Dance Dance Revolution
Jan. 17th, 2002 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moominmollyPlayed the insidious game again last night.
We got a PlayStation (PSOne) with a mod chip so we can play all of the japanese imports - woo woo! Right now, though, we just have the standard US DDR game. That's OK by me - I'm still lurching along. I'd like to hear some of the japanese music, though.
It's interesting - I still can't "dance" to the game nearly as well as I can move. So it's a struggle between elegance and speed, and elegance always loses. Both David and I are much smoother at, say, swing or tango. Also interesting: it's not frustrating, it's fun. I get better every time I play.
I still feel that Pump It Up is a better game, for a number of reasons. There are the cosmetic ones - I like the music videos that play in the background better than the random dancing characters. PIU has individual animated videos for each song, but in DDR they all just blend together and use the same visuals. Also, I like the PIU music better. That might be fixed by trying a Japanese import. Most of all, though, I feel more comfortable with the floor layout and how it maps onscreen to the arrows. PIU has the active squares laid out in an "X" pattern -
X - X
- X -
X - X
while DDR has a cross pattern -
- X -
X - X
- X -
The way I see it, PIU's layout has two advantages. First, the jumps and combo moves are easier to hit while still facing forward. Easy-style DDR seems to have a lot of forward-and-back combo jumps, for which I always find myself turning sideways and craning my neck to still see the screen. Second, the arrow layout on the screen is a bit more immediately readable. For example, in PIU, a Center-TopRight combo looks like the mirror image of a Center-TopLeft combo. This makes it easier to internalize as one move. DDR, well - Forward-Right doesn't have the same visual spacing as Forward-Left, so the cues are different and a bit hard to distinguish.
But! DDR has one advantage, and that's that I can play it in my livingroom. And it's still way fun.
We got a PlayStation (PSOne) with a mod chip so we can play all of the japanese imports - woo woo! Right now, though, we just have the standard US DDR game. That's OK by me - I'm still lurching along. I'd like to hear some of the japanese music, though.
It's interesting - I still can't "dance" to the game nearly as well as I can move. So it's a struggle between elegance and speed, and elegance always loses. Both David and I are much smoother at, say, swing or tango. Also interesting: it's not frustrating, it's fun. I get better every time I play.
I still feel that Pump It Up is a better game, for a number of reasons. There are the cosmetic ones - I like the music videos that play in the background better than the random dancing characters. PIU has individual animated videos for each song, but in DDR they all just blend together and use the same visuals. Also, I like the PIU music better. That might be fixed by trying a Japanese import. Most of all, though, I feel more comfortable with the floor layout and how it maps onscreen to the arrows. PIU has the active squares laid out in an "X" pattern -
X - X
- X -
X - X
while DDR has a cross pattern -
- X -
X - X
- X -
The way I see it, PIU's layout has two advantages. First, the jumps and combo moves are easier to hit while still facing forward. Easy-style DDR seems to have a lot of forward-and-back combo jumps, for which I always find myself turning sideways and craning my neck to still see the screen. Second, the arrow layout on the screen is a bit more immediately readable. For example, in PIU, a Center-TopRight combo looks like the mirror image of a Center-TopLeft combo. This makes it easier to internalize as one move. DDR, well - Forward-Right doesn't have the same visual spacing as Forward-Left, so the cues are different and a bit hard to distinguish.
But! DDR has one advantage, and that's that I can play it in my livingroom. And it's still way fun.
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there is a version of pump it up for the PC
Myself, i like DDR better because of the larger variety of songs.
The USA mix CD is kind of annoying, once you have japanese 3rd mix and 4th mix
you basically have all of the songs on USA plus a whole lot more.
But still, YAY DDR! :)