Before everything, if you take a look to the left panel of my blog, I now have a tagboard. It isn't embedded into the blog and is in pop-up form because the embedded form doesn't show up properly on Mozilla, and I refuse to use MSIE. Anyway...

Today, after having come from CCF to worship God (beautiful service btw), I spent the rest of the day at the Megamall (as usual) with Abby, Jess and Cat. The three of them, I have quickly turned them into Ez2Dancer people, and they can't get enough of it.

Ez2Dancer is a Korean-made dance game similar to DDR. For each player, you have four sensors (upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right) and three foot panels (left, right and back). The idea is to activate the appropriate sensor or panel as the music steps call for.

The machine was already in the Megamall under the Worlds of Fun arcade, but they shipped it off to Cagayan for their new branch there, and it never came back. About 3 weeks ago though, the TimeOut arcade, acquired their own Ez2Dancer machine. Prior to that, I had to learn where other Ez2Dancer machines in Metro Manila were (there's one in Ever Gotesco Commonwealth and one in SM Southmall, according to my sources, but I haven't seen the one in Southmall).

People have said negative things about Ez2Dancer, like it's too easy. One fellow said that even 9-year-olds can pass some of the hard songs. As much as I'd like to defend my favorite dance game, this is very true. Compared to games that Konami makes, Ez2Dancer is easy. But they miss what the game focuses on, which is freestyling!

The game was definitely meant for freestyling. The positioning and size of the foot panels make for a very good design, which heavily supports spinning and other moves. The steps themselves also support/recommend spinning. This game takes a while to get used to, but after you get used to it, you're definitely expected to freestyle!

Ez2Dancer is for freestyling! There are some people that don't, and it looks so wrong. So wrong. It's understandable if you're a novice player, but if you've been playing long enough to know how the game works, especially if you've been playing for years like me, you must freestyle!

Let me explain. The average old-player-that-doesn't-freestyle plays this way: His knees are slightly bent and ready to jump on the next foot panel, his hands are right at the sensors and ready to jump at the next hand motion, and his eyes don't blink and stare directly at the screen. There's a guy who has this horrible routine for the song Say That U. The routine involves him making awkward hand gestures (a hadouken-type move, which shifts into a hand motion similar to Ultraman's move; right hand in a fist, right arm bent to the front so his fist is at eye level, and his left fist is under his right elbow), and slamming his left then his right foot on the foot panels with enough force to shatter it. All this done with his knees slightly bent and his eyes unblinking and staring right at the screen. This guy has been playing for longer than I have!

I should write a guide or FAQ on Ez2Dancer. Players like that, newbies and players in general need to be educated on the value of freestyling. I've seen some really extreme freestyle routines that leave even me in awe. Freestyling a hard song like ZtarwarZ, Theme of Ez2Dj or Dieoxin really takes the cake (I'm working on a routine for Dieoxin now!).

Lastly, Ez2Dancer should not be compared to DDR or other Konami/BeMaNi games, because they're simply in different leagues. But since people love comparing and badmouthing Ez2Dancer anyway, let's draw up a comparison. BeMaNi focuses on making difficult technical songs. Freestyling is at a minimum because of the nature of the steps. You gain applause by being able to pass/ace the difficult songs. In Ez2Dancer, technicality is at a minimum, to focus on freestyling. BeMaNi also features a "wide" array of songs. Yeah. Wide, but the songs are generic and sound alike anyway! They have a limited genre selection, the majority of the songs being techno, euro or dance. Most of the songs are not memorable at all (or you'd remember them for the wrong reasons. Case in point, Bag). In all my days of playing DDR I've only really really liked 3 songs (out of their hundreds), Healing Vision (Angelic Mix), So Deep (Perfect Sphere Remix), and era (Nostal Mix). The others are just so-so. But in Ez2Dancer, I ended up liking all the songs, and I would even slink into the Easy Mode to play the songs that are unavailable in the Hard Mode. Ez2Dancer has less songs than a game like DDR, sure, but the songs are very rich and varied. From hip hop to funk, from soul to fusion, from pop dance to rock, from Latin-style to techno. And in general, I think Korean games are better in this aspect than Japanese games as well.

Haha okay I'll end this post now, seeing how long it's gotten. I always told Abby that if I started a blog it'll probably be more like a ranting post.