Dance Dance Pads

Jing Wang
September 28th, 2009 - 17:55

This is a AMAZING game. The street master, party, and all the other modes are amazing. I’ve only started playing DDR, but I love it. The mat is very good. It doesnt slip on our carpet, and you don’t slide on it. Amazing game 5/5
Rating: 5 / 5

Eduardo Nolazco
September 28th, 2009 - 22:13

Ten years (yes, that’s why the “X”) of Dance Dance Revolution and a good reason to buy it.

If you buy the EyeToy Camera (not included), you got another single mode: dance with feet and hands. On the screen you will see two new columns appear (one at each side of the screen). Same as the 4-column feet step guide, when the symbol reach the top you got to move your hand and reach the right or left hand symbol. This is not specified on the manual and it’s so fun!

I recommend you to buy the Eyetoy Camera as a bundle with a good game like this: Eye Toy Kinetic With Camera so you will have another workout game.

Enjoy!
Rating: 5 / 5

J. Jackson
September 29th, 2009 - 03:34

I never had an interest in dance games, I assumed they weren’t intense or competitive enough. Happily I was wrong, overall I really enjoy Dance Dance Revolution X. Its far from being just about dancing. It tests eye/feet coordination, challenges balance and pushes speed and endurance.

When the music starts north/south and east/west facing arrows scroll up the screen approaching a judgment panel. You step on the pad’s appropriate directional just as the arrow passes its match on the panel. Accuracy of timing is described by the words: boo, almost, good, great, perfect and marvelous. If you step without mistake, ‘great’ or better, you accumulate combos. The higher the combo the higher your score, the better the accuracy the greater your achievement. After the song you receive a letter grade and if you complete without error you get a ‘full combo’. Even after receiving AAA full combo I could not be satisfied until I had spent hours improving on the grade with all ‘marvelous’ accuracy ratings. Needless to say my competitive urge was thoroughly stimulated! Additionally, the game options are very deep, allowing you to tweek the difficulty in numerous ways.

When you start the game a menu greets you with several play options. There is 1 and 2 player and even an option for 1 player with two mats! (Yet another goal to strive for!)

You can choose Tutorial to get you started. You can play alone selecting one song at a time, or you can battle for points against the CPU. In Course mode, you dance to a set group of songs, a random collection, or you can create your own set. Once experienced, you can test your stamina by dancing to a continuous playlist in Endless mode.

If thats not enough you can go to Workout mode, where you tell the game to track your time or the calories burned. The game translates this energy into miles run and gives a cumulative total after each set. Here too, you can choose a preset group of songs or create your own playlist with up to 20 tunes playing one after the other. This definitely makes working out a breeze. There is a Practice mode, here you can get comfortable with songs sans the pressure of scoring points. On top of all this, there is Edit mode where you can design your own dance patterns for any song.

On the down side the game has some interface and design flaws:

-There is too much load time between songs.

-The narrator gets incredibly annoying and although I have turned off every voice selection offered in game options he will not shut up.

-When selecting tunes you can also choose either Roulette or Random, which isn’t very random. From dozens of songs it chose one song 4 times and another 3 times without selecting others even once.

-After each song, or Stage, the wheel remains on your previous selection, but before the last Stage the wheel moves to a song of its own choosing forcing you to reset the song wheel to find your place in the list and continue where you were.

-In the middle of a set, while waiting for the next song to load, if you happen to mis-step- I stepped across the pad to reach for water- it will suddenly flash a warning against making “extreme moves” then end your session without offering a chance to save your progress.

-At the start of Workout mode the game defaults to the ‘guest’ file, rather than the last previous player file. In fact, it would be nice if the game was smart enough to default to last previous player settings on all modes so one does not have to select 1 or 2 player, re-select character and re-select game mode. They offer an opportunity to select the same character in the game options but this does not work.

-The game also has a Street Master Mode which is a lame, ridiculous attempt at a story mode. Your character ‘travels’ across town meeting other people, exchanging painful dialogue- where the game forces you to hit enter after every stupid comment- before moving on to a contrived dance-off with that person. I actually played one character to level 9 but a glitch would not allow me to move to final level 10.

There are a few more, but these are the most annoying.

As for the pad that comes with this game: I play on a rather new, low pile, plush carpet and it stays put better than I anticipated, but it does slowly inch across the floor. I find myself re-positioning it more than I would like. I think a wood surface would be more ideal, and eventually I will upgrade to the metal pad.

Whether the songs are good or bad is subjective. I certainly don’t own any of them and at first, didn’t like most of them. However, once I got into the game they stopped being songs and became a series of beats I had to master. Still, over time I find I have grown to like alot of the songs, especially when I achieve high scores on them!

This game has been a pleasant surprise; it was worth every dollar of the 30 I paid, it hasn’t bored me yet and I’ve lost 14 pounds!
Rating: 4 / 5