Dance Dance Revolution Max

PS2 review by Anthony Karge - Sunday 6th July 2003

Over the past few years, Dance Dance Revolution has been quietly emerging from a cult classic to a full-blown international hit. Many of you have undoubtedly seen this game at your local arcade. It's that game with the loud music and people stomping all around on looking silly. Over a dozen different versions have been released for home consoles in Japan, but in America this only the fourth version. The last version, Konamix, was excellent. DDR Max is the first version to utilize the Playstation 2's power, so it should be even better than Konamix, right? Well, not exactly.



The DDR series is like nothing ever seen before, with the exception of those old Nintendo Power Pad games. As a warning, a dance pad is an absolute necessity if you want to enjoy playing this game. These are sold separately, and they range in price from $15.00 to $60.00 for the quality ones. It's possible to play the game without a dance pad, but using only your fingers on a controller is dull and defeats the purpose of the game; to move around and "dance."

The first impression people get from DDR is "Wow, this is stupid" or "Hey, this looks pretty easy." Neither of these are totally true, except for the first one depending on attitude of the gamer. When DDR starts, a song starts playing and arrows representing up, down, left, and right appear scrolling up on the screen. It's your job to step on the pad in response to the corresponding arrows. Sometimes the arrows get more complicated with half-beat steps and steps where you have to hit two directions at once. You can only miss a certain amount of steps before you get the dreaded "game over" screen, so paying attention to the screen and practice necessary.



The Dance Dance Revolution formula has been successful over the years, so changed to the gameplay are minor at best. The newest addition is the "freeze" step. With the freeze step, you just hold your foot down on the pad until the arrows disappear. It sounds really simple but it adds a lot more variety and flavor to the levels.

The only new mode in DDR Max is the incredibly challenging Oni mode. A group of songs plays with no break in between and if you miss more than three steps, you lose. This is so incredibly challenging that only the best of the best should even consider trying this mode. The saddest part is that the non-stop mode featured in past games has been axed in favor of this new version. Non-stop mode was accessible to almost everyone in terms of difficulty and the fact that it's missing in DDR Max is saddening.



All of the other modes from the last game are in DDR Max. The best one is the workout mode. You pick a song and then instead of keeping track of your score, the amount of calories you burned is displayed instead. The best part is that if you fail the song it doesn't stop. The song plays until the end so you can burn more calories. I actually lost quite a few pounds by playing this each day while still eating like a glutton. It was a lot more fun than running laps.

The main mode of the game is the arcade mode. You can play through three songs and a ranking is given after each one. The main reason to play this mode is to unlock a new song. Since there are nearly twenty, it's rewarding to unlock all of them. It also is fairly common to become obsessed with trying to beat your highest score. Consider yourself warned. If you get bored of all the steps in a song you can change them in the edit mode. This is a powerful tool that can greatly increase the game's life, but it takes a lot of work to create a routine that's worth dancing to. If you can't create any good ones then you can always download some off the Internet using some of the accessories available for the PS2.



DDR Max is a challenging game, especially on the highest of the three difficulty levels. Thankfully there are a couple modes to help conquer the tougher songs. The first is the tutorial mode. This one is most beneficial to beginners because it shows all the basic steps, then gradually progresses to the more difficult ones. The other is the practice mode. In this mode you can play through any song, but you can choose exactly what parts you want to dance to and how fast the song goes. Both of these modes are extremely helpful to both newbies and veterans alike.

With over 65 songs, the newest edition of DDR boasts over 100 minutes of music and more song than in any previous versions. The game also features songs exclusive to the U.S version, such as Sandstorm by Darude and that catchy "I like to move it" song. The DDR series has always been about fast-paced dance music like house and techno, and then a couple R&B tunes. Sadly there is much more R&B song in this version than in previous editions. Personally, R&B isn't bad, but they don't belong on a game focused around dancing. They simply go too slow to actually move around to. Also, many of the songs were in past games or are just remixes of past songs. Some of the new songs are great, but overall the soundtrack is disappointing.



The graphics boggle my mind, but not in a good way. I fail to understand the reasoning why Konami abandoned polygonal dancers in favor of uninteresting FMV backgrounds. Watching the dancer move to the songs was visually one of the best parts of DDR, but now there's nothing but repetitive and pixilated FMV backgrounds. Occasionally there is a quick FMV scene with a dancer, but this only happens once or twice in the whole game. A few of the backgrounds actually look trippingly excellent, but most are repeated in other songs and look rather dull. Since this was a PS2 game, I expected something that would at least look better than the previous PSone installments. Unfortunately, my expectations were not fulfilled.

The gameplay is undeniably what has made the Dance Dance Revolution series great over the years, and this is no different with DDR Max. But the absence of one of the best modes is a serious downer. The music and graphics were especially disappointing. I heartily recommend the superior and less expensive DDR Konamix over DDR Max. Just because it's on the PS2 doesn't mean it's better.

Thunderbolt score: eight out of ten

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