Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2

Dance Dance Revolution is a series with endless amounts of memorability, whether through its songs, visual themes, announcers, characters, and wacky charts. Picking a favorite can go tons of different directions. My favorite song list would be Supernova, with my favorite charts (and theme+announcer) falling under DDRMAX, so how does Extreme 2 end up winning me over as my favorite on-disc DDR game? The same reason why it's so high on my favorite games list: the game design!

Most of the early DDR games had no game design to begin with. All you could play with were the charts alone, and you'd unlock new songs by grinding out your play count. There was no story mode, or any resemblance of a completable game mode in any of the DDR games until the American version of DDR Extreme released on the PS2. That American version is Extreme is a strange release. The Japanese version of Extreme is a completely different game, featuring a massive 111 song tracklisting, covering a bulk of DDR's 'golden era' charts. That game's theme resembled the previous DDRMAX games. America's Extreme had a different tracklisting, and a different style of theme all together. Not nearly as cool as the Japanese version, but the American version had one trick up its sleeve that could win over detractors. Mission mode! Prior to this, the DDR games had no such feature. A list of 100 challenges that would include modifiers that could shift the arrows around, or force the player to purposely miss specific types of arrows, along with other strange challenges. This mission mode idea would end up sticking for the rest of the DDR games on the PS2, with each game getting an elaborate, unique mode of its own.

And so, DDR Extreme 2 would be the first game to have a fully fleshed out map of challenges as its own game mode titled 'Dance Master Mode'. The player would be given an option between a few challenges to pick from, or they could switch to the game's map view. There, the player can go through each challenge like a checklist. In addition to this, there are 'hidden challenges' on each area of the map that would need to be unlocked through specific requirements that could be discovered by buying hints in the game's item shop. Most of these hidden challenges require having to get above a certain score, so the player can often guess how to unlock these hidden squares without needing to buy a hint. The item shop also made its debut in this game, where instead of grinding out plays to unlock songs, a player could amass points from the challenges and then simply buy the songs they wanted once they were available in the shop. This makes unlocking everything in the game a far less time consuming task.

As an extra challenge, this game features a 'hidden arrow' scavenger hunt that takes place in Dance Master Mode. 30 invisible arrows are hidden throughout the game, with your only way of finding them being the Extra Arrow Hints in the shop. If you find all of them, you unlock... nothing! As you might expect, this was the only DDR game to feature these hidden arrows (although Supernova would introduce hidden challenges, instead).

The song list for this game is one of my favorites of the DDR PS2 games. The selection features a handful of trance songs, including two great Look to the Sky remixes. Some faster songs also get pulled from the 'Dancemania SPEED' albums for the first time, including Speed Over Beethoven and Cartoon Heroes. Music nerds might appreciate the Chemical Brothers track, as well as Pump Up the Volume; both of which have great charts. While only two boss songs appear in this game (both of them being essentially the same chart), Paranoia Survivor Max is daunting enough to have that area covered by itself. I'm not too picky with DDR music, there are only a few songs on the song wheel that I dislike.

This also has my favorite character selection of all the DDR PS2 games. The background dancer is one of DDR's unique features, and considering there are 22 different ones to choose from (with an alternate costume for each one), it adds a lot of personality to the gameplay. All the classics are here, including Alice, Emi, Baby-Lon, Yuni, etc. The other UI aspects have also aged wonderfully, with plenty of trance synths included in the menu music and menu sounds. The cool blue and green color palette works well with it.

As far as DDR chart quality goes, this game features ones that mostly fall on the good side. My biggest problem with DDR charts generally is either their lack of creativity, or overuse of the same awkward ideas. Both of which are apparent in the new charts from the first DDR Supernova and DDR X. During the DDR Extreme era, these charts managed to hit the sweet spot, where there are enough new ideas for the charts to stay novel, without them coming off as gimmicky. I do love me some gimmicky charts (I'm a fan of ITG officials after all), but Extreme 2 has enough of these thoughtful, accessable charts to make this game a worthwhile experience for rhythm game beginners.

Then again, the major problem with playing DDR games on the PS2 is trying to find a good pad for any reasonable amount of money (let alone one compatible with PS2). If you're looking to play for score or accuracy, you don't have many good options. The upside with this game is that most of its song list falls into a managable difficulty range, meaning you won't need to spend a lot of money to get relatively far in the game with a foam pad. Many of these charts don't appear on actual DDR machines (if you happen to live near one) since Extreme 2 is a console exclusive, so unless you want to get an expensive metal pad and Stepmania, a cheaper pad is the easier way to experience them. It's not like playing this with a PS2 controller is a bad experience, but it's difficult to understand the appeal of easier charts when you're pressing them on a controller with your thumbs instead of stomping them with your feet. Either way, the variety and quality in Extreme 2 makes this a good introduction to DDR in general.