Dance Dance Revolution Extreme

"A little lacking at first sight, but great game overall"

So I went to Gamestop the day DDR Extreme came out. Obviously, my hopes were extremely high, as this was the newest American DDR mix. When I popped it in my PS2, I was surprised by some of the songs that were in there. I never expected a song like "Like a Virgin" or "YMCA" to be in a DDR game. However, I found it quite easy to just ignore these songs and play the good stuff.

After unlocking everything in the game, there are many more choices in what song you play. You are no longer restricted to ~50 songs--You will be able to choose from the full list of 70 songs. These songs include some arcade favorites, such as B4U, .59, V, A, Tsugaru, The Legend of Max, Pink Rose, 321 Stars, Absolute, and I could just keep naming songs because they're all great. Then you get into the new songs, and you have one kick ass DDR mix. All the songs that are new to the US are also great. Mobo Moga, Highs off U, Firefly, There You'll Be, Only You, Jet World--The list just goes on.

So far with what I've explained, this mix would be good enough to buy with just the songs that are in it. But then, Konami does something great--they give us Nonstop mode, Oni (Challenging) mode, Mission mode, AND Endless mode. Wow. Now you don't have to switch between 3 different games each time you want to play a different one of those (DDRMAX had Oni mode, DDRMAX2 had Nonstop and Endless, and Ultramix 1 had Mission mode, just in case you were wondering what games I was talking about). Oh yeah, I forgot about one mode--Party mode. While I don't have an Eye Toy to really play Party mode to it's full potential, I know that it sure as hell looks like it would be a kick ass time with the Eye Toy.

Now, all of this means nothing if the basics, like graphics and sound, aren't good.

Graphics
Background videos have been improved on new songs. The background videos for Maximizer and You're Not Here completely pwn all the others. There's really not much of a difference in the graphics from past PS2 mixes, so there's not much to say here...

Sound
Sound quality is great. If it wasn't, then it wouldn't be worth buying since DDR is about the music.

Controls
Decent. There is definitely room for improvement in this department. In this mix, the dance play settings was absent. For those of you that don't know, this is what allows you to turn off the corner buttons on the pad. With them turned on, they will trigger one of the directional arrows. This can get very annoying especially with soft pads. It seems Konami either forgot to add this option in or hates us and did it on purpose...However, Konami partially makes up for this with the option that allows you to change the timing with when you hit the arrow and when it gets registered. In other words (because I know that didn't make sense at all), if your TV has a little bit of lag, then you will get lots of greats. Konami added an option that lets you set how fast your step is registered (or something like that...). If your TV lags a little bit, then you can set it to register faster and that will prevent you from getting greats that should be perfects. This shouldn't be a problem if you listen to the music and step according to that, like you should..

Overall

If you are an avid DDR fan, you may not like this mix at first sight. Just give it a chance, and it will grow on you. Yes, they changed the layout of the song menu--so what? A little change never hurt anyone. Also, most of the songs on heavy are not all that hard compared to past mixes. However, this is a plus if you are someone trying to work on getting more perfects and even AAAs on heavy.

If you're new to the DDR scene, this is a great mix to start on. There is a beginner mode in case you suck really badly, and a lot of the harder songs aren't all that hard compared to past mixes. This will break you in a lot easier to the standard and heavy difficulties, and prepare you for the hardcore stuff.

So no matter if you're a n00b or a vet, buy this game. It pwns you.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/05