My sister is the one who got me interested in DDR games. I was amazed how easily she seemed to glide across the arrows of the arcade versions of DDR whenever we’d go to the arcade. Even though she is a professional dancer, she plays DDR for exercise and to enhance her rhythm. Had it not been for her, I wouldn’t have bothered buying both DDR games for my Xbox360. She’s finishing law school in June and for her birthday – yesterday – I decided to buy her DDR SuperNOVA2 for her Playstation 2. The only reason she bought a Playstation2 was for DDR SuperNOVA, after she got tired of pumping quarters into the arcade machine. I was certain she’d appreciate this gift.
SOUND and CONTROL
All DDR games offer the same core gameplay. There are arrows in 4 fields that scroll towards markers. When they reach the markers, you need to hit a button on your controller to confirm that arrow. The button can be on a PS2 controller but, it is expected that you actually
DANCE the arrows away by using the dance mat which comes with the game. This provides the player with a good workout which will help tone down the legs and thighs, but, on higher difficulty levels, it offers an extreme cardio vascular workout that will have you doing jumping jacks, sprint motions and aggressive step routines.
Right away, my sister was impressed and excited with Supernova 2’s song list. While my Universe 1 & 2 DDRs have tracklists that are mostly Euro –dancehall and J-pop, Supernova 2 gave her exactly what she wanted – more Hip Hop/ R&B. The list is extensive with more tracks than the Wii version:
And Then We Kiss (Junkie XL Mix)
Britney Spears
ANGELUS
Hitomi Shimatani
Beginning of the End
Klayton (Celldweller)
Can't Stop the Rain
Cascada
dream of love
Kaori Nishina
EternuS
Sanxion7
Every Little Step
Bobby Brown
Faster Kill Pussycat
Paul Oakenfold feat. Brittany Murphy
Fevah
Nightriders
Got To Be Real
Cheryl Lynn
He Said She Said
Ashley Tisdale
Just A Girl (Radio Edit)
Ian Van Dahl
Le Freak
Chic
Love On My Mind (Radio Mix)
Freemasons feat. Amanda Wilson
Number 1 (Alan Brake & Fred Fake Main Remix)
Goldfrapp
Rock Your Body
Justin Timberlake
Say Goodbye
Chris Brown
Strict Machine
Goldfrapp
Suddenly I See
KT Tunstall
Take On Me
a-ha
Temperature
Sean Paul
The Rockafeller Skank
Fatboy Slim
The World Around Me
DJ Micro
Unbelievable
EMF
Until Forever
Beatdrop
Unwritten (Vicious Club Mix)
Natasha Bedingfield
volcano
Yasuhiro Abe
Wind It Up (Original Neptunes Mix)
Gwen Stefani
(Song List from Wikipedia)
I was absolutely shocked to hear Sean Paul’s “Temperature” on here, as well as other tracks that I recognized like JLo’s “Waiting for Tonight” and Linkin Park’s “Faint”. There are plenty of other good tracks on here and it made me envious. Why can’t I download songs from XBOX Live to my Hard Drive?
Control of DDR is typical. You get a dance mat with the game for $60 – (or the game itself for $39.99) The Playstation mat, unlike the 360 mat, only has 2 action buttons aside from the arrows. Its not a big deal because the PS2 menus are designed to use O to continue and X to cancel. The mat that comes with the game is standard Konami- Beemani and it works great with bare feet. The bottom is perfectly padded and the mat doesn’t slide around at all.
GRAPHICS
The graphics in DDR SUPERNOVA are a mixed bag due to the dated PS2 hardware.
In comparison to DDR Universe on Xbox 360, it is easy to see that the PS2 graphics are nowhere near as sharp. The 3D modeling must have been toned down to allow the PS2’s CPU to focus on the arrows and the synch of the music and disco flashes. This is obvious because the anime characters are plagued by jagged edges which you son’t see on more polished PS2 games like Tekken, Mortal Kombat or Need for Speed.
What my sister noticed is that the graphics appear brighter and more vivid than Supernova1. Visually this version looks similar to the Wii’s DDR Ultimate Party but, what really turned me off was the color temperature. The Black male models looked like they were glowing orange. The White female models appeared as if their skin was paste white and had no texture at all.
The menus on a 32 inch TV – the same model I run my 360 versions on – had fonts that were much smaller, cluttered menus and an overall “stuffed” feeling to them.
In short, Supernova 2 looks better than Supernova 1 but you’re best bet would be to step into an HD generation system.
GAMEPLAY
DDR Supernova 2 makes no real changes to the gameplay of the original. As I stated in my Universe2 review, Konami seems content just adding new songs without offering gameplay changes. The only major alterations made this year are
custom modules.
The modes of gameplay include Workout Mode, Hyper Master Mode, Game Mode, Online Mode, Training Mode and Edit Mode.
Workout mode as always allows you to track burned calories after you create a player profile. You can track your weightloss over time and can decide to set calorie goals – if you wanna burn 500 calories and then quit, this will be your counter.
Training mode allows a newcomer to practice with the game’s stepping while edit mode allows you to add or remove certain steps: jumps, holds,etc. Fortunately for Playstation 2, unlike Wii, Online play is fully supported and you can find people online playing…unlike Xbox 360 where the leaderboard has less than 50 people worldwide. The PS2 version also gives you
FREE online play (so long as you have an internet connection) while the 360’s Xboxlive costs $50 a year.
Hyper Master Mode is the singleplayer course you’ll work through to unlock new songs and actually play the game itself. This mode – similar to the Wii version – consists of challenges and boss battles.
The Game mode, allows you to simply jump into the game and play a few songs and leave if you don’t feel like playing Hyper Master mode. Game mode allows you to also battle another player if you have a second mat. Its standard multiplayer but, its fun to play with other people so it is satisfactory. Players can choose to dance at their own level, but, what isn’t so great is the fact the player characters cannot both be on screen at the same time. There are cut-ins which allow the player avatar to show themselves when they are hitting combos but, it would be nice to see video footage of both avatars simultaneously. Not that it’s a big deal, the background graphics are usually music videos so you’ll probably be busy watching those instead.
The custom modules are small modifications that can be used on your dancer profile – unlocked when you win challenges or progress through the game. A “performance boost” mod might help you beat a Boss battle that you could not before for example.
OVERALL DDR Supernova 2 is a solid DDR experience. My sister’s praise of it is more than enough for me to fully recommend it but, I would have liked to see a little more. Supernova 2 really isn’t different from Supernova 1 because there aren’t any major changes in any of the modes to warrant high levels of accolades which would separate it from the sea of DDR’s on the market. You buy DDR games for the new music tracks. The same dance music you hear now on the radio will be on DDr Supernova 3…its just that simple. Unlike the 360 which has a Hard Drive, PS2 is limited to memory cards, so downloading songs and storing huge libaries of music for this game isn’t really an option. I won’t fault the game there, but, I do hope that when DDR is released for Playstation 3, the Playstation online store allows you more freedom in purchasing of tracks.
DDR: ULTIMATE PARTY -
http://www.epinions.com/content_410848890500
DDR: UNIVERSE -
http://www.epinions.com/content_400034598532
DDR: UNIVERSE 2 -
http://www.epinions.com/content_410471140996 
