360 degrees to view the show and the surrounding audience from multiple angles. In addition to the Video Vault, there is a standard two-player mode to challenge friends to a dance off.

While Britney's Dance Beat from the outset looks like a licensing cash grab, once into the heart of the gameplay it is evident that THQ has something to work with here. The main problem is the paltry 5 songs present in the game. Even die-hard Britney fans will tire easily. We are hoping another Britney game surfaces in a year from now with all of her hits and even more varied gameplay. For now, a rental will suffice any curiosity.