Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I bought DDR Ultramix 2 almost a month ago. After struggling with the original Ultramix, I was worried that they would make the same mistakes with the new one. I’m glad to report that it is much, much better…

If you’ve never played DDR before, the original Ultramix (made exclusively for the Xbox) was far too difficult to play. There was no Lesson Mode. There was no Beginner Level. There were only two songs that were possible to play for a beginner and if I ever hear them again, I will plug my ears and try not to scream.

Ultramix 2, however, has the Beginner Levels for all of the songs. It can use the songs from the Song Packs (downloadable from Xbox Live) and it will give Beginner steps for those songs too. There is still no Lesson Mode, but after going through the Lesson Mode on DDR PC, I don’t think it’s essential to the enjoyment of the game.

Not only is it easier to play for beginners, it’s harder to play for experts. There are 10-Footer songs that have been made exclusively for this game and a lot of the old favorites to get your heart pumping and your feet moving. I’m not at that level yet, so I can’t tell you if they are truly worthy of the 10-Foot rating, but the experts on the DDR forums give them two thumbs up.

Most importantly, the Workout Mode is better than the original. You choose your first song, and then after that, the songs keep coming at you in random order until you stop the workout. This prevents all the cool down time between the songs and allows you to keep your heart rate elevated throughout. It’s a great workout!

Additionally, they fixed some of the Xbox Live snafus with this new entry into the Dance Dance Revolution family. When you have a Match on Xbox Live, it’s possible to keep your players and play song after song without having to lose them and meet up again using Quick Match. That means less time between the songs, so a better workout. I have met with friends from the DDR Forums online to exercise and we got an amazing workout.

Finally, when you edit the step patterns of a song, you can upload them to Xbox Live and share them with the world. This way, even if they didn’t have any Beginner Level songs, you could make super easy step patterns for the songs and upload them to everyone.

On the whole, DDR-U2 is much better than Ultramix. It’s just as easy to use compared to the arcade game. It’s better in the Workout Mode and beginners actually have a chance of playing the game without continually failing in frustration. It’s a great workout and fun to play!