DDR II & hottest party 5 (Wii) (International)

If I can be horrible for a moment... I never really liked ITG. D:

Yeah, I know, I know. I just never felt that it really appealed to me; I never really liked the songs and the design bothered me (I hate the default arrow-scrolling setup), and while I like the more community-based aspects, I liked DDR more. Doesn't help I suppose that ITG never really became all that widespread or well-known in my country.

I always thought that the problem with ITG was that it was just too close to DDR for comfort, what with often using old DDR cabs (sometimes making for rubbish gameplay) and the fact that it was aimed at a good chunk of DDR's audience thus potentially ruining Konami's chance for profit. The latter may not have been particularly nice about the whole debacle, but I can see why they did it, especially from a business standpoint.


P.S. This is the second time that my rating has jumped about 200 points in about a week or so and I expect it will drop back down to 200-odd again in a few days. It's just so... random and weird. Any idea what is going on?

Edit: Never mind, it seems to have fixed itself again. Weird.

Edit 2: Only just saw Pie-kun's post. You can ignore most of the above.

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Interesting, because i have Wii too.

Considering DDR now exclusively for Wii on this year and next year, the song quality must be better than before.

BTW, i just wonder why no more cover licences again since HP2 ?

Some covers are better than original (Yeah, but some of them worse than original)

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Are you retarded?

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Um... sorry.

I just hope next DDR for Wii better than DDR 2010 before.

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According to U1, there will be new information for DDR II released for Konami's NYC Gamer's Day and that more information will be release from that day until the release date.

Unfortunately, I cannot seem to find when this year's NYC Gamer's Day will be, but last year's was held in late August, so perhaps we can hope for that time frame.

Brandon Cox, one of the PR managers for KDE said on twitter he will be in NYC Sunday through Thursday so I'm assuming it's during that time frame.

My guess is each day they announce something new to the game. A new song, a new dancer, a new stage, ect...

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Reminds me of how information was slowly revealed for Super Smash Bros. Brawl up until release.

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But Super Smash Bros. stages, characters are interactive.

Accessories, Dancers, and Stages are relatively useless and filler.

But they add a nice touch to the games. :/ I wouldn't be half as interested in DDR if there weren't characters to choose from and such. Letting you play as your Mii is also a fun small thing. A lot of the stages were quite cool and lovely too. It feels like more effort went into the games if I see things like that in there, instead of flat pictures or music videos and so on.

Yes, yes, I know, the core of the game is step-charts and music, blah blah blah. But that is just a plain cake there. With characters and stages and other small aesthetics, you get the icing on top, making it so much better than if it just a basic design. Rather than going "here step charts, now go play", we see other things they put into the game. I like having different characters to "play" as, and I like having a variety of stages to play on.

When small things like that are part of the game, it makes me think that they worked hard to make the game look good. If I could have a good-looking game, I don't mind losing "quality" stepcharts as a result. If the arrows are unsatisfactory, why not Shuffle them or Mirror them or something? You can't expect them to hand you EVERYTHING.

In my humble casual opinion of course. ._.;

WHAT?! The song selections and their stepcharts are the damned cake, the layers of icing, and the damned toppings on top of each mix! If you do not have a good song list nor good charts, you will not sell your DDR.

Sorry, but those kinds of things do matter in terms of marketing the game. You have to remember that majority of the people that purchase these games are not the kind of people who would be content with a solid black background while the arrows scroll to music. The characters in DDR also have a long history and they have developed distinct personalities.

To compare, take out the character pictures on the results screen for IIDX and see how fans take it.

If NYC Gamers Day is free I'll go to get you guys some nice info. Hooray for being an East Coaster!

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The characters back around the time of 5th Mix and whatnot were charming, but since then they have kind of lost their edge, mostly because a lot of the older characters don't always feature in every new game and some of the new ones lack personality.

One of the other problems is that the character engine has not always been handled well. I'd say that if you can't make decent characters or animations then you are better off going for videos instead. Compare the Hottest Party characters and animations, that actually had scripted dances for songs and would STOP at the end, to the ones in SuperNOVA who randomly danced away even when the song doors closed. It's touches like that which really make the game work. The latter just made me long for videos. :/

I'm also not very keen on the too-colourful stages which can often distract the player thus ruining the point of the game. I'm not saying that the venues/stages are bad per-say, but I haven't been a massive fan. Then again I'd probably prefer more realistic stages if we had to have them at all.

As an interesting comparison, let me go off-topic slightly for a second to compare Karaoke Revolution (2009) and Karaoke Revolution: Glee (came out later):

KR used a character engine and, partly because it was on the Wii, it suffered because of it. There is NO crowd and the characters are all ugly (I'm serious) and look like they took a bad trip through uncanny valley. Then there's their animations, at least one of makes them look like they are having some kind of seizure. Of course that's not even getting into the game engine, which while "okay", wasn't amazing.

KR:Glee, on the other hand, didn't even bother with characters or avatars (probably to save money on paying royalties for likenesses) and instead use DVD quality clips from the show, sometimes repeated across songs, but they often work. The engine is nice (one of the best vocal engines on the Wii, in fact) and it has a level of polish that really seems to be lacking from a lot of other games, and especially DDR. I sometimes find it hard to believe that Konami makes both games.

Characters can work though, even on a weaker console like the Wii, but it requires quite a bit of work on the part of the developer. Neversoft/Vicarious Visions are one of the few developers I know of who actually managed to get it right.

Done right it can compliment the game and improve the players experience. Done wrong and it actually WORSENS it.


I may be biased though because I usually only make simfiles for songs where I can edit in a video. That might be because it's Stepmania, and the characters aren't amazingly well supported, but I still feel little attachment to the dancing characters and prefer a good music video.

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Pointlessly repeating myself here, but I never minded the random off-dances the PS2 had (besides that everyone pokes fun at the pelvic thrusts no matter who's doing it xP), just as long as I had the right to choose what character I could, I don't know, team up with (the male characters) or have represent me (Alice and Devil Zukin, mostly). Then there's the option of customizeable characters seen mostly in other games, but since we're already on the boat of characters, it seems kind of like a let down to go to that. But eh. A little personality is a little personality. Even so, no one can deny that axing the characters didn't do anything to the success of Max through Extreme AC (or at least Extreme... wasn't a DDR player baaack in the daaayyy of Max2).

That said, it's hard for me to see that those guys"worsen" DDR unless the cheesy awful moves outnumber the lovely windmills and flips. It's not like they have to spend a ton of time on design or making new ones; a handful of people would just be okay playing as the same characters over and over, and the other ton of fans might just turn them off.

There is definitely a such thing as too much color/ too many distractions. It's called DDR 2010. But X2 PS2's wonky blue swirlies and white rings are also distracting once you notice them. And then Dance Masters has that alternate universe thing which Iono if you can turn off or not, but it's really flashy. Ehm. Well, in short... interesting graphics are spiffy. Over-flashy is bad.

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I am now fairly certain that the NYC Gamer's Night will be on Tuesday, August 23rd.

I would kill for Hottest Party 5 to have a stage that consisted of a solid black background.

The closest thing I could think of is that cute still image used instead of music videos seen in Hottest Party 3. It also had a plain black background if you wished. D8; But I hated those so much. Seems very lazy, to just use the music video instead of coming up with routines. OTL


Sweeet, only 3 days away!


Not quite. D8; To take what Pie said, and turning it into a cake metaphor again, a DDR games with songs and charts is the plain cake. If you sold just that, not many people would buy it. But add cute decorations and icing and everything else to make the cake look pleasing to the eye, sales! Small things matter, even if the hardcore-to-the-MAX crowd refuses to see it.

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid to say you are alone in saying you buy ddr games just for characters and stages.

DDR PS3 was ALL flashy colours with the depth of a spoon, but did the people buy it? Of course they fucking didn't.

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