Dance Factory

Script for Dance Factory TV commercial (to air during Dr. Phil): Mom: Get your greasy fists out of that chicken bucket, Billy. It's time for another round of good-for-you dancepad gaming!" Billy: Aw, Mom, but those Japanese disco songs make me feel all weird and tingly_Why isn't there a dance game that lets me shake my humps to the disposable pop songs I like this week? Mom Chime sounds as game appears in her hands: Thafs why I got you Dance Factory, the only game that lets you dance to your own CDs. Billy: Gosh... that's hella crunk! Maybe I won't need my stomach stapled after all! But Dance Factory doesn't really work as advertised. After you replace the game disc with your own CDs: the game slowly digests your chosen song(s), then spits out a bargain-bin version of Dance Dance Revolution to the tempo (not the beat) of the track. The timing works, but the moves are totally random, defying all graceful movement and sucking the life out of ass-shaking hits. Fun dance patterns, not great music, make dance games worth playing. It's an interesting idea that doesn't quite work.

I couldn't disagree more with this bunch of haters. You have to be a hardcore geek to care about choreography in a dancing game. For me, these games are about having fun and looking silly with a bunch of friends, and Dance Factory lets in all those people turned off by the sounda-like techno drivel that dominates this genre. Who cares if the autogenerated routines won't make me look cool in the arcade? And so what if the trappings are a bit...low-rent? If I really wanted style and choreography, I'd be watching the latest Beyonce clips on MTV. Plus, this game has the first fitness mode that's good for the long haul, because you get ready-made routines to your favorite songs. Don't listen to these guys they're clueless!

If you find the concept of dancing to your favorite songs fascinating enough to consider playing a videogame based around it, I have a suggestion for you: Open up iTunes on your computer and commence dancing immediately instead. While Dance Factory works as advertised, it does so in the most piss-poor way imaginable (and don't let Jennifer convince you otherwise). The step charts gradually become more and more off synch as songs progress, breaking the single most important rule of any music game. Couple this with repeated crashes, a total lack of interesting step generation, and an absolutely appalling interface and you have a game more ghetto than your downtown club.