PS3 Move: Dance Dance Revolution Preview at Konami Gamers Day in NYC

I’ve been a DDR player for around 8 or 9 years now. I’m not one of those professional plays-on-two-arcade-machines-at-once kind of gals, but I’m certainly decent. If you’ve read my E3 hands-and-feet-on preview of the Wii version of the upcoming DDR game - you know my dilemma with how the series has changed over time. It’s gone from a tracklist of Eurobeat, hardcore, and Japanese-inspired songs to Britney Spears and Sean Paul songs slowly but surely. That’s when I left the scene… And waited ever so patiently for a return of the music that devoted DanceDanceRevolution players have been waiting for on current-gen consoles and arcades. We’re tired of tap dancing around on the PS2 if we want good music! Luckily I had a chance to try out the upcoming PS3 version of DDR at a Konami preview event in NYC this week which also utilizes the PlayStation Move hardware.

Sneak Preview: The music is back!

The full tracklist has not yet been announced but on the demo disc available at the event there were probably around 10 songs on there to check out. The good news? At least half of those songs were original songs along the lines of the old DDR music original fans may have been hoping for. I still can’t get the song Let’s Get Away from DJ Naoki and Brenda Burch out of my head. There’s even a song that reminded me of Vocaloid-inspired music called Private Eye by atomsoak featuring Cerol.

A few months ago at E3 when I played with the Wiimote and nunchuk - I was originally rather skeptical but it turned out to be for naught. The Wiimote worked well and was easy to get used to with the game. So I was willing to give the PlayStation Move a shot yesterday when checking out the PS3 version. The experience did not translate as well. Unlike the Wii how you have both the nunchuk and Wiimote to represent each hand, with the Move version, you have only one wand per player for this game. Each corner of the screen has a circle that you have to hit with the wand when the hand arrows come up on-screen. I couldn’t even reach all four for some reason, the camera sensor wasn’t “normal” - it expected me to reach a far distance beyond what you can normally reach with your average arm extension. So it was a real feat to try to concentrate on stretching so far and still coordinating my footsteps and balance properly. Having a wand for each hand would make a lot more sense, I think. It didn’t end well for me, I’ll tell you that much. I know you want to say, “Well maybe you’re just short!” I’m actually pretty tall! So this definitely worried me. I was also playing on the Difficult difficulty, though, since I normally play DDR on Heavy.

Afterwards I watched another girl play and she played on the Basic difficulty, and it seemed more manageable, perhaps because it wasn’t demanding you stretch and jump diagonally at the same time. But once the hand motion and footsteps come together at the top of the screen, it becomes really difficult to coordinate it all. On the flip side, if you become good at it you will have some super serious hand-eye-foot coordination. Plus you’ll live forever. +999 vitality.

The game allows you to play without the motion controls as well, if you’re in the mood for classic DDR dancing which, for me, was just what the doctor ordered. I am almost definitely going to be picking up the newest DDR because classic DDR was there and boy did it shine. The songs are what make or break these kind of games, and seeing that they already have at least a handful of high quality original songs is essentially all I need to hear. A perfect mix of jumps, steps, eighth notes - it’s all there just how it should be.

One thing I would think would be nice to see though that wasn’t available would be on the scoring screen when you complete a song should tell you how many Excellents, Greats, Misses etc you earned separately for both footsteps and hand movements, that way players would be able to get a feel for what they’re struggling with and to concentrate on trying to improve their skill in that area. I hope the Move hand motions are calibrate a little better in the final game, since it was just a demo, but I know that playing on a lower difficulty setting will help you become more accustomed to the new control scheme of the Move.

Here’s a token embarrassing action shot while I was playing, taken by my friend Greg Wilcox at the event. You can check out the song list that has been revealed thus far below as well as the latest trailer which has the song Let’s Get Away playing - you won’t regret it!

Song List So Far

Licenses
Animal / Ke$ha
Bad Romance / Lady Gaga
Battlefield / Jordin Sparks
Celebration / Kool & The Gang
crushcrushcrush / Paramore
Hey, Soul Sister / Train
I Got You / Leona Lewis
I’m Yours / Jason Mraz
Love Shack / The B-52′s
My Life Would Suck Without You / Kelly Clarkson

KONAMI Originals
dreaming can make a wish come true / jun & NRG Factory feat. Anna Kaelin
IN THE ZONE / U1 (NPD3 style) & KIDD KAZMEO
Let’s Get Away / NAOKI feat. Brenda Burch
Private Eye / atomsoak ft. cerol
Rescue Me / NAOKI feat. Fracus
Top The Charts / J-Mi & Midi-D feat. Hanna Stockzell