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Good idea, needs work!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: September 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this for my fiance who had become obsessed with various DDR games in the hope that I could replace the repetitive techno music with songs of my own and maybe join the fun... well I had no problem figuring out the setup and LOVE that I can in fact dance to any music I want... the only problem is.... well.. even after I have the game create a dance to go with my songs it leaves me wanting more. First of all the steps NEVER go with the music... and some of the songs shouldn't be hard to find a beat for at all. Second, I'm not very fond of the levels of the game. The easy is frustratingly simple, the normal level is not much better, but the expert is crazy!!! There is no middle ground!!! Plus I do miss the option to have the two players competing dancing on different levels... After all, I'm just not as good as he is! In this game both dancers have to choose the same difficulty. I know its frustrating for him to have to "slow it down" for me, and I get upset trying to keep up with him on the harder levels... Oh well I guess over all its alright.... at least I can listen to my music instead of "Cartoon heros"

It's About Time Somebody Did This

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 78 / 79
Date: September 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love DDR as much as anyone, but even the most hardcore player has to admit that it eventually gets repetitive when you're stuck with a very finite number of songs. Dance Factory is a long overdue idea that lives up to its promise. You really can pop in any CD and dance to it.

Granted, there are a few caveats. It takes some time for the game to analyze each track and come up with dance steps, about 30 seconds for a 3-4 minute song. If you're doing a whole CD be prepared to wait up to 10 minutes. There's a mini puzzle game included that you can play while it's creating your dance steps, but I found that this actually made the create phase run much slower. Once you're done you'll need to save the steps to a memory card to avoid waiting the next time around. It's not very space-intensive, however the game doesn't recognize Slot 2 or the PS2 HDD.

I should also mention that the game itself is on a blue-base CD-ROM, not a DVD-ROM. (When was the last time you saw a new PS2 release on one of those?) I've always had a bit of trouble getting my console -- it's the older bulky model -- to read some of these, and it took a couple of resets with the disc already in the drive before it would take it. Occasionally during play the song would cut out before it got to the end, and the game would tell me it had a problem reading it. This happened on different CDs so I'm assuming it's my PS2.

Once Dance Factory loads, you eject the game disc, insert your music CD and create your steps. I experimented with a variety of music types and got mixed results. It seems to work best when there's an easy beat for the game to pick up on. With some old-skool hip-hop and a dance collection that was very similar to what you'd get with DDR, I got pretty good steps. Sometimes they were spot-on, other times the game seemed to get the main beat confused with the half-steps, and I was never certain whether this was intentional. I got similarly decent results from an 80s/90s light rock CD, but highly complex or soft, beatless music (such as jazz and new age) is better left undanced to. Continuous mix CDs don't work so well either, since even in endurance mode the game stops after each song to give you your score, unexpectedly cutting off the segue into the next track. It works much better if there's a fade-out between songs.

My biggest gripe comes from the game's arrow layout. For some reason (possibly legal?) the designers chose to transpose the positions of the up and down arrows on the screen. DDR has pretty much wired my mind to expect: left, down, up, right. So I tend to look at where the arrow is rather than what direction it's pointing. This led to a lot of confusion when I first started. Also I felt the arrow columns are spaced a little too far apart in the one-player mode. Finally a couple of the background themes make it hard to see the arrows coming.

The difficulty also felt unbalanced at times. Even on the pro difficulty a few songs (mostly slower ballads) had steps that were too easy, but for most faster tracks the sheer number of steps was insane. It felt like there was a difficulty level missing between normal and pro. And the step generation algorithm never came up with anything nearly as creative as the human-created moves in a DDR game.

All this said, I'm still glad I got Dance Factory. Dancing to your favorite music is a blast compared to the endless Paranoia remixes. The game itself is far from perfect, but the sheer music variety it gives you makes it a worthwhile purchase for people who love dance games.

Not to happy

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: September 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My main grip about this game is that the steps DO NOT match with the music at all. I was SO exsited when this came out rushed out and bought it the day it came out and loaded up some black eyed peas and DJ Jeonki and was ready to find I had a hard time seeing the arrows as they scrolled. The back ground is so bright and the arrows blended in to much that i had a hard time seeing them. I also am not empressed with the "creature" mode. The system generates a creature to dance with you... all the stupid monkey did was flail it's arms at me. DDRs dancer are like doing neat stuff in the background and on songs that I had memeorized i found myself watching the dancers and hitting the steps right because I knew which way to move my feet I didn't need to fully watch what I was doing to know I would be getting a good score...

All in all, not thrilled. Should of waited for X-play to review it and read up on it before I waisted my money on it. I may give it another chance some other time but right now, it's DDR all the way.

Flawed, but still fun

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The complaints other people have had about this game are all valid. Here they are:
1. It does not work well with all songs. If it has a strong beat it may be ok. I took a bunch of my old mix cds and tried all the songs out. Some that I thought would work well were completely off. Others that I thought wouldn't work at all turned out really good. Let me say again: if there is a strong beat it will work well, but the game sometimes gets confused with what is the main beat.
2. Difficulty: Easy is too easy, Normal is ok, and there is a big jump in difficulty from normal to pro. Personally if there was one between normal and pro I'd use it.
3. Arrows: If you are used to the DDR setup you'll be a bit confused since they switched the position of the up and down.
4. Lame/Distracting background: Totally. But you can turn it off.

Also you can also record your own steps to a song, which kind of negates numbers 1 & 2.
The translation of a song to dance steps could have been better. Dance Factory 2 (If it ever gets made) will be a masterpiece.
This game is good, but just don't expect perfection.

EDIT: After playing some DDR Supernova I realized my main problem with DF. The steps are too simplistic. Oh you can put it on hard and it will be fast, but not complex.

Great idea, but they didn't deliver

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: September 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I started playing the DDR Extreme series last year, and over time dancing to the same songs over and over again has gotten old. When I saw that Dance Machine would generate steps to go with any music, I was very excited and waited for a few months for it to come out.

This morning, I bought it. What it does is spend about 10 minutes analyzing the disc and generating dance steps, then you can dance to the music on the CD. Unfortunately the steps seem to have nothing to do with the music, not even with the beat. For one or two songs, it almost worked. For most songs, the "normal" difficulty level produces one step every 2-3 seconds (very slow), and frequently the step comes just before the beat, so that I have to dance like a klutzy spazz to score in the game.

In the DDR series, the choreographed steps have a flow to them, forcing you to plan your moves and rewarding you when you do. The Dance Factory steps don't flow at all, it's just "step over here" then "step over here".

Initially I was really disappointed that Dance Factory doesn't have a "double" mode that allows a single player to dance using two dance pads at once. After seeing the results of generating steps for a single pad, I realize that a double-pad mode would be a complete disaster if they had tried it. So I won't complain that they don't generate steps for a pair of dance pads, just that they couldn't even do it with one.

Off to sell it to the used game store...

Not quite there

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: September 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I read all the reviews before buying this, but my family loves this game, so decided to see for myself. I don't mind the length of time it takes to process the dances, but two things really ruin it.
1) The up and down arrows are switched from the normal DDR positions on PS2. Even though I never go off of Beginner level, it still threw me. For my Heavy level son, he played about half of one song and re-booted in disgust.
2) I made it through about 3 songs before I called it quits. It would get the beat right about half the time, and then it would pick up something like the guitar riff and just go nuts.

I'll be trading in this game really soon!

A bit of a let down

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: September 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I didn't love this game but I didn't hate it ether. It was however far from what I was thinking it would be, while it's a good dance game is far from being anything like DDR. Then again as it wasn't put out by the same people as DDR its not a surprise its nothing like DDR.
While I didn't completely hate the game it was somewhat of a disappointment, game play seems far to easy. When a noob like me to the whole dance game can get an A max (top score) its way to easy. On top of that the dance moves a lot of the times were not in sync to the songs., and seemed to lag. Then at other times it just didn't seem to be the right place for the right move. Or not even enough steps to much dead times in some of the songs I played. However it was cool to play any type of music with this game it still seemed that the more upbeat technosh dance type songs that are normally in these games anyways seemed to flow better. Though over all it seemed just not as much fun as I thought it would be. Then there was the fact there was no way at ALL to get a game over. While I hated to get "Game Over"s on DDR it made me want to work at the song and get better. This lacks any room to really improve on a song as is... And it `s a bit of a hassle to have to go dig back up that Panic at the Disco CD just to play the song that you saved the dance from. It would have been easier to just go at it from the main screen where the starter songs are. Also I found I could NOT use any burned CD's I had made which was a huge let down for me as I have a lot of burned CD's from way back when and would have just loved dancing to the theme to Gundam Wing or any of Two-mix's other songs
On the plus side I see this as a awesome game to get beginners into the whole dancing games idea as it is so easy to play and get use to stepping at the right times and no voice yelling at how bad your doing. Also the whole over all concept of being able to dance to any CD is fun and a good draw. I loved being able to play to some of my CD's like Fule who you would never see on such games. Another thing that I found cool was that each of your CD's held a creature that with points you earned from dancing you could customize how it looked.
Over all this has the makings of a good game. It just needs a lot more work. It was a good start into trying to get the idea of other types of music for these dance games as well, but just lacked delivery it seemed maybe if there's a Dance Factory 2 it might be more up to the challenge of giving the DDR games a run for their money. The talents there but it just needs some more work...

bleh

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: September 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When I first heard about Dance Factory, I was enthralled. "Yay! Now I can play my own songs that sound like good DDR type songs!" I even made CDs full of songs that sounded like they'd be good on DDR. But, after buying this game and letting it create the moves for songs, I found that only about 1 out of every 30 songs had good steps to it. For the other 29 out of 30 songs the timing was terrible on steps, not to mention there was no clear correlation between the steps and the music.
But, I figured I could correct the bad steps making my own dance moves to the songs...nope. There's a limited amount of steps you can place with the dance editor, not to mention it doesn't allow you to start placing steps until about 20 seconds into the song (some songs start way earlier than 20 seconds), and it stops you no matter how many steps you've used when the song is almost over. Dance Factory is not all it's cracked up to be. I myself am very disappointed in it. I would suggest saving your money for a game that works right in everything that it does.

Goo Goo Revisited

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: September 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Playstation had a game like this called Goo Goo Soundy and it did the same thing Dance Factory does. That game never worked right and neither does Dance Factory, but you'd think it would on the PS2....oh well.

Dance Dance Revolution is the way to go it seems!

This game has its place

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 34 / 34
Date: October 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Our family has DDR. My two teenage boys are very good at it, and thrive on challenging dance moves. My two grade schoolers just have fun dancing. My wife and I join in occasionally. This game is not for intense DDR fanatics. My teenage boys give the same complaints that other reviewers here do, that the up/down arrows are in reverse order compared to DDR, so for those who almost play DDR with their eyes closed, this will be frustrating. However, for my younger kids (and their parents), we don't care. Our brains don't have DDR burned into them yet. Even my older boys acknowledge that being able to dance to their own music is fun and refreshing, even if it's not as challenging. I agree that some songs don't get read well by the dance making software, so you simply don't play those songs. But I was impressed how well many songs were translated into dance steps. Once you've uploaded songs from a CD, you never have to do it again (as long as you have your memory card inserted). As for CD-R discs, I've had no problem with them. I used quality brand discs, not the super cheapies. I haven't tried CD-RW discs, and wouldn't either. A big plus for parents is that this game has no annoying DJ's voice like our DDR game, and so instead of hearing the same techno songs over and over again with annoying comments like "You're not an ordinary fella!" and "Absolutely wonderful!", when my kids play this game I just hear normal music playing (and feet stomping, of course). As long as you know what to expect from this game, you won't be disappointed, as long as you aren't a super freak intense DDR fanatic. I'm glad we got it.

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