Some really bad choices hurt this game.
Bad: Crap unlock system; Quest Mode stinks; Konami's Hawaii bureau can't make a proper DDR game; annoying video clips from some L.A. based dance troupe called Groovaloos; annoying website plugs; presentation blows; the banner designs for the new original songs are horrible; horrid framerate issues; party mode and freestyle mode are weak at best; only saves Basic Trick and Maniac records; still no nonstop and challenging modes; not many songs have a 2nd Maniac step; very long load times; older song packs are off synched.
Once again the designers over at Konami's Hawaiian bureau come up with a DDR mix that tries to be too Indie for its own good. That particular studio in Hawaii is known as pretty much known as the worst of Konami's studios.
Okay let's get the good stuff out of the way. There are no repeats here from Ultramix 2, none. Some of the issues from UM2 have been solved like the ability to have random dancers displayed, the addition of the Challenge (stupidly known as Oni) difficulty, the return of the game difficulty option. There's a good number of good music here which range from hits such as. . .
So Many Times/ Gadjo
Superstylin'/ Groove Armada
Virtual Insanity/ wg feat. Austin Willacy
Walk This Way/ RUN D.M.C.
Rock Lobster/ B-52's
Istanbul ~Not Constantinople~/ They Might Be Giants
Body Rock (Olav Basoski's Da Hot Funk Da Freak Funk Remix)/ Moby
WHERE'S YOUR HEAD AT/ BASEMENT JAXX
Whip It/ Devo
Hey Mama/ THE BLACK EYED PEAS
There's even some surprises that you'd never expect like. . .
butterfly/ SMiLE.dk
TOGETHER & FOREVER/ CAPTAIN JACK
BYE BYE BABY BALLOON/ JOGA
Nari Narien (Jay Dabhi remix)/ Jay Dabhi vs.Hisham Abbas
Mi Alma/ Ozomatli
There are good new Konami Originals too like. . .
Brilliant R E D/ NAOKI feat. Tahirih Walker
Jelly Kiss (Midihead's Smack Mix)/ Togo Project feat. Sana
Insaner/ Jondi & Splesh
Raise Your Hands/ Midihead
The new Bemani crossovers are pretty good such as. . .
Guidecca/ D.J. SETUP (an incredibly hard beatmania IIDX 8th Style song)
CARNIVAL DAY/ Paula Terry & Fu Fu's (a classic GuitarFreaks/DrumMania song by Mitsuhiko Izumi and one of Paula Terry's few Bemani songs outside of NAOKI)
Sunflower Girl/ SHORTCUTS (a GuitarFreaks/DrumMania song from Tomosuke)
Music To Your Head/ SLAKE (a techno beatmania IIDX 8th Style song)
Right On Time/ Robbie Danzie (another classic GuitarFreaks/DrumMania song)
Now that's out of the way, the rest of the game is subpar. Just like in UM2, the game is still full of filler music that does not belong in the game. All of Big Idea's songs still stink, A Different Drum is a cheap wannabe Dancemania with really bad music, or-if-is is back with another lame song, boyjazz and Stay Gold Pony Boy have no business in the game, the two Come with me songs are boring, and why the hell are there 2 songs here from Rumble Roses? The presentation of the game is no winner either. The theme is all bubbly and it really looks like the game was designed for little girls. The system music lacks melody and sound like a flash based game. The arrow position is all wrong, the dance guage looks like a bunch of bubble gum pieces. The music select screen is poor looking, the fonts used look bad. There is no coherence between the banner and the song name display, for example, if in the banner the words BASEMENT JAXX are all capitalized, the song name display will be "Basement Jaxx". The banners themselves look bad. The designers have no respect for look and style. Where the hell is the proper NAOKI logo for the banner for Brilliant R E D? Why must dj TAKA's logo be different in every song? Where is the classic one from the old mixes? I'm also sick and tired of the designers plugging in an artist's website on the long load screen (another problem). Do you really think I want to know that Stay Gold Pony Boy has a website and I want to visit it? Most importantly, why does the framerate suck? Its just a bunch of arrows, a movie clip, and dancers going on in the background, yet why is it still running at less than 60 frames? All Xbox DDR games run like crap and the PS2 ones have better performance.
The game's new focal point is this rather lame Quest Mode where it's your mission to become a popular dance troupe. If you don't want to pass a song on all three difficulty levels with an A or above to unlock one of the hidden songs, you can atleast do this torturous mode to unlock most the songs. For some strange reason, your dance troupe only travels to State capitals (as well as Canadian Provincial capitals). So your no name dance troupe will never get big in the real cities that matter like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York (as none of those metropolises are State capitals, but you can make it big in Toronto, Ontario's capital). The point of the mode is to reach your fanbase target in one song play. How do you reach it? Well, the more arrows the song that greater the chances of meeting your quota. Some capitals like Sacramento or Toronto have really high quota levels while Pierre or Juneau have smaller quotas and you can play easier songs and still pass. The more states you have mastered the quicker you become famous in harder quotas. The mode can be played with more than one player and you can battle for territory in turns. But overall the mode is really gimmicky and lacks any real dirrection. What's worse? In Europe, the game Dancing Stage Unleashed 3 (has more songs than UM3 with more exclusive music) has this same Quest Mode where dancing Europeans try to make it big in American and Canadian state/province capitals. Those Hawaiian developers don't know what's the capitals of the Italian states Sardinia or Lazio. The small imperfections really kill this game (funny because the game has a song called Imperfection). Since DDR games are so cheap to produce, why can't Konami Tokyo handle development themselves? This Indie approach to the DDR games make it feel cheap. Like In The Groove cheap, you know, crappy presentation and lots of bad music. Stick to the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Sega Dreamcast, and Arcades for a real and proper DDR experience.