Dance Factory

[Thrill_Shakespeare]

[JGB]

[Syncopation]

Even discounting the left/up/down/right arrow layout, and that there appears to be only five in-game songs--it's clear that this game didn't get a whole lot of playtesting...

1. The opening demo/tutorial game video sequence--half the time the players aren't even stepping on the arrows when they show them stepping on the dance mat. This sort of gives a general impression that there wasn't a whole lot of attention to detail occurring during testing (more on this below).

2. At least one in-game song--Get Down On It (Kool and the Gang)--gets out of sync a bit after 4 minutes, so that the arrow that is supposed to be stepped on the beat is one sixteenth note late for a Perfect, and then the stepchart fades out while arrows are still scrolling on screen when the song fades out. The entire stepchart is 6:09 in duration.

But the real selling point of this game is use-your-own CD music, right? It's buggy as heck, often failing more often than it works...

1. The step generator for use-your-own-CD music, depending on the CD and music it seems, sometimes auto-aborts with a "ding" sound up to three times before actually generating steps for a single song. At one point, it took more than 10 attempts to generate a single dance from track 6 (out of 11 tracks on the CD). With this type of bug, it seems doubtful that the game can even generate an entire CD for its Endurance Mode without the step generator aborting at some point!

2. After generating steps, sometimes the dance fails to read up to three times before the dance actually starts.

3. Once the dance starts--the steps seem generated from purely random patterns rather than logically following the music (e.g., busy steps during a portion of a song with no drumbeat and long freezes during a busy part of the song with a drumbeat and multiple instruments). All the steps seem to be quarter and eighth notes, plus freeze arrows... for steps and jumps.

4. There seems to be no added benefit to playing the Creature mode, other than to have a creature dancing onscreen like DDR's characters. The game mentions extra powers in Battle mode, but who really plays Battle mode?

5. There seems to be no added benefit to playing the Cubric game that is included as an extra in the game, also available while the step generator is generating steps.

So, about the only possible benefit of Dance Factory is the ability to step to longer duration stepcharts--when the step generation actually works and doesn't get off sync!

Way overpriced at $39.99-- a good concept, but very poor implementation.

[0rion]

Personally, if I wanted a music game with autogen, I'd go with Vib Ribbon for the PS-X. Man, that was one cool game.
_________________

-Sir "O"
There's a little yellow bird on my avatar. (Brawl FC: 4640-1720-6690)

[Thrill_Shakespeare]

I haven't had it abort yet when making steps, but I'm sure it's bound to start at any moment.

Generally, I've found that the autogen works okay for faster (140+ bpm) songs with a strong, steady beat. Forget anything with tempo changes, but a faster techno song with a mechanized bass line can at least be decent. I would say about once a CD the game accidentally makes a step chart that I enjoy enough to consider playing again. As good as human crafted step charts? Heck no. Amusing for a change of pace? Sure. Overpriced? No doubt.

Just for laughs I played the Supernova V-Rare on it last night. Those 5+ minute mixes get really old by the time you're done.

[NOAAAH]

hey you people are waaaay to picky.I am a ddr player who does legend road oni and all that stuff,and I dont see why you people hate this game so much. You say it does not have 1/16 arrows?No speed mods?Nothing that makes the songs really hard?Give me a break people,this is just a fun little simulation thing that lets you dance to your own cds.Plus,this is the first time something like this has ever been created,so you can't expect it to be amazing.Hmm?Whats that you say?It takes a WHOLE MINUTE to create arrows for a song?! Yay,get over it.
_________________

[Reenee]

[Coolkid27]

There was GOO GOO SOUNDY which did the same thing, created dance steps to any CD. Just so everyone knows. I guess it can never be really really good.

[Syncopation]

Here's an important note about using burned CD's:

When attempting to use burned CD's, the manual says they may not work... well, they don't seem to work reliably at all based on this test I ran.

1. I burned 15 CD audio tracks to a TDK 700MB/80 min CD-R Music disc.
2. I played the disc using Dance Factory's CD player mode, and the disc played all the tracks without error.
3. Afterwards, I attempted to use the same disc in Dance mode, generating all dances for Endurance mode... and that's when the bugs started to occur.

• Dance generation stopped and locked up at song 8/15, holding down the triangle button down was necessary to abort dance creation.
  
• Playback of songs 1 and 2 in Dance mode, which actually did generate dances before the lockup at track 8, showed that the steps went offsync (quarter note steps were no longer on the downbeat) after just 2 minutes into the song. By about the 3 and 1/2 minute mark, quarter note steps were occurring on the off-beat.
  
• Because the disc could not generate steps past track 8, it was not possible to play Endurance mode since it needs dances for all tracks on the disc.
  
• Attempting to use Record mode to record over an existing dance kept generating an error that "Dance Factory was unable to read the dance, do you want to try again". Even doing a Delete Dance before attempting to record just generated the same error when trying to record a dance.
  

So basically, the game only works with CD originals--but who wants to keep bringing out their CD originals just to generate dances that will eventually get off-sync?

My own conclusion is that the lack of proper support for burned CD's in Dance mode is obviously a game related problem, rather than a disc problem, since the disc plays flawlessly within Dance Factory's own CD Player mode.

Definitely don't pay more than a low budget price of $9.99 or less for this game.

[Acester25]

I have a question. Does anyone know another game that lets you use your own music that works better? I heard someone say "Stepmania"? Also, I wondered if anyone knew if another, more improved, game is coming out for PS3, XBOX360, or Wii which will allow you to save songs or steps on a hard drive or flash memory?

This is an AWESOME idea and I would love to have a game that would let me dance to some Live 20-minute DMB (Dave Matthews Band) songs.

Also, if Stepmania works well, can someone explain how to get a dance pad to respond well on a computer? Is there a certain converter that works better than others? Is there a USB dance pad that works well with computers?

Thanks!

[neodude237]

[shopaholicoxxo]

[FishDK]

Is this game on a DVD or CD? I can't imagine they'd put so little on DVD.

[JedlyDDR]