- Title: Dance Dance Revolution Universe 2
- Platform:Xbox 360
- Publisher: Konami
- Developer: Konami
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Dancing, Music
- Pros: Same DDR gameplay you love; tons of modes
- Cons: Weak song list; distracting backgrounds; uneven difficulty
Features
DDR Universe 2 has pretty much every feature you could ever want. The game starts out in basic mode and you have to prove your worth before the rest of the game opens up. Don’t worry, it is really easy. Once you get the full menu, you can choose from party mode, game mode (arcade mode), workout mode, and challenge mode. Quest mode also returns from DDRU1, with many of the same problems as before. It is supposed to represent the travels of a DDR fan around the world to competitions, but the map navigation is goofy and the whole appeal of DDR is to dance, so having a pseudo RPG element in between all of the dancing seems pretty pointless. Not saying it is bad, just not that interesting. Of course, the Quest is where many of the achievements are found, so you’ll end up playing it anyway. Online play returns and can be fun as long as you are playing with someone in your skill range.
Gameplay
Graphics and Sound
Graphically, DDR Universe 2 is exactly what we have come to expect. Simple arrows scrolling up the screen with videos and animation playing in the background. Occasionally the background videos are a bit too flashy and get in the way, however, which is annoying.The sound is a bigger issue with DDRU2. The soundtrack just isn’t very good, to put it simply. It is made up largely of European club music and some J-Pop with a handful of licensed American tracks thrown in for good measure. None of it is all that good, though, and a lot of it just blends together and it all sounds the same after a while. This is the biggest failing of DDRU2 and the reason why some of the other issues stand out so much. We put up with the difficulty and other issues in previous games because we could always find 15 or 20+ songs we genuinely enjoyed. That isn’t the case here.
Bottom Line
One other thing is kind of bugging me. I’ll admit it, I’m not a DDR expert. But I am a music/rhythm game fanatic, and I’m starting to wonder if we should revoke DDR’s “rhythm game” status. There is very little that resembles dancing or rhythm in DDR. On easy it is way too easy and slow, and on harder difficulties the arrows are coming so fast you look like you are having a fit rather than really dancing. You’d think that you would be dancing to the beat and rhythm of the music, like in real life, but you really aren’t.
All in all, DDRU2 can still be a lot of fun to play, but it isn’t really a special experience anymore. The biggest problem is that it is hard to really get in the mood to play a DDR game when you can’t get into the music. DDR Universe 1 has a slightly better soundtrack, although still not as good as the Xbox Ultramix series, but I would recommend picking up DDRU1 or any of the Ultramix games on Xbox (Sorry, not BC) rather than Universe 2.
