Dance Factory is a cool piece of technology, but unfortunately it doesn't provide enough of its own songs.
Dance Factory counts on the player to upload their own songs. Once you choose a CD, the game will generate dance steps for songs of your choice. Either that, or you can make your own dance steps. This game actually does a good job with the dance step customization, because you make the steps while the song plays. Unfortunately, there is really no way of editing the song if you make an error. You would have to erase the old song and start over. Although this game does allow players to upload any music CD, it still seems tedious after a while.
When you look at Dance Factory, it feels like the developers didn't do very much else to make the game unique. When you begin, there are only five songs that actually come with the game. "I Like the Way You Move," is possibly the most entertaining song in this game, but that depends on your taste of music. What really get me is that none of the songs are very hard, especially for long-time DDR players. The only challenging factor is that they switched the positions of the up and down arrows. So instead of going left, down, up, right, like in DDR, they read as left, up, down, right. Why they decided to do that, I have no idea. Its just annoying to have to get used to it, and it might have been more fun if they kept the traditional arrow positions.
As far as music CD's go, different songs will generate different step patterns. Some songs that you upload will be very easy even on pro, and others will be slightly harder. However, the difficulty of this game compares to DDR's standard mode at best. Sure, you can make the songs as hard as you want by customizing the steps, but sometimes that just gets boring. If you want to spend time with this game, I'm sure you could easily make some pretty awesome step patterns, but most people will just press random buttons according to the beat. That can make for some confusing steps, which aren't very fun to dance to.
The graphics are one of this game's best qualities. Before you play a song, you can select a theme. This allows you to choose the background styles that you see while you play a song. There are different color patterns, like multicolored rings that flash and rotate, and fireworks that explode on the screen. It really does look amazing sometimes. *If you have epilepsy, this game is not for you.* Cool visuals also follow good dancing, because when you achieve a high combo, the screen flashes with brilliant colors and there are explosions of eclectic light. These color changes can sometimes make it hard to see the oncoming arrows, but it is not usually a rpoblem.
The sound in this game is also pretty good. Aside from the small song selection, the in-game sound effects are really cool. This game sound like a re-vamped pinball machine with tons of bells and whistles when you dance well. You might think that would be annoying, but it was actually really cool. It doesn't really overpower the music, and it makes you feel liek you are dancing very well.
Some of the attempts at replay value in this game are just terrible. There is this one mini-game called Cubric. I did think it was cool that you could play it while your songs were loading, but its not really a fun game. I would really rather play Pong, and that's no joke. You basically rotate a pile of cubes around to collect other falling cubes. If you get a cluster of a like color, they will disappear and you will earn points. You can also earn points by completing dances. The funny thing is that you use these points to buy accessories for an on-screen dancer. There's really not much of a selection, and in the end, the "creature" making scheme just seems odd.
Dance Factory is not a terrible game, but it doesn't compare to DDR. DDR feels much more solid and precise, whereas this game feels too easy. Just pressing random buttons on the over sensitive dance pad will get you a B, and you can also miss about half of a song and still receive a C. Don't get me wrong; I did enjoy making steps for my own music. But like many others, I don't have very many CD's, and the kind of music I like doesn't really go well with dancing. If you have hundreds of CD's ranging from rap to country, then you might want to consider trying this game out. It can be fun for a few hours, but in truth, this game is what you make of it.