Ultimate Next Generation Dancing hits the PlayStation 2!

Dance Factory for PlayStation 2 is a dancing game similar to Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) or In The Groove (ITG). Dance Factory's ultimate difference from DDR and ITG is its ability to create dance steps for any music CD from your collection and allows you to dance to it! You'll never be limited to what song you can dance to, you choose and Dance Factory delivers.

Dance Factory offers up 6 single player modes and 4 multiplayer modes. The single player Modes include: Normal, Endurance, Eye Toy Camera mode, Fitness, Record, and Creature. Normal mode lets you dance to your own music CDs or you can even dance to the 5 included songs on the game disc. The 5 included songs on the disc are: I like It, I love It; I Like The Way; Pon de Replay; Don't Cha; and Get Down On It. Endurance mode lets you play through all of the tracks on a CD back-to-back. Eye Toy Camera mode puts you on the screen and adds hand sensors on the left and right side of the arrow targets. You must have an Eye Toy USB Camera for PlayStation 2 in order to be able to play Eye Toy Camera mode. Fitness mode is just like Normal mode except that the game now keeps track of how many calories you have burned. Record mode lets you create your own dance steps for your favorite songs. Creature mode, which is the coolest mode, lets you dance with a creature that has been magically generated from your music CDs. The more CDs you play with, the more likely you'll create and discover new creatures. The creatures will dance and react with how well you perform each time. You can customize your creature with various accessories such as glasses, hats, watches, mp3 players and more. You can purchase more accessories for your creatures and background themes from the shop menu with the money you earn while dancing. The multiplayer modes include: Battle, Cooperative, Creature Battle, and Tournament. Battle mode is a 2 player versus mode. Cooperative mode has you playing with a friend to achieve the highest possible score and earn double the amount of cash. Creature Battle mode lets you and someone else battle your creatures and unleash attacks upon each other while dancing. Tournament mode lets you set up a tournament for up to 16 players.

Once Dance factory finishes loading into your PlayStation 2's memory, you can take the Dance Factory game disc out and then pop in your own music CD from your collection. So the only time you actually need the Dance Factory game disc, is just for the game to load the first time into the PlayStation 2's memory.

Dance Factory's ability to create dance steps for your music CDs is absolutely perfect! The steps match up wonderfully with each song and it's able to create these step patterns in less than 15 seconds per song track! The game offers three different difficulty level step patterns per song. There's Easy, Normal and Pro. The easy level is perfect for those who are new to dance games. The normal level is perfect for players who have played dance games before but don't consider themselves experts. The pro level offers up quite a challenge each time, so this level is perfect for dance game experts. Dance Factory is also able to save any or all dance patterns it creates to a memory card if you desire, so that it doesn't have to re-create step patterns each time you load the same CD. You can rename your CD and tracks in the game if you desire too.

Dance Factory also includes 2 fun extra bonuses for you to mess with. There's Cubric, a block matching mini-game where you must line up four or more same colored cubes to earn points and move on to the next stage. You can even play this mini-game with a dance mat while Dance Factory creates step patterns for your songs. The other fun extra bonus is a CD Player mode. It allows you to listen to your music with the accompaniment of the background themes from the main game or even watch one of your creatures groove solo style!

Dance Factory's graphics are very good. The background themes available are quite impressive and never dull. Some cool background themes I really enjoyed were the dancing satellites, the crazy rainbow spiral, or even the star blast theme. Each Dance Factory arrow pulses to the music adding a neat dance club style effect. The song choices are unlimited. Realistically, the replay value with this dance game is endless! You'll never run out of great songs or great step patterns ever again. Finally, you can do more now with your CDs. Instead of just listening to them, why not Dance to them with Dance Factory? It's the Ultimate Dance Game on the PlayStation 2!