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Dance Dance Revolution celebrates its 10th anniversary! Dance Dance Revolution Universe 3 dances its way to you with an all new interface, fun new modes and settings for players of all skill levels, cool smash-hit songs, robust online and offline support and exciting new exclusives. In addition to one of the biggest soundtracks — more than 70 songs spanning from the ’70s to some of today’s hottest tracks — Dance Dance Revolution Universe 3 brings friends together from around the world via Xbox LIVE. Character customization features more than 400 options of clothing, faces, skin tones and hairstyles, allowing players to create the ultimate dancer.

Genre: Music

Publisher: Konami

Developer: Konami

Online Play: 4 Versus

Local Play: 2 Versus

October 24, 2008 –
Dance Dance Revolution has been essentially the same since it was first released in Japan in 1998. DDR Universe 3 follows that tradition with the same directional-based gameplay that the others have enjoyed. While the formula is still functional, I can’t help but feel like the series was passed by nearly a decade ago.

It’s hard not to feel cheated when playing Dance Dance Revolution Universe 3. Why is Konami still releasing these games? They haven’t included much more than an ounce of innovation in any of the “Universe” releases, only adding small modes to the same tired gameplay. Universe 3 is no different. There’s the now-expected Quest Mode, a new and quite unexciting DJ Mode, and a Game Mode that will likely provide the most fun out of anything in the game.

Click here to watch the gameplay.

Regardless, it’s Quest Mode that provides the meatiest experience. You travel around Dance Dance City completing challenges and facing off against bosses in dance battles for money. There’s a multi-tiered progression that suits the game and it’s a decent attempt at giving meaning to your actions, now if only the production wasn’t so poor. You’re stuck forwarding through myriad text bubbles that pop up when you enter or exit a challenge and there’s no option to retry a failed attempt. That means you’re kicked out to a score and loading screen and have to forward through the same exit and entry text all over again. The annoyance you feel from that is only equaled by the frustration that most of the bosses present to anyone but the most loyal DDR diehards.

The Game Mode presents a standard progression that ups the difficulty as you go. It has an arcade feel but doesn’t really differentiate itself enough to be considered as something truly new.

The Xbox Live and competitive multiplayer modes are still where I had my most fun with Dance Dance Revolution Universe 3. There’s an assortment of modifiers that can be applied and there are some cool attack modes that change up the feel of DDR a good bit. It’s just too bad that they’re the same modes that we’ve enjoyed for the last few Universe releases. Still, getting a group of people together and powering through an hour or so of the party mode is reasonably fun given the right amount of alcohol.

Technically speaking, the package is no more refined than any other DDR game that we’ve seen in recent years. There’s the same style of character models and overly flashy art design, and while you can create a custom avatar this time around, it doesn’t differentiate itself visually in any way.

Wave bye, bye.


The list of tracks is the usual techno variety, with the same statistical readouts so players know what they’re getting into before selecting. The most notable artist is once again Jamiroquai with few others that are recognizable. Luckily you can download tracks off of Xbox Live and create your own tracks and dances thanks to the DJ and freestyle modes, so the possibilities are a bit more open than they have been.

Closing Comments
The bottom line here is that Dance Dance Revolution 3 isn