DDRMAX2 Dance Dance Revolution

"7th Mix eat your heart out, this mix easily surpases it."

A Revolution different from Japan.
As Konami sees its Dance Dance Revolution franchise get exceedingly popular in the United States, they see this as an opportunity to showcase songs that they usually don't work with when they make their Japanese versions. The result is mixes that feature popular dance music that American audiences can relate to. Their first try at this new approach for Dance Dance Revolution in the United States is with 2002's DDRMAX: Dance Dance Revolution. It featured songs that Japan may never play such as “Sandstorm” by Darude, “I Like To Move It” by Reel 2 Real, and “Dark Black Forest (Short Trip)” by Steve Rhyner. This time they have taken this approach to the next level with DDRMAX 2: Dance Dance Revolution. The fifth American home version DDR installment for the Play Station family of consoles (PS1 and PS2 combined).

And DDR is?
A dancing game series that gets the player of the couch and break a sweat. What makes Dance Dance Revolution unique than most games in the market is that you can purchase a special controller just for the game, a dance pad. A pad that you actually step on, it has buttons for use with the game. Your feet will be used to play this game, you will see arrows scroll up and when they reach a permanent set of arrows on the top of the screen called the “STEP ZONE” it is your job to step on the correct arrow. It's a rather simple game to begin with, all you need to do is get on the rhythm and focus on the arrows. You are not penalized for stepping on the wrong arrow, only if you miss on what your suppose to step on. Execute the correct patterns and move on to your next song. Continually miss and its game over. With that brief explanation behind the gameplay on DDRMAX 2 is no different than the original Dance Dance Revolution released back in 1998. There have been little advancements to the series, today its newer features are freeze arrows and more difficulty modifiers like speed mods. Another good feature of DDR is how the game caters to all levels of skills. DDRMAX 2 is no exception. There are several levels of difficulties to choose from. BEGINNER mode is aimed for people who have never played before while MANIAC (called in this game as HEAVY) is for expert players who can handle songs with very complex step patterns. LESSON MODE is available for those who are complete newbies to this game. It is a series of 3 lessons, lesson 1 is learning very simple steps, lesson 2 is intermediate level like how to execute common strings of 1/4 beat arrow arrangements, lesson 3 is the difficult level where you learn how to step on 1/8 beat arrows with a few freestyle tips. There is EDIT MODE where you can create your own steps to any song playable in the game, if a song is too easy or hard for you, use this mode to create steps for your skill level. Also TRAINING MODE is present, this is where you hone your skills. Practice any song at any difficulty in the game, there are modifiers in this mode to help you get better such as hand claps to tell you when to step and even slow the song down to help you get the patterns down. At the end of the song a grade will be given of your performance along with a chart of which areas of the song you may need more work on. With all those helpful modes there is the classic GAME MODE. The main attraction of DDRMAX 2. Here is where you spend all your time trying to unlock all the goodies or just have fun dancing. NONSTOP MODE returns this time and is a lot easier than ONI MODE from DDRMAX. Dance your way through courses with pre-selected songs and difficulties. This mode still has its challenges, like Random Course and Ultimate 12. All in all with all these features I mentioned, this is your average home version DDR game features. Though there is a secret mode, can you unlock it?

Graphics, any good?
Yes this time I give this DDR a passing grade in the graphics department. DDRMAX suffers from poor pixilated background videos and the game has this terrible flicker effect going on, the flickering problem has been fixed on this version. The background videos look much more smoother and hey those dancing characters are back! This time around since this game runs at 60fps, the dancers are much more fluid than ever before. Plus they look even better now that they are cell shaded, Rage and the gang look more colorful giving the game a burst of color which was missing in DDRMAX. Some of the songs in this game even have music videos playing in the background. Though not DVD quality as the music videos look compressed. But still they offer a rather cool perk.

Most importantly the songs, how good are they?
Good news, its better than the Japanese version of DDRMAX 2. As I said before with the whole Americanized thing, DDRMAX 2 offers players songs that we know . Radio hits such as “Love At First Sight”, “Days Go By”, “Get Down Tonight”, “Heaven”, “Busy Child” are some of the songs just for this mix. That does not mean this mix has no songs from previous Japanese installments. Popular licensed songs from Japanese mixes such as “CONGA FEELING”, “IN THE NAVY 99”, “DREAM A DREAM”, “GHOSTS”, “LONG TRAIN RUNNIN'” and more are what I call the Dancemania imports on this American mix. There are songs from Konami's in-house artists in this game as well. The ever so flamboyant NAOKI returns with songs like “D2R”, “rain of sorrow”, “DESTINY”, “END OF THE CENTURY”, BREAK DOWN! (by his girl pop band creation BeForU), and more. There are implants from games you may have never played before like Beatmania IIDX. Such as dj TAKA's “Tomorrow Perfume”, Togo Project feat. Sana's “more deep (ver. 2.1)”, and DJ Spugna's “Bad Routine”. Also featured are brand new Konami Originals by Sota Fujimori (of “Look To The Sky” fame) such as “Forever Sunshine”, and “Try 2 Luv. U”. With all these songs stuffed in one DVD this mix surely gives you a little taste of everything. If you don't happen to like popular dance music its okay as there are other songs on this mix you'll likely enjoy. With such diversity present in this game I found one major flaw with the song selection. And that is how this mix has way too many repeated songs from DDR, DDR Konamix, and DDRMAX. Almost 1/3 of the songs in this game are repeated from previous mixes. Though not all the repeated songs are bad, swapping discs to switch to another game is not that hard. Plus there are songs in this game I just can't stand such as “Busy Child”, “DIVE ~more deeper & deeper style~, “SO DEEP (PERFECT SPHERE REMIX)”, “Days Go By”, and “MAXX UNLIMITED” are some of the ugly ducks on this game. Some of my favorite songs are “Love At First Sight”, “CONGA FEELING”, “feeling of love”, “Heaven”, “IN THE NAVY 99”, “DREAM A DREAM”, “D2R”, “Forever Sunshine”, “A Little Bit Of Ecstasy”, “Take Me Away (into the night)(radio vocal)”, “LONG TRAIN RUNNIN'”, “GHOSTS (Vincent De Moor Remix)”, and “Secret Rendez-vous”.

So the bottom line…
This is a proper DDR mix for anyone. I like the amount of licensed songs featured and the graphics, how it featured the return of the dancing background characters. The only problem I have is the amount of repeated songs which could have been used to license more songs. 7/10.

GAMEPLAY: 7, its just like any other DDR game.
GRAPHICS: 7, much improved over last year's DDRMAX.
MUSIC: 7, lots of fun new tracks but lots of repeated songs for players who knows this series well.
REPLAY VALUE: Moderate to high, newbies will spend lots of time on this mix while more veteran players will find themselves playing this game for much shorter time.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/02/04