Genre: Rhythm Action

Developer: Andamiro

Publisher: Mastiff

Release Date: 09/08/2005

Rhythm-action games – and dancing ones in particular – don’t seem like that hard a genre to pull off. Konami probably had no idea how amazingly addictive Dance Dance Revolution was until they started play testing it, and with such a simple concept of four directions and a special mat needed to really enjoy the game, who would have disagreed?

But it does work, and it’s worked beautifully for Konami despite the fact that there have been numerous contenders to the throne. The secret? Good step patterns and good songs. That’s really it. All the other players tried with new mats and a crappy selection of “hits” to cash in on what Konami had already realized: it’s just about the tunes and letting the player have fun while stomping around to them.

In this respect, Andamiro is the first developer to understand this (and, admittedly, Mastiff for bringing the game out here). Pump It Up: Exceed does indeed offer something relatively fresh with the shift to diagonals and the additional button (more on them in a second), but there was plenty of time devoted to making sure the actual stepping part of things was fun, and almost as much time making sure the songs were catchy enough for everyone.

That’s it. The game is great because it’s fun to dance along with, and the songs are good, so long as you can stomach lots of happy hardcore remixes, plenty of Korean pop and some very tame remixes of familiar American songs. There’s more to it, of course, but Andamiro did exactly what all the other DDR wanna-bes couldn’t and just got the core down pat.

There are some major differences in the play style, though. Part of this comes from the fact that the game is actually very, very hard against newcomers – even if you’ve been playing DDR for years. I literally had to work my way down from about mid-level to the easiest difficulty and I still had some trouble adjusting to things.

That’s not a slight against the game itself, though, it’s just that going from basically shifting your weight from the center out to the left, right, forward and behind you to the diagonals with an extra button where it’s more natural for DDR players to rest things takes more than a little practice. After it starts feeling like second, nature, though, it’s cake to get through most easy songs, and as you slowly build your way back up, you really do get a sense that the moves in place had some choreography behind them.

The claims that the game is more like dancing are largely ridiculous, because you’ll still flail and stutter around like a jackass most of the time (or at least I did, and I’d like to think I have some rhythm for a white boy), but there are times when the moves just feel more natural and appropriate for the audio.

Things aren’t perfect, though. The unlocking system seems a bit broken, forcing you to endure plenty of game over screens while you try to win new songs in Arcade Mode (which are then playable in Home Mode, which is far more forgiving). It’s a crash course in how to hit the steps, but it’s also a bit cumbersome, unnecessarily difficult and will turn off newcomers if they aren’t willing to stick things out.

The song selection menu is also a little bizarre, separating songs into Banya’s stuff (there are enough songs here to warrant an entire category), k-pop and just plain ol’ pop. The top diagonals shift categories and the bottom diagonal scroll through the songs. The X button in the middle actually confirms things, which is weird. You can technically stand in the middle and scroll through, but you’ll have to hop off at least once to pick a song – or at least that’s how we figured things out.

The actual interface itself, however, it impressively clean. Huge shiny metal CG overlays, big song selection wheel and a nice visual polish to things does help. The actual songs rarely offer anything that perfectly matches up with the audio, but what’s there is damned impressive, nicely high-res... and at times horribly distracting. It does give one something to look at when taking turns, and it’s really quite the eye candy at that, but it’s for bystanders more than those watching unless you decide to play unlocked videos in a separate mode.

It would also have been nice to have the quicker steps highlighted a bit more on at least the easy difficulty levels. I can count the number of times I nearly flubbed an Arcade Mode song near the start because I just didn’t realize the steps were quicker than I was hitting them. With so few mistakes allowed before game over, it can be frustrating, and not much more forgiving than then one-slip-and-you’re-dead Sudden Death Mode.

The audio, not surprisingly, is the best part of the experience. The song list variety at first seems rather limited, but there’s enough subtle takes on different genres and sounds that so long as you can stomach some form of electronic music, you’re going to find quite a few decent songs. Some sound like covers or sound-alike bands, others are completely original and still others... well, there’s something hilarious about a high-BPM remixed version of a classical music tune you may have had to play as a kid if you grew up taking piano or band or orchestra classes.

PIU is best described as an alternative to DDR. It’s competition, sure, but the games really exist almost as separate styles of the same experience. They’re both awesome, and both offer their own pluses, but the best part is that both are rewarding in their own right, and more solid dancing games certainly can’t be a bad thing. If you’ve got the $60, patience and open mind to relearn how to play another game, there’s a hell of a lot of fun to be had here.

Reviewed by Sam Bishop