Pump It Up; Exceed Review

Picture a regular Dance Dance Revolution game. Now imagine that the arrows have been turned so they are diagonal and an extra button has been added to the center. If that concept just blew your mind, you need to buy Pump It Up: Exceed. In all honesty, it plays an awful lot like DDR, but it adds a few new tricks to the gameplay and has a better song list overall than the two Ultramix games, so Pump It Up is worth checking out for Xbox owning music/rhythm/dance fans.

Gameplay

Pump It Up: Exceed is a dance game similar to DDR with a few key changes. First, the arrows have been placed in the corners of the dance pad which makes hitting two buttons at a time easier since you don’t have to twist your body away from the TV like in DDR. Secondly, a fifth button has been added to the center of the pad. This fifth button adds a number of new step possibilities and makes the whole experience flow together a bit more smoothly than in other dance games.

At its core, Pump It Up plays just like DDR. You once again follow arrows onscreen and step on them at the right moment. Other moves such as pressing two arrows at once or holding down one arrow for several seconds are put to use here just like in DDR.

Where the gameplay changes, however, is that the steps in Pump It Up have been choreographed to resemble actual dancing rather than just a series of random steps. You can flow from step to step very easily and once you get you head around the extra button and arrow placements the game is very rhythmic and fun.

Features, Modes, and Feel

The problem with these extra buttons and fancy steps, however, is that Pump it Up: Exceed is far more difficult than DDR. Even on the easiest difficulty PIU is crazy hard. DDR veterans will welcome the challenge and love every single second they spend with Pump It Up since the two are so similar. Dance game newbies, however, are better off with one of the Ultramix games because Pump It Up will chew you up and spit you out.

There are two main modes in Pump It Up: Exceed – home and arcade. In home mode, you can screw up all you want, but in arcade mode you can only miss a limited number of steps before you see a game over screen. Unfortunately, you can only unlock new songs in arcade mode, so unless you are fairly skilled expect to hear the same songs a lot because, like I said, this game is hard. There are also a handful of hidden modes you can unlock which keeps the game interesting.

The game also has some Xbox Live features. You can’t compete online, but you can download new songs which is nice if not a bit disappointing.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Pump It Up: Exceed isn’t going to blow you away, but it doesn’t have to. The gameplay arrows are big and easy to follow on screen and music videos, clips of anime characters, and other weird things play in the background which make Pump It Up pretty interesting to watch. You won’t really notice while you are playing since you’ll be too busy tripping over your two left feet, but spectators will definitely enjoy it.

Sound is the most important aspect of a game like this (who wants to dance to cruddy music …?) and Pump It Up: Exceed has a great soundtrack. There are some recognizable names on the soundtrack, but most of the tracks are trance, house, techno, Korean pop music (k-pop), and remixes of some classical pieces. Most of the tracks are really catchy and very fun to dance to despite not being from familiar artists. There are 97 songs in the Xbox version of Pump It Up: Exceed and they all add up to the best overall soundtrack out of any of the dance games released for Xbox so far.

Bottom Line

Pump It Up: Exceed is a well put together game that stands shoulder to shoulder with the Ultramix games on the Xbox in terms of quality. The new button and arrow placement give it a fresh new feel and the soundtrack is surprisingly good so there is a lot to love here for DDR fans. If you aren’t already a hardcore DDR fan, however, Pump It Up: Exceed will likely be pretty overwhelming and I can’t really recommend it for dancing game newcomers. Dance veterans will love the challenge PIU presents, though, and it is definitely worth picking up for fans of the genre.