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dance factory may not work on all playstation 2 systems

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: December 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Dance Factory is sold under the Codemaster company. It is a game made to play on the Sony Playstation2 with dance pads. I bought it for my kids for Christmas this year. We put the disc in and received a Disc Read Error. Think we had just gotten a bad disc we returned it to the store and got a replacement disc. On the second disc we got the same DISC READ ERROR. Ii tried to contact the Codemaster support but there is a message on the number that says they are not accepting ANY phone calls till the 2nd week of January. I next emailed them with the problem. They stated that some systems are unable to read their game and to try to put the Playstation console on its side, this also did not work. When I told them this they said it was a playstation problem and to contact Sony.

I contacted Sony and they also knew about the problem, they told me for $45 they would take my playstation and give me a "refurbished" one, at this time they said my playstation was not broken. After refusing to fix my "NOT BROKEN" playstation they refused to give the authorization to get my money back stating it was a Codemaster problem.

Once again I contacted Codemaster...this is the response.

You have been mis-advised by Sony, as it is them who manufacture the discs and they should know of the possible problems with blue CD-Rom discs. However please use the reference number above when dealing with your retailer. We advise you to request a refund, as none of the discs will work in your PS2.
Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused

No, I do not accept your apology Codemaster. Sony, you have lost all of my respect as a reputable company. I will NEVER buy another sony product. Does anyone want a Playstation3???? Playstation2???? 3 Sony computers????? 2 Sony tvs?????????

Not for DDR nuts

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

To be brief, I love DDR and I HATE this game.

While I recognize that it's important for Codemaster's products to not be mere derivatives, there's no reason to for a dance-pad game to start by rejecting everything that's familiar about Konami's games.

Where do I start on what drives me nuts...

1) As other people have mentioned, the down and up arrows are reversed from DDR mixes. I found that eventually I got used to this. Still, was it really necessary?

2) The one player arrows are spread WAY too far across the screen, and the background and arrows flash through the same colors. These things together make patterns very difficult hard to read.

3)I, too, found no happy medium between average and pro levels. On a pro song (this was a rather upbeat Shakira dance song), there were stretches of nothingness, followed by stretches of near impossibility.

4) I found the interface VERY non-intuitive. Although all buttons are labeled somewhere on screen, it seemed like there were a lot of unnecessary menus and confirmations, particularly relating to saving or not saving. Also, for some reason it kept wanting me to enter my name (then confirming, "Enter name?" after I had...) though I didn't ever see the name used in the main screens. Perhaps in another records menu four levels back... Additionally, the default X button after a song dumps you back to the main menu. To play a second song in a row (the DDR default) you have to find the tiny instruction to press , which on a dance pad is a rather obscure, seldom used button. This pattern continued through everything I tried to do.

5) If playing two player, both players must dance the same level. This is no good when playing in a crowd of mixed abilities.

6) There is a max chain number, and it's not hard to reach. My little sister (a DDR whiz) ran into this the first time we ever played.

7) It bugs me that you can't compile a single dance list of all the songs you've saved and loaded. Seems like that's what we use the memory card for, such that after I've created some steps, I should be able to reinsert the game, and now have a single song list that includes
-built in songs
-songs from CDs I've previously loaded
-songs from the CD I just loaded.

I've given this one a few tries now, and I get sick of it after just two or three songs. If you're a big DDR fan, go buy DDR Supernova, and wait for Konami to do their own version of this.

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...

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!

Not a good game for DDR players

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game SOUNDS fantanstic, and thats why i bought it. I always thought it would be awesome to turn any song of my choosing into a DDR song, and was very excited when i found a game that could do that. The biggest issue i had was that the up and down arrows are switched. Honestly i didn't even realize it until I played one round on a fairly easy level, failed, and couldn't understand why. If you've ever played standard, heavy, or expert on a real DDR game you find that your brain gets to know where arrows are and it takes less concentration to do the dance steps over time. When you're so used to playing the game one way, and the arrows get switched, it throws you for a loop. It was extremely difficult and frustrating for me to adjust to the flipped arrows, and I still can't play nearly as well on Dance Factory as DDR. It also frustrated me that there was no way of changing this, either by moving the arrows or reassigning the buttons on the dance pad. This game is great for someone who is young or hasn't played DDR before because they can learn with the arrows set in Dance Factory fashion, but it's terrible and frustrating for anyone who is even remotly good at DDR.

An okay dance game ruined by the user interface

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 15 / 17
Date: October 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I will not belabour the points (trans: shortcomings) enumerated by the other reviewers, but will add the following points missed that should further disincline one from obtaining this game.

1. Once the cd is read, and you've laboured your way through titling the disk, artist and particular song, you must confirm a jaw-dropping FOUR times to play any particular song. What is stunning is that the last confirmation is: "Go" which immediately follows your confirmation of "dance this song?".

Let me reiterate: it requires four confirmation to dance a song. DDR has zero: you select the song which immediately launches the dance. This user interface (lack of) design kills this game.

2. DDR has characters that look a bit silly, but compared to Dance Factory, they are Da Vinci's. Dance Factory's creatures are ugly and have lewd dance animations: in short, this game is /much/ better played /without/ the accompanying creatures, and "earning" a new creature is a dubious accomplishment.

3. Maybe the developer thought a majority of their target audience weighs 30 kilos, and maybe they are correct, but requiring me to enter my weight (over 75 kilos) at every session, when I have this information stored and easily retrieved from my memory card is simply assinine. Also, one of the FOUR confirmations ask for my weight again, at every song.

4. No goals for workouts? Tracking, if it's done, off task of the workout session? So this game is for something other than a dedicated dance workout person. The problem is that it has no compelling game play other than dancing individual dances. What I'm getting at is that I'd like to have easy access to a workout history, or, failing that, have a dance game that's captivating in some other way (e.g. DDR Extreme2's "dance master mode"), Dance Factory delivers neither.

5. I have an iPod of more than 300 CDs, already titled. Bundering my way through titling the songs again from the CD is an unnecessary pain, and I think my family learned a few new words from my Coast Guard days as I had to erase the previous character, AGAIN, to get the song title correct (and, THEN, confirm-confirm-confirm to save that information and THEN back-out,select,confirm-confirm-confirm-confirm to dance the thing, for goodness sake!). Does Dance Factory come with hard-drive support? Maybe. Do they advertise this hoped-for support. Not one bit.

6. Redundantly with the other reviewers: normal too easy, steps are not in synch with the beat, no control over arrow layout (which actually has helped me with the silly DDR puzzles in DDR Supernova), steps are often arranged in nonsense, and the timing often changes, more than often twice, midsong with no accompanying cues.

In summary: great concept, but poor implementation -- I do not recommend this game.

hrm...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I really like how you can dance to the music you choose. This is a huge plus.

I have to agree with the other reviewers. What is with the arrows? I am really good at other DDR games, but I can't seem to quite catch the arrows at the right time. It tells me I have a lot of "perfects," but I can't figure out where the right timing is.

The beat and tempo of the steps is odd, too. Like there's 3 beats to a measure or something.

It's also difficult to figure out whether there are two arrows on the same line or if they just want you to him 'em really fast. If you play this game on a large tv (ours is 51 inches), you may never be able to tell with certainty. And the arrows are spaced far enough apart from side to side that you have to use crazy peripheral vision to catch all that's going on.

It's still a fun game, though. For the price, I'd recommend it.

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.

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.

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!

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