Brilliant original concept, slightly flawed implementation
User Rating: 7 | Dance Factory (Bundle) PS2
I love dancing games, and I have been a fan of Codemasters for a long time, so naturally I got this as soon as I heard about it. I find DDR a bit too easy, and I have quite a few of these games. They all seem to have one thing in common: that they are expensive for a small selection of songs, (and the selection that I would want to listen to is even smaller). This sounded like such an amazing concept, you can put in a CD and get it to map a dance pattern on. I made a few compilations up, and even ones with regular beats seemed to be ever so slightly out of sync. When I tried making a selection of Squarepusher and Aphex Twin tracks, it coped even worse. Not only that, but no matter how fast the beat is, the game seems to reign it in to a slow 2step. It seems completely random which tracks it likes and which it doesn't with the exception of ones that change tempo, where it just takes an average. But even normal pop songs, it cant cope with some of them.
Moving on to the bizarre points system, you can get an avatar, and get points and accessories for them. And I think you can battle them against one another in 2 player mode. It seems a pointlessly tacked on feature, especially when you consider they could have taken it out and made the game work instead.
Despite this, I picked it up cheaply, and I'm not sorry I did. I enjoy it, and I have had fun burning CDs of my music collection and making a list of which songs work. I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, unless you have limitless patience with this kind of thing. I hope that they continue to make games like this, as I would happily pay more for a working version. With games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band around, perhaps its on the cards
