Reaction: Dance Factory on PS2

The team over at Opposable Thumbs posted a comment about the Nintendo Wii the other day. They pointed out that regardless of how ridiculous you look, gamers have repeatedly proven that having fun is more important given the strong sales of titles like Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution.

I picked up Dance Factory last night and it is arguably the LAST iteration of DDR I will ever have to buy. Codemasters brings the DIY element to the PS2 by having their software perform an analysis of any given audio CD track and automatically generate a new step routine automatically. Gone are the days of purchasing a new edition of DDR every year for new songs to play.

The big question is - will it read burned CDs? The answer is yes and no. You see, the PS2 drives are rather picky with media. I happened to have on hand a CD-RW of J-Pop tunes I wanted to transfer to my Xbox to be a soundtrack for DOA Xtreme Volleyball. While the Xbox drive ripped it just fine, I had trouble playing it on the PS2.

After loading Dance Factory and swapping in my CD-RW, it wouldn't even register at all. My solution was to simply dig out a blank CD-R and copy it over. This permanent burn seems to work just fine. The generated step routines are saved on your memory card so the next time you boot up, it will recognize the CD you just ripped - don't forget to click save before turning off the game!

How are the step routines? Well, surprisingly well done. It suffers from the Taiko Drum Master issue tho: the step rhythms don't always follow the obvious backbeat - sometimes following the singer's voice, etc.
You also notice for the first time how short typical DDR songs really are - a single normal song converted for use with DF feels like it lasts an eternity by comparison. DF also seems to be a lot more lenient on its scoring and won't kick you out of the song until you're really messing up badly (as in, not even stepping on the pad for more than 10 seconds).

Overall I was just thrilled to be stepping to my own music instead of the tired old selection of generic Europop.