Like the original, Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 2 for Wii follows the series' classic fomula with a wide selection of modes, songs, and dance moves. Unfortunately, it's a few steps from hot and not enough steps ahead to be considered a true sequel.
In the package, players gets a dance pad that plugs right into the Wii, accurately reading your foot presses. You''ll use the Wii remote and Nunchuk to track hand moves and deal with occasional "wild cards" that require your attention, such as missiles and bonus arrows. Although the game plays well, it looks like the previous one. Most of the dance venues look the same, and the available characters are unappealing. To spice it up, you can stick the head of one of your Miis onto a character, but they look oddly disjointed. At least the arrow readouts are easy to read, no matter how many players participate in a match.
Hottest Party 2's song choices are mostly disappointing. Most of its tracks are forgettable techno mixes along with some are recognizable covers of such dance hits as "Umbrella" and "Black and White.". We ended up going back to Young MC's "Bust a Move" because of the hilarious music video playing in the background.
The most interesting new mode is Dance N' Defend, where you battle against a friend or a computer-controlled opponent, earning power-ups with each successful dance sequence. If you've got a real person to play against it gets better since beating the computer is far too easy. There's also a "new" Groove Arena mode, a slightly improved version of last year's Groove Circuit mode.
Training Mode, Free Mode and calorie-burning Workout Mode also make a return, along with multiplayer for up to four players. You can also play the game with a d-pad, if you're not up for rolling out the dance mat. Unfortunately, that's where the game options end as there are no online leaderboards or versus matches here.
Despite these minor changes, Hottest Party 2 retains the series' mat-stepping fun, but it feels more like a cheap cash-in. Do yourself a favor and avoid this dance.
Reader Comments (5)
Man....I have played DDR sense it came out and I have to say that it's just gone down hill sense like...the 3rd version of the game (and yes, I have played all of the versions out so far :P) :(. It's no fun anymore because basically all of the songs suck and there's no online mode even though like, EVERY other game now seems to have it (GRRRR >:x)! If they actually got some decent music then it would be a whole lot funner, and I agree with pookieizzy7 that it's to hard to use your hands as well as your feet. I play on hard and I have all I can do usually to talk to someone and play at the same time so I couldn't really have fun with someone doing that X_X...
I love DDR and all the music
I've played DDR for many years and I always felt that it was just a challenge to play with use of your feet, but now using your hands is a bit too much. The only way I can see full use of your body is on Para Para Max and I'm surprised that Konami has never released that to any of these consoles
it's gamedaily, so even though this review is utterly irrelevant to a ton of gamers, i'm going to assume they didn't play the game being reviewed, and i'm calling them out on it. Same goes for any list or review they've done, past present and future.
i agree........ first comment~