Dance Dance Revolution Universe 2 (Xbox 360)
created by Konami, 2007

The DDR formula churns out more of the same

review written by: Belarius

I know what you're thinking: what could possibly be worth reading about another DDR game? They are, after all, essentially identical. Apart from providing a fresh track list to DDR addicts who have memorized past titles, who cares?

Everybody Dance!

For me, despite having owned consoles in each generation since the NES, this is the first DDR game I wasn't playing at a friend's house. Instead of relying on twenty minutes of game twice a week, I'm now in a position to actually get good enough to pretend some small amount of expertise. Consequently, while I learned to stay afloat on past titles, this is the only DDR I've really had a chance to earn my wings in.

As it happens, I was lucky to jump into the franchise where I did: word on the street is that the first DDR title for the Xbox 360 (the "Universe" to this game's Universe Deuce) managed to take the simple task of displaying colorful arrows and make it a hardware-intensive task. DDRU2, on the other hand, has no visible hardware issues. Taking full advantage of the 360's impressive hardware, it replaces the pixelated mannequins of the PS2 era with high-poly-count dancers, and plays the original music videos for the game's "famous" tracks (including the 80s-tastic videos for Safety Dance, Rock It, and Walk Like An Egyptian). Presumably DDRU did this as well, but it's nice to have regardless.

It's no surprise that music rhythm games can be made or broken by their music, and DDRU2 delivers here as well. The tracks mix hip-hop, J-pop, and plain old pop with techno and funk. Obviously, people who hate DDR music as a rule are going to find the sugar-on-sugar tracks annoying, but if you're a DDR fan, this is an especially good batch of songs.

Most importantly to me and my housemates, however, is the game's learning curve. While the high levels are punishingly hard (and still beyond my reach), DDRU2 holds a beginner's hand as well. With a starting track list of over 50 songs and a range of difficulties for each, a player like myself can make progress without getting stuck playing the same half-dozen songs repeatedly. This title is a good place for the DDR-naive to get started on the franchise.

The first complaint is the most obvious: It's DDR. Though the polys are higher and the dancers sexier, it's still the same game I was introduced to eight years ago. While rhythm games continue to evolve, DDR looks like it's a dead end, fated to continue to be more of the same. Maybe this is a strength. Maybe DDR is the hardy trilobyte of the rhythm game market, an eternal niche market that doesn't need to be improved. But at the same time, there's little question that this game isn't going to make headlines. It doesn't have the genius of FreQuency, or the mad vision of Rez, or the breakthrough appeal of Guitar Hero, or even the inventiveness of Mad Maestro. It's just DDR, nothing more.

Which brings me to my second complaint. In my brain, there's this "DDR ideal" that I compare games to. In my perfect DDR game, songs are unlocked by playing the core game mode and achieving various degrees of success. Not so in DDRU2. If you want to unlock any songs, you must play "Quest Mode," which takes the core DDR game and saddles it with a bunch of badly designed kludge. Playing DDR's main mode feels like a game; Quest Mode feels like work. With its clumsy interface and uninspired mechanics, Quest Mode makes the game a slog, keeping me from ever getting to many of the 20+ songs awaiting within. Even worse, Quest Mode is the only way to unlock songs. Imagine if you were playing any other game and discovered that unlocking the bonus content meant wandering into a different, inferior game. You'd be understandably annoyed.

Everybody ... Earn Money to Play Dress-Up???

Despite playing smoothly, DDRU2 is not without its glitches, oversights, and bad design choices. Once in a while, the game forgets to save a new high score (making for shout-at-the-TV frustration). You can turn the voiceover down most of the way, but can't turn it off. These little details don't make or break the game, but they could easily have been fixed.

It's pretty obvious that the DDR drones over at Konami who make these games mindlessly tinkered until the game worked smoothly enough to be easy on the eye, and then lapsed back into languid torpor. They're not even trying anymore: the half-assed design oversights and the quarter-assed Quest Mode makes that clear enough.

Sure, the music is good and the gameplay is solid, but here's the bottom line: Konami seems to have a piece of software that makes DDR games (a DDR pump, if you will). When they need another game, they just turn on the pump. If we could liberate that software somehow, we wouldn't have to fork over full price for an endless stream of the same.

That said, if you're only going to buy one DDR, this is a fine volume to get.