Dance Factory, Dance Mat Game (Dance Factory (PS2))

Member Name: imsooosickofu

Product:	Dance Factory (PS2)
Date:	09/12/06 (2010 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: can use your own cd's

Disadvantages: eyetoy doesn't seem to work

Its another dance mat game, you can buy it for around £30 with the mat or £18 without, i believe any other PS2 mat will work fine with it tough.

Having played another dance mat game at a friends house a few times before, I was looking to get one for myself. If you haven't used a dance mat before, they're really good fun, basically you pick the music and the game brings up dance moves on the screen. Its nothing complicated just; forward, back, left and right but it varies you have to do jumps nd things, think of it as a modern day twister. The mat acts as a control pad for your feet and you hit the arrow's with your feet, depending on how accuratley (in time) you hit the arrows your awarded points accordingly. There are three levels of difficulty; easy, normal and expert. Although i don't think ill ever be able to do it on expert its impossible.

The only reason that stopped me buying one before was the fact that most of them only came with about 5-10 songs, probably due to licencing costs etc.

Thats was great about dance factory, your choice of songs is as big as your cd collection. The game does come with 5 built in tracks which is fine but insert your own cd and it reads the song and makes dance moves for it. You can do a whole album or just song by song. It even works with CDR and CDRW's so you can use all of your downloaded music to. To scan and make dance moves for a whole cd it only takes about 5 minutes, and there's a little game you can play whilst your waiting.

There are various different modes you can play the game in, single player is well when you play by yourself and multi player is when you play with others (you'll need another dance mat for this). Theres also endurance mode, where you attempt to tackle a whole CD without stopping, it gets harder and harder as you go on. There's also the calorie counter mode, which is pretty much the same as the normal mode but instead of telling you how may points you've got it tells you how many calories you burn (you put in your weight before you start).

There is another great feature, recorder mode, where you make up the dance moves to your own cd track and challenge a friend, or yourself to do the dance you have made up.

With the points you earn you can buy new backgrounds and upgrades for your creature ( a little alien type thing that you dress and it dances on the screen with you, in creature mode)

And one last thing, there is also eye toy support, meaning you can see yourself on the screen and, i think, do dance moves with your hands as well as feet. I say, i think, because i haven't been able to get this to work, my eye toy works fine but the game doesn't seem to recognise it. this isn't really a huge problem for me though because i enjoy the game plenty without it.

This is a fantastic game, its really good fun, and good exercise as well. Its great to play on your own but its even better with friends, and after a few drinks its a great laugh watching them stumbling about lol. Its really easy to use and to get used to. It was £38 when i bought it with the mat, but its down to £30 so i would reccomend it. It would be a great xmas present to get all the family up and about after stuffing their faces on xmas day.

Hope this has helped :o)

Summary: the best dance mat game ever