Are you also done with playing the same old DDR songs over and over again? Then you can consider trying this game. Final

User Rating: 7.8 | Dance Factory (Bundle) PS2
Are you also done with playing the same old DDR songs over and over again? Then you can consider trying this game. Finally a dance game where you can dance to your own favorite music. Dance factory features a cd recording mode that captures the beat of the song and creates dance patterns to it. You can use original cd's or your own burnt compilation cd's of your favorite tracks. It takes about 10 minutes for the software to create patterns out of a whole cd. Don't expect the generated patterns to be as hot as those in DDR games since it doesn't really detect the climax parts in the songs. It can generate 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 and double steps...no 1/16 steps, but you can create 1/16 steps by recording your own dance pattern.

However if your chosen music has a distinctive beat, the created patterns will probably follow it quite strictly. Dance factory is not very suitable for music that has little beats, or songs that have a very variable tempo.
If the created pattern of a song is very offbeat, you can also record your own steps over it. This is actually quite fun and it works pretty well, you just let the music play and you jump on the dance mat, making your own patterns. Everything you do is recorded live, so make sure you don't miss a beat :)
The best way to record your own patterns is to look at your feet instead of the screen, that way you'll know you hit the arrow keys on the right place.

However, there are a couple of flaws in this game, it's very annoying that the up and down arrows on the screen are placed at the opposite of those in DDR. This is quite confusing and you'll notice that you'll constantly hit the wrong arrows when playing faster songs. But after playing long enough you'll get used to this (but getting back to DDR will be very difficult then).

Another issue is the colors of the arrows, there's no difference between 1/1 arrows and 1/2 and 1/4 arrows. So when it gets very crowded at your screen you don't really know what beat the arrows are in. Especially since the pattern can be a little sloppy and offbeat at times. Also the background colors can be very disturbing while you're playing, they constantly change color and sometimes match the color of the arrows...not good.

Also, it's not possible to connect a usb keyboard to the ps2 and use that to insert the tracknames of the recorded cd. So you'll have to insert everything with your dance pad, which takes quite some time.

Overall this game is quite fun, don't expect the generated patterns to be very tight to the beat, they can get a bit sloppy and offbeat from time to time. But they're quite accurate most of the time if you use music with a distinctive beat. The 'record your own pattern' mode is fun to do. And the coolest part is that you can finally use the dance mat with your own music.

good game, worth a try.