Dance Dance Revolution Universe
By Jo-Jo Chen

The father of the rhythm games craze in the American game market is invading the world again with the release of Dance Dance Revolution Universe for the XBOX360.  Like the other entries in the series users must use the requisite dance pad in order to step in rhythm to over 70 varied musical selections from techno and J-Pop to R&B and Rock. 

DDRU starts out in Beginner Mode, allowing those of us who’ve never stepped along the arrowed path to funky town in our lives to join in the fun.  From there you can switch to Master Mode which displays options similarly found in previous titles.  New to the series is Quest Mode, where you take your player across the country challenging others in Dance competitions, gathering fans and backup dancers along the way.  While an interesting idea, Quest Mode is very poorly executed.  Konami should have considered merging its cool Challenge Mode into Quest Mode.  In Challenge Mode, you have to complete the dance routines as normal, but with stipulations placed on how well you do in the final score.  Sometimes you may have to go the who song without getting a Boo from the crowd, or the truly sick notion of never getting more than 10 ‘Good’ steps in a row, making you purposely throw off your own rhythm.

Even though it’s a new generation, not much has changed about DDR.  Same old Anime derived avatars and trippy house/trance techno inspired backgrounds.  I find it hard to believe that these things will ever change, but you’re here to dance not to pay attention to the backgrounds so you can’t really knock them there.  Perhaps the biggest knock you can give DDRU is it’s lack of a custom soundtrack option.  However, if you were to be able to import your own music into the Edit Mode of DDRU, what reason would there be for you to download the Online Content from the XBOX Live Marketplace (of which there are 10 currently at $1 a pop) or even to EVER buy another DDR game?  Not good for business most definitely.

In the end, Dance Dance Revolution Universe is an average entry in the DDR series.  A good starting point for new players, with enough meat to satisfy DDR experts.