In the past few years, the concept of what can be sold as a "video game" has changed a lot. For years, a game involved accomplishing some task for points, and working your through levels until you reached an endpoint. Now we're seeing companies sell "games" that don't have an endpoint, and hardly have any sort of goal. Games like Electroplankton, Brain Age, and Picross DS all have systems of scoring, but they're not really intended to have an ending, or to be "beaten" in the sense that you "beat" games like Halo, Super Mario Bros. or Ridge Racer. EA is expanding this concept of a non-traditional game by releasing Boogie, a game all about creativity on the part of the player.

In Boogie, you control a character to make them dance on screen in time with music. You can adjust their style of dancing, and earn the ability to perform additional moves, but the biggest goal is make their moves synchronize with the timing of the soundtrack. There is a scoring system in place, so it is possible to compete with your friends in a dance-off, but that is not the main focus of the game.

Once you have created your dance to a piece of music, you are given the ability to make a music video. The dancing that your character performed will be recreated in the video, but you can enhance it with different visual effects and camera angles. The limit is 100 camera edits per video, but with each song being only a few minutes long, I don't see how that could feel like much of a limit.

A microphone is included for karaoke competitions in the style of SingStar or Karaoke Revolution, with the option to use these vocal tracks in the music videos as well. For the karaoke-shy among us, the options let you balance how much of a "vocal assist" you would like, giving you the option to not hear your own voice at all, or hear it completely unassisted, or anywhere in between. The EA representatives I talked to said this was added to encourage more people to play.

Boogie looks like an interesting title, but it may disappoint the traditional gaming crowd, as it's more about creativity than competition. For those interested in a more creative title, who want to produce their own music videos to songs like "Can't Touch This" and "Don't Cha", this is a perfect match.

For more pictures, visit our Boogie image gallery.