Post
by MarioKnight » Fri Sep 24, 2004 12:31 am
Well, since Konami apparently thinks that release date = ship to the stores date, I got Extreme on Wednesday. So after playing some on campus last night, and a lot of hours tonight on controller since my universal pad kicked the bucket, I can write out a full honest opinion of the game.
I would say that this mix is the best US mix released to date. It starts off with just over 40 songs availble, and a very good mix of songs I feel. Some good selections from previous mixes and from the japanese mixes, as well as a slew of licensed songs ranging from the 70s to the early 90s. Grading is not like US MAX and MAX2, it's like the arcade mixes, with an addon of a * to your grade if you full combo a song, which is a welcome addon to me. Things are unlocked after every 5 or 10 songs played, so you get new songs fairly quickly for a short while. In this mix, you get to choose your dancers on the screen again before each round, something absent since Konamix (though MAX2 is arguable). More positive things is a lot of game modes. Besides the standard game, workout, training, and other modes in all DDR games, there's also a mission mode that's eventually unlocked where there are various challenges to do, which for the most part are challenging after the first batch, though I don't like the ones where you have to get a low score or finish with the dance meter at 10% or shit like that. There's also a nonstop mode for batches of 4 songs, and challenge mode for the expert players with the battery life bar.
Last night on campus, someone had the EyeToy, so we used it for a bit. We had it set to watch ourselves as we play, which was fun for a bit. Then just so we could say we did, we tried out the party games, which were decently fun. However, the novelty wore off fairly quickly. Honestly, it's pretty much a waste of space having that stuff on there because it's only good for a quick play and little replay value.
Onto other negatives, I have to complain about the interface of most of the game. I love the new interface of the game screen itself, the main menu is fine, as with the character select screen, everything else sucks. This is an example of when change is bad, my biggest beef being the song select screen. I can't really describe it well, but I'm sure you can find screencaps everywhere. The new interface of it takes off some key items, most notably the radar which rates the different aspects of the songs. The only positive thing about the new interface is being able to see the top grades and foot-level for each difficulty level on the screen at the same time. No way to see any modifers that have been set, no rader, and you can only see 7 song titles on the screen at a time. Not to mention that the listing of the songs is in alphabetical order by default, so there's no need for an ABC listing of them. Piss poor interface.
If the rumors I hard were true, that the interface had to change for the EyeToy, I'd have to say it's bull. Before the game was release, I would believe it, but since the EyeToy stuff is only availble in Party Mode, meaning there's no need to change the interface for it, not to mention that even IN that mode you don't use the damn thing to navigate through menus. Konami did a good job in filling this disc right up with all the modes, around 70 total songs, and the best resolution on a US PS2 DDR game yet. Had they decided to not do anything with the EyeToy and use the space for more songs and the JPN Extreme interface, I'd say that this mix would be damn near perfect. I'm all for experimenting with new things and see how well they do, but as most feared the EyeToy functionality just doesn't work out well for too long as with the rest of the party mode and should be kept off the DDR series.
Another thing I like is that the information section goes a bit farther than normal with each song page having a chart of all the US mix logos minus Ultramix where they're all darkened except the logos of the mixes where the song appeared in. Pretty nifty.
Overall, even with the shitty interfaces, this game is well worth the money. Lots of songs, good variety of music, lots of game modes, this is a great mix and I recommend it to everyone.
My problem is that when I look at the screen I can't see where to step and end up missing the arrows, that and when I do hit them, they don't always work (POS!!). 
The songlist (availble in the 
boooooo!
