great epinions screws up another picture, does this mean if I miss a step

I got DDR Extreme 2 about a year ago but my dance pad quit so I had to delay reviewing it in till I found another dance pad, that and the game is just huge to play. Anyways this is probably the best of the DDR’s out there.

Gameplay
Since there are no story lines in DDR I’ll start with gameplay and go backwards a bit in this review. The basic idea of DDR is a rhythm music game, the idea is to press the direction of the dance pad has the arrows heading up on the screen when they alien with clear arrows on top. The closer you are in aliening the arrows when you hit the arrow the more points you get. At the top is your life bar it goes off for every great and perfect step, and loose health for every almost and boo (complete miss) you get. Sounds easy, well it is in till you throw in the freeze arrows, 1/8th steps that make you step on the pad real fast, and some crazy tempo songs. The game can also be played with a PS2 controller but it’s not nearly has fun.

Now DDR Extreme 2 changes thing from previous DDR. While the other DDR had workout mode, the practice mode, but the main mode was the arcade mode. The arcade mode was always dance 3 songs and then finish then back to the beginning screen, every 5 songs completed in arcade mode unlocks another song; if you played the same song you would eventually unlock all the songs. Well those days are all over has there is now the dance master mode, in which you have to go through a rather simple map and complete objectives (usually completing the song either alive or with a certain amount of points but there are some crazy ones to watch out for) and when you do 2 lines will branch out to two more songs each with there own objectives to complete. This gives a bit of a non linear to the game and it is always surprising what song comes up next. When you follow a line to the end a red stage will appear complete it and it will open up new song selections, costume for character, arrow selections, in the shop that can be purchase from the points you get from completing songs. This means unlocking songs is a lot quicker but a lot harder because once you get past the first several stages the songs get tough when you approach standard and heavy modes.

The arcade mode is back and works the same way minus the fact that your now only limit to 3 songs you can play has many has you want without being booted out to the main menu. And the workout mode is back to normal to and it allows you to create your own workout routines by selecting the songs you want.

Songs.
The music is important and there are a lot of songs. While I was a bit disappointed when I saw songs from Brittany Spears in the game, the game had a lot of great if quirky songs. One is a remix of one of Beethoven’s symphony, another quick song called Cartoon Heroes was a fun one to dance to, but my favorite and the quirkiest one is the Butterfly upswing has it is a fast and just plain silly song to dance to. A lot of great songs exist in this collection.

Graphics.
Graphics have never been a big factor in DDR, lets face it most of the stuff that fly’s in the background are pretty much crazy screen savors with a generic character dancing in the front. Same here except the characters do look a little smoother and flesh out then last time giving them a better look. Of course there are music videos and when one starts the characters don’t appear so you can see the music video distracted only by the arrows which is what you really should be paying attention to.

Final Recommendation.
I like the new idea of putting in stages in a quest type of mode for you to complete rather then just the same song and dance arcade mode. There are some great songs on the list to boot and to tell you the truth this is the best DDR to date.