Nurien is a new game that just came out a few days ago. Its a dancing game that uses the Unreal 3 engine and could be considered the next generation of dancing games. There's a few pictures of it in my game album. The quality of the pictures were lowered because I had to convert it from BMP to JPEG otherwise they would have been 2+ MB each.  I had to censor the names because the game uses REAL NAMES. Not your screen name. If you're interested in looking for videos, the official site has some.

http://www.nurien.com/service/nguide/clientDownMov.nrn
 

Story:
N/A – I haven't figured out if there is any story. So far there's only been the tutorial mission and all you do is basically learn the steps to play.

Graphics:
The graphics in this game are very nice, but as a result, you need a pretty high spec system to be able to play the game. You can adjust your character's facial structure, but the entire character design is based on just dragging some things around so its very difficult to change the face to exactly something because some combinations just aren't possible. The real graphics are when you are dancing with other people. There are few effects, but the character animations are solid and the character details are noticeable even in the middle of dancing. It can be distracting at times due to how the gameplay is. I hate the lighting in my personal room. Its nice to have some, but sometimes its too much and it hurts my eyes to look for an extended period of time.

Gameplay:
The first thing that I noticed was that the login screen was loaded with advertisements. It makes money I guess.
 

The entire game is about dancing. You start off in your own room and you can visit other people's rooms to chat with them and stuff. You can choose from 1 of 6 different room designs but there is no way to customize it yet. From your room you can access any other point of the game by right clicking your character. You can check your cards, your buddy list, take on missions, just dance, or visit the shop.

The first important part of the game is that the game uses your REAL NAME. I think you have a chance to rename it right before you finalize creation of your Nurien account but I'm not 100% sure on that. I don't like this idea. It takes your real name and everyone is there to see you. It may be okay at first, but when you realize people can track you down in real life due to some information being public and they can just disassemble your social security number (keep in mind this is South Korea) and find your exact address just isn't something I'm really fond of. They also give you a personal profile page on the Nurien website and you can customize it and turn it into MySpace or something.It also means people can track you down though.

There is a nice variety of clothes to choose from. They are not that expensive (most expensive item I saw so far only costed like 12000 in Mstar, the game currency). The clothes are suppose to be based on some designers but I don't really know any of them so I can't say for sure. You can buy shirts, jackets shorts, pants, shoes, and gloves. I find it strange that there are relatively few varieties of clothing for now. Its mostly recolored versions of the same stuff for now, but it might change later on since its still early.

If you're doing quests you do it alone with an NPC guide telling you what you need to do. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out how to play but there are a few things you don't normally see in other games that would catch most people off guard. First, the buttons you need to press appear on screen as you're dancing. Its hard to keep track of it at times because they appear in different places. They don't appear all at once and you don't get to see ahead all that much. There are 3 different things that set it apart from normal dancing games and throws other people off. First is that some moves require you to hold the down arrow. It appears as a circle around your character and you have to release it when it reaches the bottom. The game makes it very hard to time it right and I nearly miss it all the time. In some songs you hold it for like 2 seconds. In other songs you hold it for like half a second. The second is that as you hit notes, you start earning stars up to a maximum of 6. At set points during the song you can press space bar to activate the stars. Whoever puts up the most stars will walk up to the front of the stage, get points based on the number of stars on the field (including misses by other characters) and get bonus points for a short period of time. The last part is at the end of the song. There is an applause section and you basically have to press space bar super fast. Some songs its easy like no more than 3 keys on screen at once. On other songs, there may be as many as 30+ on the screen at once and you have to mash space bar as fast as you can. The applause at the end is worth about 1/4^th of your total score as well so screwing it up can cost you big.

If you have trouble learning the game, there's a tutorial quest where the NPC will take you through the whole thing step by step and even show you how all of it is done including the timing. You can also replay any part of it at any time if you get stuck.

Lag is minimal, but it can be killer. If you lag by just a tiny bit, the score updates slow down. If you lag by a lot, you become off sync with the game and will miss everything.
 

All your dance moves are available as emoticons in game. If you were wondering how you would look while dancing, your room is a nice place to try it. Unfortunately, you can't try out new clothes with the dance moves. You can only do one or the other which I find disappointing because sometimes it looks completely different and behaves differently when you're dancing compared to when you're standing straight.

Right now there are many features in the game that have not been implemented yet. Of all the dance modes, only Mstar single and team work so far. Couple is not implemented yet. The limit is also 6 players in a single game at a time.

The amount of exp and money you get at the end is dependent on your score and overall placement. Its fairly easy to level up and its not hard to earn money. You can buy something every hour of playing or so even if you suck pretty badly.

Groups/Guilds:
The only group system so far are friends. You can have a few friends, but there's nothing like a guild yet. The most you can do is hang around together in a room and chat. There are also various player directories that aren't available yet.

Overall:
Nurien is a complete overhaul of the other dancing games out there. It provides one of the highest levels of customization to date although the customization is limited to the head. Its easy to pick up and learn and is fun for most people. If you like dancing games, I suggest you give it a try. If you don't like dancing games, you should try it too since its quite different from the other ones out there. If you don't play the tutorial you will miss out on a few things since it has a few things different from other games.
 

Final Score:
8/10 – Try it. Its an improvement over the old dance games with some new features. The game is still in heavy development so a lot of features are missing but its still quite enjoyable.

Final Note:

Keep in mind that Nurien is still under VERY HEAVY development. There's updates every 2-3 days whether it be client side or server side.