When I used to visit arcades when I was younger it was all about Time Crisis and Virtua Cop, not to mention the classic outrun (oh those were the days). Now however things have changed and these days when you visit the arcade you are greeted with lots of teenagers transfixed to a screen while dancing about on a flashing metal dance floor, which to be honest looks as if it requires a lot more energy than I am personally willing to part with.
So this brings us to the subject in hand, a game called Dancing Stage Universe 2, which is similar to the games I am talking about, with the only difference being that this one is played using a rubber mat which attaches to your Xbox 360 at home.
Dancing Stage Universe 2 comes packed with all new songs for you to dance too, within the disc there are songs from The Klaxtons, Justice, M.I.A as well as some rather weird techno tracks. Although our review copy did not come with a mat we did manage to get hold of a mat from the original game. It has to be said that the mat itself isn’t particularly great, your feet seem to slip a lot and it is not quite as responsive as perhaps it should be. I am unsure if the mat that comes with this latest version of the game has been improved, but I would hope to think it has.
The game comes packed with various modes for you to play through, these include Game Mode, which allows you to jump straight into he action using 4 or 8 panels on the dance mat, depending on how confident you are, Challenge Mode which basically gives you set tasks to complete, you can choose plenty of difficulty levels here too so depending on how proficient you are at the game you should always be challenged. Workout mode allows you to check how many calories you are burning if you are interested in that type of information and Quest Mode sees you create an avatar and then work your way across the islands different dance halls to build your reputation.
By far the biggest mode included in the game is the Party Mode, this in itself includes no fewer than 10 modes such as Freestyle, Sync, Bomb, Triple and Relay. Unfortunately it seems that to get the best out of this mode you would need to invest in additional dance mats, and this of course would have several drawbacks such as the cost and lack of space.
Dancing Stage Universe 2 does include an online mode, which obviously makes not having additional dance mats a thing of the past, however finding someone online to play against takes about as long as going down the arcade with your mates, having a go on that machine, going to the pub and coming home again, sure you could wait if you have the time but I know what I would rather do.
Unfortunately this game may just be one step to far for a console game, in my opinion some games are best left in the arcade, I know I have great memories of going there with my friends and perhaps the people who dance away there now should just keep doing that.
