Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME 2
Extremely dance-riffic.
Published: October 24, 2005
The DDR series hasn’t really had a major addition to the formula since the inclusion of the freeze step (okay, diagonals count). To say it’s stagnating isn’t too much of a stretch, but there’s still life to be had in the old bird, and with the inclusion of online mode and what could best be called a single player mode, it’s gotten enough of a boost to become the best American release of the series yet. That is, if you like the soundtrack. Trance, anyone?
If you haven’t caught on to the whole dancing game craze, it’s cool. You’re probably about three years too late, but it’s cool, and this is certainly a good way to get introduced. The whole idea is simple; you step in one of four directions when the indicator scrolls up to the top of the screen. The aforementioned freeze steps require that you hold your foot in a direction until the tail end reaches the top (thus leaving you with just one foot to hit the other steps), but that’s about it.
With such simple gameplay, the allure, then comes from the steps, of course, and the music selection. Since this is a dancing game, the tunes are clearly going to be of the electronic feel. If you don’t like that, this isn’t your game. And we wish you well on your way.
There was an attempt to include some basic R&B hits (some Sean Paul makes an appearance), but most of the licensed tracks are stuff like The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and Sneaker Pimps; very much in the realm of electronic. The rest is a heavy smattering of different types of trance (progressive, speed, epic, etc.), some dance stuff and so on.
I personally like trance, and like it quite a bit, so all the cheesy builds and syrupy syth notes are right up my alley, and even the covers of popular songs with trance takes work well (yes, I totally dig the direction “Genie in a Bottle” was taken, cause I’m retarded like that. The selection, then, isn’t as well-rounded in past games, but is perfect for saps like me that can’t get enough of what’s here.
Aside from online play, which is finally here for the PS2, and works modestly well when the service is up (we were 2/5, but got plenty of mileage out of those two visits), the other big additions are Dance Master mode, which assigns arbitrary tasks like “get 5 million points” or “get 20 perfects” to the songs, and My Room, which organized all of the unlocked songs and info into a single place.
The rest of the modes, from Workout (which lets you track burned calories over time) to Edit (make your own songs) to Training and Lesson to Free Play and Advanced (letting you tweak courses and how many you play per session) are all carry-overs from previous games and are hopefully rather self-explanatory.
Dance Master is actually quite cool, if only because it allows for a new way to unlock songs in the other modes and gives you a bit of currency to buy stuff like slight tweaks to the existing modes (like changing step placement), get new costumes for characters, and so on. Scattered across a grid are interlinked songs with a few different song requirements. Early on, just passing the song is good enough, but later the challenges get more difficult.
Completing a song unlocks the next one down the line, and the criss-crossing paths mean you can either play along a line until you get to a “boss” song and finish things up or, once unlocked, you can simply pull up a menu and scoot around playing every song, which helps save time and means you won’t have to re-play down the same line just to unlock a new branch.
There are a few stacked back-to-back song challenges, and a fair amount of repetition to things, but the promise of hidden songs and steadily increasing song difficulty keeps things interesting far longer than they ever would just playing through the songs in Free Play.
The move the PS2 (and Xbox) meant Konami could finally add in real music videos, which they did a few games back. The MPEG-2 clips are clean enough, but they’re still pretty rare and instead usually throw some kind of static or vaguely psychedelic image in the background, which is fine, since you probably won’t be watching them while you play anyway. Aside from that, it’s just sliding steps and the basic interface, which hasn’t changed much in years.
The music, again is going to be as good as your taste in the music. Many, many tracks from DDR mainstays like Naoki and NC, as well as stuff from SySF and dj TAKA are in full effect here. It’s frankly the best-fitting mix I’ve heard in the series, and it’s right up my little goofy clichéd trance-loving alley. The actual comments from the “announcer” and the after-level tallies are, again, carry-overs from the previous game, and they’re fair.
So, in the end, it’s down to the music. If you like electronica, you’re probably going to dig this stuff. I honestly love it enough to make it part of my daily morning cardio workout, which I didn’t think I’d be able to do with a DDR game again. If nothing else, it’s meant more exercise and that can’t be a bad thing.
If you haven’t caught on to the whole dancing game craze, it’s cool. You’re probably about three years too late, but it’s cool, and this is certainly a good way to get introduced. The whole idea is simple; you step in one of four directions when the indicator scrolls up to the top of the screen. The aforementioned freeze steps require that you hold your foot in a direction until the tail end reaches the top (thus leaving you with just one foot to hit the other steps), but that’s about it.
With such simple gameplay, the allure, then comes from the steps, of course, and the music selection. Since this is a dancing game, the tunes are clearly going to be of the electronic feel. If you don’t like that, this isn’t your game. And we wish you well on your way.
There was an attempt to include some basic R&B hits (some Sean Paul makes an appearance), but most of the licensed tracks are stuff like The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and Sneaker Pimps; very much in the realm of electronic. The rest is a heavy smattering of different types of trance (progressive, speed, epic, etc.), some dance stuff and so on.
I personally like trance, and like it quite a bit, so all the cheesy builds and syrupy syth notes are right up my alley, and even the covers of popular songs with trance takes work well (yes, I totally dig the direction “Genie in a Bottle” was taken, cause I’m retarded like that. The selection, then, isn’t as well-rounded in past games, but is perfect for saps like me that can’t get enough of what’s here.
Aside from online play, which is finally here for the PS2, and works modestly well when the service is up (we were 2/5, but got plenty of mileage out of those two visits), the other big additions are Dance Master mode, which assigns arbitrary tasks like “get 5 million points” or “get 20 perfects” to the songs, and My Room, which organized all of the unlocked songs and info into a single place.
The rest of the modes, from Workout (which lets you track burned calories over time) to Edit (make your own songs) to Training and Lesson to Free Play and Advanced (letting you tweak courses and how many you play per session) are all carry-overs from previous games and are hopefully rather self-explanatory.
Dance Master is actually quite cool, if only because it allows for a new way to unlock songs in the other modes and gives you a bit of currency to buy stuff like slight tweaks to the existing modes (like changing step placement), get new costumes for characters, and so on. Scattered across a grid are interlinked songs with a few different song requirements. Early on, just passing the song is good enough, but later the challenges get more difficult.
Completing a song unlocks the next one down the line, and the criss-crossing paths mean you can either play along a line until you get to a “boss” song and finish things up or, once unlocked, you can simply pull up a menu and scoot around playing every song, which helps save time and means you won’t have to re-play down the same line just to unlock a new branch.
There are a few stacked back-to-back song challenges, and a fair amount of repetition to things, but the promise of hidden songs and steadily increasing song difficulty keeps things interesting far longer than they ever would just playing through the songs in Free Play.
The move the PS2 (and Xbox) meant Konami could finally add in real music videos, which they did a few games back. The MPEG-2 clips are clean enough, but they’re still pretty rare and instead usually throw some kind of static or vaguely psychedelic image in the background, which is fine, since you probably won’t be watching them while you play anyway. Aside from that, it’s just sliding steps and the basic interface, which hasn’t changed much in years.
The music, again is going to be as good as your taste in the music. Many, many tracks from DDR mainstays like Naoki and NC, as well as stuff from SySF and dj TAKA are in full effect here. It’s frankly the best-fitting mix I’ve heard in the series, and it’s right up my little goofy clichéd trance-loving alley. The actual comments from the “announcer” and the after-level tallies are, again, carry-overs from the previous game, and they’re fair.
So, in the end, it’s down to the music. If you like electronica, you’re probably going to dig this stuff. I honestly love it enough to make it part of my daily morning cardio workout, which I didn’t think I’d be able to do with a DDR game again. If nothing else, it’s meant more exercise and that can’t be a bad thing.