Dance Dance Revolution Extreme

"It's...well...it's DDR. What else is new?"

So help me God, a review of a DDR game. I never thought I'd have so much free time on my hands.

Being the 8th Mix in the series (13th Japanese Mix thus far), without the official title ''8th Mix,'' it's what every DDR fanboy wanted: A whole lot of songs, songs from their favorite Bemani series game in DDR, and difficulty. Depending on your cup of tea of course, this new version may or may not be what you're looking for.

Graphics: 6/10
Who needs graphics? It's still pushing System 573 (PSX-based) hardware like nuts. The MPEG backgrounds are horribly pixelated (granted, for compression's sake), and you can't really render arrows into anything spectacular.

Sound: 7/10
I'm sick of that announcer already, I hate, as my friend calls him, Jamaican stereotypes (or whatever he's supposed to sound like). The music is...well for the most part, it's recycled. The new ''Extreme'' music makes up less than 10% of the total songlist, which is pretty thin, quite honestly. Besides, who in their right mind, plays DDR to bad Queen covers?

Presentation/Gameplay: 7/10
I absolutely love the new modifiers. It's a shame they're not playable, and not used more widely. I'm not a big fan of playing Fuwa Fuwa and Brake on Trick Oni only. Aside from that, it's DDR. Some of the new songs are fun. Some of the new songs practically encourage bar raping, which, IMHO, takes a lot of fun out of the game. However, there are enough glitches and offbeat songs to detract from the gameplay, and show DDR fans one obvious thing: this game was rushed.

Difficulty: 9/10
Props to Konami for raising the bar again, unlike with Max 2 (whereas only Maxx Unlimited was the only thing decently hard). Paranoia Survivor, Paranoia Survivor Max, Legend of Max, Cartoon Heroes, Bag, enough songs to keep most people from getting crazy high scores/grades for quite a while. And when you're done with those songs on singles...try 'em on doubles! The new Onis are a huge step up in difficulty compared to what they were in Max 2 as well.

Replay: 7/10
I didn't find this mix as addicting as some of the others, I don't know why. I didn't want to keep pumping quarters/tokens/nickels/what-have-you to keep playing this game. I rather play some of the older mixes for some reason.

Overall: 7/10
Some how, I got more of a ho-hum reaction from this mix within a month of playing. While it has a ton of songs I love, I can't really find myself continually playing this Mix. From an objective standpoint, it's an awesome Mix. But I can't quite put my finger on why it's just not quite as good as it should be. I would like to score this higher, but I can't find reason to give it quite an 8.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/31/03