 Best Sellers | | |  | |  | | | Dance Factory | | | | | | | |
List Price:
| $14.99 | |
Our Price:
| $4.98 | |
You Save:
| $10.01 (67%)
| | Shipping: | Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. | |
*Shipping:
| |
| | | SKU:
02-767649401161 | | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1 business days | | |
|
| | Features | | |
| | Description | Unlimited music, Unlimited dance, Total fun! Get down and party with the only PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system game that gets you grooving to your own music CD collection. No other dance mat game gives you an unlimited choice of tunes! | |
| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 7.75 inches | | Product Width: | 5.75 inches | | Product Height: | 0.53 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.3 pounds | | Package Length: | 7.5 inches | | Package Width: | 5.4 inches | | Package Height: | 0.7 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.3 pounds | | Release Date: | November 09, 2007 | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 42 reviews |
| |
| | Game Information | | Platform: | PlayStation2 | | Media: | Video Game | | Item Quantity: | 1 |
| |
| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 42 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
92 of 93 found the following review helpful:
It's About Time Somebody Did This Sep 05, 2006
By C. Forman
"open-minded skeptic"
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.
39 of 39 found the following review helpful:
This game has its place Oct 09, 2006
By Tom Trails
"Tom Trails"
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.
16 of 16 found the following review helpful:
Good idea, needs work! Sep 03, 2006
By C. Woody
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"
16 of 18 found the following review helpful:
 An okay dance game ruined by the user interface Oct 20, 2006
By Douglas M. Auclair
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.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Fun and great exercise Feb 16, 2007
By K. Montgomery
We love DDR. My 3 kids and I all play it all the time. We were wishing recently for some new songs to dance to, and I stumbled across Dance Factory. I am so glad I did. I will never buy another DDR game again. This game lets you insert any CD and it creates dance steps for you. It works very similar to DDR, but since you can use your own songs you will never get tired of it. There are a few flaws, the biggest one is that sometimes the background is too chaotic and distracts you from the arrows. Otherwise-its great. My kids are really into Blank Eyed Peas and the new Fergie CD right now. We just popped in the CD's and were able to dance to all their favorite songs. FUN!!! I can't believe it isn't getting more favorable reviews. Some of DDR songs are lame and unrecognizable to anyone but die hard DDR fans. With this game, you can dance to anything from Beatles to Bruce Springsteen.
See all 42 customer reviews on Amazon.com
| |
| |
| |  | |  |
|
Recently Viewed | You may also like ... |
