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For nearly a decade, Dance Dance Revolution fans have been asking the question: why can't someone make a dancing game that works with any music CD? Now, they finally have an answer: "Because Dance Factory, that's why." The curiosity of randomly generating dance patterns based on your favorite tunes wears off in a few minutes, and you'll soon find that you're just playing a low-rent DDR knockoff that's not even one-tenth as fun or polished as the real thing.

So It Thinks It Can Dance

At its core, Dance Factory is an unabashed clone of Dance Dance Revolution. You can play it with any DDR pad -- and in fact, you have to, as the game doesn't include one (and using a standard controller defeats the whole purpose). The casual observer wouldn't be able to distinguish Dance Factory from DDR, except for the fact that DDR's visuals are super-stylish and Dance Factory looks and sounds like a low-rent clone.

You'll no sooner put the Dance Factory disc into your PS2 than you'll be yanking it back out again. The game keeps running as you swap in your own music CD. If your PlayStation 2 still has the ability to read CD-ROMs, it'll whir and chug until it brings up the track information, at which point you can select a track and have the game automatically generate a dance pattern to go along with it. This takes a minute or so -- while you're waiting you can play an odd little boring puzzle game where you rotate a cube by stomping on the dance mat.

When all this is finally done, your very own personally selected music will begin, as will a succession of arrows that vaguely follow the song's tempo. The fun of any music game is that the patterns are carefully edited to follow the music. Dance Factory's are far from it. Yes, this is bound to happen given the fact that they're created procedurally. But that doesn't make it any less stupid.

I Don't Got the Music in Me

Okay, so the randomly generated patterns are worthless and completely devoid of fun. Surely the mode that allows you to edit your own patterns is better? Well, it is -- slightly. The way you edit a song is to simply start dancing on the mat while it plays. The game will record your moves and save the pattern to the memory card. You can then play it back, or challenge a friend to match your moves.

But you can't go back and polish your work up. If you make any mistakes while recording -- and you're going to -- they remain in there forever, and the only way to go back and fix them is to record the whole pattern again from the top, permanently losing your original in the process.

Bonus Steps

A few extra modes and diversions round out the package. There's an EyeToy mode that adds two markers on the screen that you have to hit with your hands while you dance. But you can't make custom EyeToy dances; you have to use randomly generated patterns. And the implementation is terrible -- we had to go through all sorts of acrobatics just to get the sensor to register.

Completely superfluous is the Creature mode, which rips off Monster Rancher's gimmick of generating little animated creatures based on the CDs that you insert. They'll dance in the background while you play. This is at least preferable to the generic blobs of color that pulsate in the background while you play every other mode. (But not to watching yourself jump around like a mental patient in the EyeToy game.)

Rhythmless Nation

The ability to make your own dance patterns is not a dumb idea per se. Dance Factory would be an interesting gimmick if it was attached to an otherwise good DDR clone. But it's only got five songs of its own on the CD (from hot, modern artists like Kool And The Gang, no less). So the gimmick is the main attraction here, even though you'll be tired of the novelty in less than an hour.

Article by: Chris Kohler
Video produced by: Jonathan Solin