It's hard to believe that Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series has been around for four years already. Now, the series that arguably started the rhythm game craze in Japan has been blessed with its third official US release, Dance Dance Revolution Konamix. Unfortunately, the series hasn't made that much progress in its lifetime, so the game that once inspired awe with its wacky style and bizarre game mechanics in 1998 is getting a bit stale.
At this point, everyone who has entered an arcadelike setting in the past two years has encountered Dance Dance Revolution in some form or another. For those who haven't, DDR is a rhythm game in which you have to dance to play. Using a large dance mat, you dance by stepping on four directional buttons in time with onscreen cues. Four columns of directional arrows that scroll to the top of the screen represent the cues. Once a moving arrow reaches the stationary row of arrows at the top of the screen, you step on the corresponding arrow on the pad. The number of points you score is affected by how good your timing is and how long you can go without missing a step. If you miss too many steps, your game ends. It can be difficult to get the hang of the timing at first, and for those who need the extra hand-holding, a training mode is included. There is also the diet mode, which was originally introduced in the Japanese release Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix. This mode lets you know how many calories you're burning while playing the game. It's a weird addition, and its accuracy is highly questionable. And while you can theoretically play Dance Dance Revolution without a dance pad, you'd be cheating yourself out of most of the fun.
Dance Dance Revolution Konamix is the US console equivalent of Dance Dance Revolution 4th Mix, which differs from the last US DDR release with the inclusion of tempo changes, the use of corner buttons, and a different catalog of music. The tempo changes and extra dance buttons seem like clever ways to mix things up, even if they're a bit gimmicky. The music, however, is another matter.
It should really go without saying that good music is absolutely imperative to the success of a rhythm game, but somehow, this kind of thinking has escaped the designers of DDR Konamix. When all is said and done, there are more than 50 songs in the game, but you'll be hard pressed to find a full dozen that you'd want to dance to more than once. DDR fans will notice a handful of returning songs from previous mixes, and DDR regulars Naoki and Scotty D. both contribute tracks to Konamix. But with the untold versions of DDR that exist, it's confounding and disappointing that Konami would select music from one of its more uninspired mixes for one of its rare US releases.
One of the things that hasn't changed between versions of DDR is the graphics, and Konamix looks almost identical to the original Dance Dance Revolution, save for the inclusion of a few new onscreen characters. Thankfully, graphics have little bearing on how much you'll enjoy DDR, since you'll be far too preoccupied with figuring out your next step to actually watch your digital counterpart getting down.
Though it's as technically sound as the original DDR, Konamix is much harder to recommend, partly because it's more of the same, and partly because of the subpar music selection. The whole Bemani craze has been extinguished in Japan, replaced by more bizarre, arcane forms of rhythm games, and it's arguably losing steam in the US, as the audience that would take interest in a DDR game appears to be dwindling. Konamix seems to be catering to the hard-core DDR crowd, but at this point, most of the truly dedicated dancers have snatched up the many Japanese DDR releases for the PSOne, rendering this version useless. Casual players who enjoyed the original Dance Dance Revolution for the PSOne may want to check out Konamix, though the novelty is likely to wear off faster this time around.
