Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Mix
Score: 83% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Konami Developer: Konami Media: CD/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Miscellaneous
Graphics & Sound: Graphics have never been a strong suit of the Dance Dance Revolution series--there's only so much you can do with scrolling arrows, after all--and while Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Mix is a little better in the graphics department than most games of the series, it's still not much of anything special. Instead of the weird background animations in most DDR games, DDR: Disney's Rave usually has the inside of some DJ's booth, with one or a few Disney characters bopping to the music as you play. As usual, the graphics tend to distract you more than anything else, which means they're serving their purpose admirably. (Anyone who's ever played Paranoia in the original series will know exactly what I'm talking about.) But don't look for any real glitz here; 2D backgrounds and scrolling arrows is all you'll get. Music, of course, is the core of any DDR game, and DDR: Disney Mix offers up quite a few solid songs. Many of them, of course, are remixes of Disney classics, such as 'Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious'--I taught myself how to spell that back in kindergarten, before I had ever even seen the movie--and that 'Chim Chim Cherree' song from the same movie. There are others, of course--nine of the twenty songs are Disney, including two versions of the Mickey Mouse Club theme song--and the songs that aren't Disney range from speedy hip-hop to slow oldies like 'Let's Twist Again'. Unfortunately, a number of the songs on the original Japanese release of this game were cut before they were brought over, undoubtedly due to licensing issues, which is a shame, as some of my favourites got cut. There was something about DDRing to Beach Boys songs, but that's just me. Nevertheless, the selection on DDR: Disney Mix is nice, and while it's not as big as, say, DDR 3rd Mix it's got plenty of variety.
Gameplay: What can be said here that hasn't already been said by hundreds of avid DDRers? DDR: Disney Mix offers one major new 'kink' in the gameplay--a battle mode with attacks--but for the most part the game plays identically to every other DDR game ever made. This is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how avid a fan of the series you are. The basic mechanics are deceptively simple. A series of arrows scroll up the screen, and as they reach the top you have to press the corresponding button--on a controller, that's either the D-pad or the face buttons, and on a dance pad (the only way to really play) it's by stepping on the proper arrow. Depending on the difficulty level of the song, the arrow patterns are more or less complex and occur faster or slower. The more you get in succesion, and the closer to 'perfect' timing that you have, the better your score. That's pretty much all there is to the core game. You can play it two-player as well, and a lot of the fun of the game comes from one-upping your peers. You can pick which songs you want to play as well, and each song has two modes--the regular difficulty and 'Trick' mode, which is a more difficult form of the song with tougher arrow patterns. As stated before, the one major addition to the bulwark of DDRism in DDR: Disney Mix is the addition of a battle mode. It works much like many games in the 'puzzle battle' genre, like Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo and its ilk. Each player selects a character (no duplicates), each with a series of different attacks to unleash upon your opponent. As you hit more and more arrows perfectly, your 'trick' meter rises, and when it gets to the top, you unleash one of your attacks. They range from making the arrows invisible to speeding them up--they still come at the same interval, but you have less time to see them on the screen as they zoom from the bottom. You can play this mode either against the computer or against a human opponent. I highly recommend another human, as the computer is often devilishly hard to beat, making very few mistakes.
Difficulty: As in any DDR game, Disney Mix's difficulty depends both on your level of practice with the platform--if you're using one--and the difficulty of the song. Some songs are trivially easy, enough so that my lesser-skilled family members can do them, and others are difficult enough that I have trouble doing them with a controller, much less on my pad. As stated before, the AI in battle mode is pretty fierce, so your difficulty there should come from which human you select as your opponent, as any good multiplayer game should be.
Game Mechanics: There's arrows. Hit the buttons on them. That's just about it in terms of play mechanics. You can play this game on a standard controller, or you can play it the real way--with dance pads. Playing it with the controller is a lot more fun than playing Samba de Amigo with a controller, but it still doesn't compare to actually dancing as you play. The menus are easy enough to navigate, and the old Select-Start reset is still there, which is a terribly handy feature that I think should be in most games. Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Mix doesn't offer anything spectacularly new or original to the series. The battle mode, while definitely different, isn't nearly as much a show of skill as the standard game, and when you get down to it DDR: Disney Mix is the exact same game we've been playing for years (those of us who import, at least) with different songs. It's a good game, but I would have preferred more variety in the music; while I understand all of the Disney songs, more non-Disney ones would have been nice. And the game doesn't have the crack-addict unlockable stuff like most of the other games in the series. Fans of the genre who don't already own the Japanese version should definitely pick it up, as should people who enjoy Disney stuff and don't mind a little techno remixing of their favourites. Newcomers to the series, however, may be better off with the first release of Dance Dance Revolution here in the States, especially if they're not friends of the Mouse.
-Sunfall to-Ennien, GameVortex Communications AKA Phil Bordelon
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