dance games

[cellio]

It's all dr4b's fault. :-)

I've now tried DDR and Pump It Up. I can see how these would be addictive! Unless I get a home setup, though, I'll resist that. Arcades are both inconvenient and expensive.

Last week buoren brought his DDR stuff in to work. I played about five times (plus or minus one). I would have played more, but the parking lot was about to close and I didn't want to be locked in, especially on the night before a holiday. I let Kevin pick the dances and he knew I'd never played before, so I assume we played the easiest ones in the game. I did not fail the first time! (I got a D, but I didn't fail.) We were having a little trouble with the pads slipping, but my biggest problem by far was maintaining orientation. A shift of a few inches from center is enough to cause misses.

Last night after choir practice some of us went to Dave and Busters, and after eating dinner tangerinpenguin and I played PIU. That time I did fail the first time, as I did for at least half of the six dances I did with him. (Chris can do normal low-level stuff in his sleep, so he was acing these.) Two of those were level 4, though, so I don't feel bad. Again, my biggest problem was maintaining orientation. This time I noticed a spacing problem that I hadn't with DDR; the width you need to maintain to hit pairs of arrows is rather more than my usual stance. So I was missing a lot of arrows by being too close to the center. I wonder if the PIU board really is bigger, or if it just feels that way because it's using the diagonals. (Of course, if the squares are the same size then the PIU board is functionally bigger due to orientation.)

With PIU, I found that I was stomping on the board, not stepping lightly. (I don't think I was stomping with DDR, though I wasn't stepping especially lightly.) A lighter touch would improve speed and endurance; I wonder how sensitive the pad is.

The loud gawdy background images were not as much of a problem as I thought they'd be. I did not have trouble seeing the arrows most of the time.

I guess in one sense DDR might be easier: there are four pad positions, not five. (PIU uses the center; DDR does not.) DDR has the "step and hold" arrows to make up for it, but that doesn't seem hard (yet).

Comments

[dr4b]

PIU is *definitely* bigger in the sense of the diagonals. I always feel like I'm offbalance playing it, as opposed to DDR, which has a much better way of keeping your center of gravity in the center of the pad.

the arcade machine always involves a lot more stomping than the home pads though. DDR arcade machines do as well, but the D&B PIU machine also has some pretty lousy arrows, in terms of sensitivity.

[aquatwo.livejournal.com]

DDR and PIU although very similar in concept play radically different. if you're used to one, playing the other just feels weird. it's like vi and Emacs... damn hard to be good in both. harder still to go back and forth between them.