Dance Dance Revolution should be a household name by now, and with good reason. The easy to learn play mechanics let anyone jump into the action, but there’s enough depth (and difficulty) for veterans to keep improving. DDR: Extreme is essentially the same game as every other DDR, with some new songs and not-so-exciting EyeToy support. But why fix what isn’t broken?

As in every other DDR game, the player follows the onscreen arrows by stepping on the appropriate part of his dance pad. When a left arrow pops up, step on the pad’s left arrow. It starts out simple, but moving on to tougher difficulties provides near unlimited challenge with ridiculous dance moves far beyond the skills of this reviewer. So that’s the core of the game, for the one person who didn’t know. There are lots of different modes, but they all boil down to just following the onscreen arrows. It’s a lot of fun, and certainly a good work out.

Those new to the game would do well to check out the Lesson mode, which guides newbies on all the basic steps. Taking this brief course will dramatically improve your play, and I’m glad to see Konami continually including this mode in their releases, instead of just assuming that everyone who purchases these games is already a DDR vet. There are also plenty of low-level songs to dance to, meaning that even the woefully uncoordinated will have a decent selection of songs from which to choose.

Extreme has over 65 songs, a good 20 of which need to be unlocked, and chances are every player will find a few they really like. It’s mostly dance music, of course, but there are some poppier songs, which I actually tend to prefer in my DDR games. A lot of dance music sounds like generic techno crap to me, but your mileage may vary. I could’ve done without YMCA, though. It seems like that’s being thrown into every single music game lately.

So what’s new? The party minigames, most of which require the EyeToy, are the big hullabaloo, even though they’re not very exciting. Only two of the games can be played without the EyeToy: Hyper Dash and Feeding Time. In Dash, you simple “run” on the left and right arrows, which causes your on-screen character to run along. Once you’re going fast enough, you can launch fireballs at your opponent by pressing the up arrow, but they can jump over them by also pressing up. It’s fun, once or twice. Feeding Time, however, is never fun. A picture of an animal appears, and then you need to step on the right arrow to feed him. If a dog appears, press the right arrow to give him a bone. The down arrow will give a fish for the cat, etc.

The EyeToy games aren’t much better, and don’t really feel like much development time was given to them. Watch Me Dance is pretty self explanatory; it just shows you on screen while you dance. Clean the Screen is more annoying than anything else. As you play, some kind of fog or other obstruction begins to block your view of the dance arrows. You’ll have to periodically “wipe” the screen, or else the dance arrows become completely hidden. Fortunately, the movement of body while dancing takes care of quite a bit of that.

In Coconut Panic, you have to hit the left and right arrows to shake some trees, causing coconuts to rain down upon you. Catch them for points. It’s slightly less fun than it sounds. Magical Ball actually sounds like it could’ve been a good idea, but it doesn’t work so well from a gameplay perspective. It also has nothing to do with DDR, and doesn’t even use the dance pad. It’s basically Breakout, where you hit a little ball up to try and clear the screen of blocks. It’s just not very exciting, and early stages will eventually clear themselves after you hit the ball once. Part of the trouble is that hitting small objects with the EyeToy isn’t very accurate, so sometimes you’ll try to hit it down, but it goes left or up instead.

The only minigame worth playing more than once or twice is Hands and Feet. This mode combines standard DDR steps with hand moves. It’s fun, and gets pretty tough if you ramp up the difficulty. It probably won’t replace standard play, but it’s a nice change of pace every once in a while. Certainly, it’s the only worthwhile part of Party Mode.



Article By: Joe Mackie