Tuesday, March 15, 2005

DDR 2

If you've ever read any of the archives I've recently posted, then you'll know I used to be obsessed with Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). In college we'd throw DDR parties all the time and I'd play it daily. I was an addict. After I graduated from college, I didn't have access to playing it any more, which wasn't all that bad, but I eventually missed it a lot. Thankfully, and Xbox version of the game was finally released, which I picked up right away.

My brother, Ryan, and I would play it all the time as he slowly tried to get as good as I was. Over time, he eventually became the master, even managing to beat Max 300 on the hardest setting, a feat I know I will never accomplish. Once he had mastered DDR, we kept playing, but eventually we didn't get around to it as often as we'd have liked. It eventually got to the point where we didn't play it a whole lot so we let my other brother, Randy, take it to college with him.

Again, the longet the game was gone, the more that craving started creeping up in the back of my mind. I wanted to dance again, to stomp on the floor performing my own personal rain dance in time with the magical arrows laid out before me on the flickering tv god. With my brother's return home for his spring break, also came the return of DDR, and on top of its return Randy also picked up DDR 2 for mine and Ryan's birthdays (on the 18th and 16th of March, respectively). Let's just say it feels like the second coming having a whole new game to master.

There are a ton more songs on DDR2, a ton more game modes, and a difficulty level that even taxes my brother's abilities. I can see days and days ahead of us, stomping to the new j-pop, eurotechno, and trip-hop contained in this game.

There is one drawback, however. When we had the Xbox set up before it was in our basement so the pads were on a carpeted floor. Now that the Xbox is upstairs hooked up to the big screen tv, the pads have to be set up on the hardwood floor. I've already noticed that the lower portion of my calves get sore after repeated playing on such a hard surface. I don't know if that's just because I'm getting back into the swing of playing DDR or if it's the hard surface. Hopefully it's just my getting reacquainted with the game because I definitely don't want to stop playing because of an injury any time soon!

No comments: