Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

I figured I’d try something new – I’ve never played or reviewed a Dance Dance game.  Usually Jason or Keith handle these titles, and they are very proficient at them.  I figured that I’d try to give this review the perspective of a beginner.  Boy was I in for a shock. 

The game looks simple enough.  The arrows come from the bottom of the screen and all you have to do is hit the appropriate pad when the arrow hits the target.  See?  Simple!  Given that I can beat almost any music game on the higher difficulty levels, I figured that I’d start off on the “Difficult” setting and run with it.  Stomping my feet like they were on fire and trying to hit the arrows simply resulted in me looking like an ass and the game telling me “You can’t fail if you just keep trying” and tossing up a big “Failed” message.  I knew I’d have some sore legs and a lot more failure messages ahead of me for this review.  Time to get stomping!

Now, just because I’ve not played a Dance Dance Revolution game doesn’t mean I’ve not seen one.  Typically the Dance Dance games have some pretty crazy Windows Screensaver-esque background action with the arrows layered on top.  More recent games have the occasional music video and little dancers to keep your eyes entertained.  Just like Guitar Hero though, you’ll likely be watching the arrows, and those around you will be watching the background videos.  The action just gets far too intense to pay attention to anything else.

Not only is the action intense, it is also a lot like looking into a Kaleidoscope the size of a big screen TV while sniffing Sharpie markers and huffing lead-based paint.  Some of the background scenes are a neon rainbow of explosions, starburst gradients, bright landscapes with a giant yellow sun, and your dancing character busting out dance moves to the song.  Breaking up all this eyeball-puncturing background action, you’ll also get a few pretty cool music videos.  Jamiroqui and Cascada contribute their videos.  The videos do tend to distract you a bit from the arrows, so I suppose it is better that there are only a few of them.

The game has an almost cel-shaded look to it.  The characters are bright and very anime-like, but it is the animation that’ll knock your socks off.  You can pick from several characters, each with several costumes and as you play through the songs the characters will dance along with the music.  The characters are obviously motion captured beyond the normal basic mechanics of most mocap efforts.  Hips, legs, arms, wrists, hands, butt, and everything else is included in the capture output, giving the characters a very realistic dancing animation.  While you probably won’t see most of it as you try to keep track of the arrows, everyone else will get to enjoy it at least.

Tossing in one last goodie, Dance Dance Revolution Universe is one of the few titles that supports 1080p thanks to the recent update to the Xbox 360.

Much like any other music game, the sound section is quite important.  All the game mechanics in the world won’t save the game if you can’t stand the music.  Dance Dance Revolution Universe delivers 70 total songs – 15 of which you will unlock by playing the game.  You can also “purchase” 10 more songs for a total of 80.  (Purchase is in quotes as the songs are already on the disc.)

With 80 songs to chose from you’d expect to be able to find something you like.  I personally am not into trance and house music, but I was still able to find some pretty great tracks in the list.  There are some cool songs from 8-bit, remixes from Depeche Mode, a remix from Castlevania, and even some Earth, Wind, and Fire!  There is literally enough of a mixture of tracks to fit almost anyone. 

There is a narrator for the game that is meant to encourage you, but the complete randomness of the quotes makes it more patronizing than praise.  It seems like the more you screw up the more you’ll get told how great you are doing.  When you fail the narrator tells you things like “You can’t fail if you just keep on dancing!” just as the giant message that reads “Failed!” fills your screen.  This is something you’ll see and hear a lot of, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Dance Dance Revolution Universe comes with a mat bundled with the game.  This is a good thing, as the change in platforms means your old dance pads will not work.  This is a painful transition for the folks who have invested heavily in the ION Pro or the other branded platforms as this means those platforms will not work, or will require an adapter that hasn’t been made yet. 

The mat that ships with the game is full size.  It folds out to be the same size as a single platform for the game, and is made of a relatively thick plastic material.  I wouldn’t recommend playing with your shoes on, but the mat looks sturdy enough for long term wear and tear.  At the top of the mat there is an Xbox guide button.  This is handy for seeing which achievements you may have unlocked, or seeing which of your friends are online.  Surprisingly, what it isn’t good for is listening to your messages.  When attempting to listen to Xbox Live messages I found that the music doesn’t mute as it does in other games, and there was no voice in the message.  When I checked again later, without the game running, the messages were still there but now had voice. 

Other than the message bug, the dance pad works very well.  The plastic holds to the ground quite well and the lengthy cord makes sure you aren’t right on top of your TV.  If you have a larger TV, this is important as proximity to all that color could make your eyes explode if you are too close. 

Konami has set up Dance Dance Revolution Universe to work for beginners and for pros alike.  There are all new modes aimed specifically at teaching new players like myself how to move their feet to the beat including a “Super Easy” mode for those just starting out.  To make it even more accessible, even the menu system is simplified.  The game starts in a basic mode that gives you access to all of the beginner items.  When you feel that you are ready, you can toggle to the “Master” mode which will allow you to reach all of the game modes.  There are quite a few of these modes as well, with even more sub-modes within them.  For instance, the Party Mode has an Attack mode, a Bomb mode, a Sync mode, a Triple mode, a Quad mode, Point Battle, Score Battle, Speed Mode, Power mode, and a Relay Battle mode.  Each of these are vastly different, with Triple and Quad mode being the most insane – they’ll require 3 or 4 total dance mats, respectively. 

In addition to the various modes I’ve listed above there is also a Quest mode.  You are presented with a map of the United States, and you essentially travel from State to State competing for money and fame.  Oh at least, that is what I think is going on – it is really hard to tell.  If you are confused, then you’ll feel right at home here as the Quest mode makes absolutely no sense.  It isn’t that it is just a confusing storyline; I’m telling you that it is simply and completely broken in almost every way.  Given that you have to use the Quest mode to unlock many of the songs, this is very disconcerting.  You’ll get no help from the manual either – it is essentially a pointless leaflet that offers absolutely no guidance on quite a few of the modes.  You’ll compete against other dancers (or at least there will be a dancer’s picture in the upper corner – you’ll have no interaction whatsoever) in several different dance sequences.  The best way to explain it is to give you a story, so that is what we’ll do. 

I started off on the beginner mode and played enough to work up to basic before I started the Quest mode.  The first challenge was to hit 8 Freeze steps, which seemed like it’d be pretty easy.  I selected a song and got 4 Freeze steps in before the song ended.  The game encouraged me to continue by calling me a failure.  I continued and noticed that the Freezes followed me to the next round.  Completing 3 or 4 songs more netted me the 8 Freeze steps and finally I was greeted with a victory screen and a pathetic grade of C for my efforts.  I earned a few bucks and was able to move to the next state.  This next challenge required that I get a little over 900 points of “fanbase”.   I managed to get a perfect on the song and picked up over 300 points in my first run – I expected that this would only take 3 more songs at most to complete, but I was wrong.  Upon loading the next song (thanks again for another failure screen) I found that my score was once again zero.  In short, it is impossible to complete this challenge on the first two difficulty levels, which completely sucks for only your second Quest challenge.  With absolutely no guidance from the game or the manual, you can only wonder how many people failed a ton of songs only to find that they were set up to fail from the start. 

There are several variations on the DDR theme for the rest of the game modes.  There are several challenge modes that get progressively harder by giving you slight modifications to the traditional dance moves.   For instance, one mode asks you to not hit two buttons at the same time, meaning that you simply hit one side or the other instead of jumping onto two pads, regardless of what is on the screen.  Additionally, the game may ask you to get only 9 steps in a row, purposely missing the 10th note throughout the song. 

As I said, this is my first brush with Dance Dance Revolution.  I can’t say that I was a natural at this game, and more practice didn’t resolve my Dance Dance Inadequacy.  Simply put, the game seems to have forgotten that not everyone has jumped in on the last 10 iterations, and that some of us aren’t starting off on the Oni difficulty level.  On a related note, it’d be nice if the game made sense all the time too.

The big hook on this version is that it supports online play.  It isn’t the first in the series, but it is the easiest to execute, thanks to Xbox Live.  You can dance against other players for points and fame on the leaderboards.  The game doesn’t seem to support the Live Vision camera though, so it feels almost like you are playing against an AI. 

As I mentioned above, you can “download” songs via the Xbox Live marketplace to add to the already extensive list of songs.  Since the game disables the custom soundtrack feature of the system, you won’t be importing and dancing to Slayer – something that could have extended the overall value of the game significantly. 

It is hard to say whether or not this game will get any extended gameplay in my household.  We’ve broken it out when we have company, but it hasn’t really served as the party game I would have expected.   Additionally, the audio bugs and frustrating Quest mode makes for a complete package that really falls short of its PS2 predecessor – something sad to say about a Next-Gen platform game.

I felt a little silly dancing on the pads for this game. After just a short while though, I found that I was actually enjoying myself, and everyone else was getting a good laugh out of my feeble dance skills. If that is what you are looking for, Universe could be right up your alley. The overall package falls short in several areas, but it does bring the series across to the Next-Gen platforms, and enables a very easy multiplayer mode. The next game should be that much the better.

Gaming Trend Score

75

1. Graphics: 80
2. Audio: 85
3. Controls: 80
4. Gameplay: 65
5. Value/Replay: 75
6. OVERALL:75