Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 3 Impressions

Konami's Dance Dance Revolution franchise continues to chug right along, with two new games due out later this year: DDR Extreme 2 for the PS2 and DDR Ultramix 3 for the Xbox. Though neither game was actually shown at today's press event held by the publisher, new info on the roster of modes for both games was featured.

DDR Extreme 2 will be the first DDR game to feature online play on the PlayStation 2. There will be standard head-to-head play, but it will also track the top 100 players and provide you with some specific online challenges. Other new modes include advance mode (which is sort of an expert/pro difficulty mode), combo challenge, dance master mode, EyeToy support, and shop mode. The shop mode is effectively the new way to unlock content in DDR Extreme 2. Throughout the game, you'll earn dance points, which you can then use in the shop. Also, today's event yielded the full song list for the game, which can be found in our news story on the subject.

As for the Xbox's DDR Ultramix 3, the bulk of the content that was mentioned involved offline play. One of the big ones is freestyle mode, a section of the game where there are no set dance steps, and you can dance however you want in a 3D environment. There's also a brand-new quest mode, which the producers referred to as an "RPG-light." In this mode, you'll be working to build the ultimate dance team, dealing with managers and all sorts of other drama as you go. The last new mode addition is the jukebox mode, where you can simply listen to any of the game's tracks without having to bother with that whole dancing thing. New on the Xbox Live front will be instant messaging and chat outside of normal gameplay, so you can talk to your friends when not engaged in the act of dancing. Though an official song list for DDR Ultramix 3 was not provided, it was mentioned that there would be tracks from major artists such as the Black Eyed Peas, Good Charlotte, and Moby.

Both DDR Extreme 2 and DDR Ultramix 3 are due out this fall, exclusively for the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox, respectively. We'll bring you more on both games soon.