Getting In The Groove

August 8th, 2006 at 08:36pm Grey

As I type I’m still sweating from my last session of Stepmania. The game doesn’t exhaust you or put you out of breath (at least not at the difficulty levels I’m on) but it certainly can cause you to perspire – or glow if you’re a woman. The heat doesn’t help obviously, nor does wearing clothes. I’m not yet desperate enough to dance around naked on my own – but if the heat gets worse I may have to consider my options…

At the start of this challenge I was determined that I wouldn’t rely on others for advice, and I’d let the game speak for itself. Well, I can’t exactly help it if people starting giving hints in the comments here, so I have learned a few things recently. Like I can stand on buttons whenever I don’t have to hit them. I would have figured this out eventually I’m sure, but knowing it now has given a very major boost to my performance. Before I was having a lot of balance problems because I was trying to keep my feet in the little gap between the buttons, and there really wasn’t enough space at all. I’m much more comfortable now that I know how to play a bit more properly…

I’m trying to learn more about the game mechanics and the scoring system, but it’s not exactly crystal clear. You get marked on your timing with each move – depending on the timing of your step you get rated as Miss, Poor, Okay, Good, Great, Perfect or Marvellous. “Perfect” sounds like it should be the best, but “Marvellous” uses flashier text so I must assume that it’s better. You have a health bar that starts at 50%, and Misses or Poors cause it to go down, whilst better ratings make it go up. If it drops to zero you lose, and I assume the ending position of the bar affects your overall score. The three highest move rankings can count as part of a combo, so one of the challenges of the game seems to be to try and string together the longest sequences of well-timed moves to get a high combo. At the end of each song, assuming you didn’t fail it, you get a score from E to some high number of As – the best I’ve gotten was AA on one song, and I’m guessing to do better I’d have to get Marvellous or Perfect on each and every step.

I did some amendments to my mat to try and fix the troubles I was having with it slipping, and with my inability to tell where the heck the buttons where. I taped some squares of polystyrene and cardboard to the bottom under where the arrows buttons are, so I can now feel bumps under them with my feet to know I’m stepping in the right place. This extra padding on the bottom also handily doesn’t slip as much, which all helps to improve my performance. Okay, so it looks a bit silly, but since my mat already looks like the results of a paint factory explosion I’m not too fussed.

So, with these developments today’s practise gave me much improved results. On a new 2-foot song I downloaded I didn’t miss a beat on my first try, and got a rank of AA. On almost all of my 3-foot songs I now have A or B rankings. The song I’m best at by far is still Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”, on which I can easily string up combos of over 100 on both 2 and 3 foot modes. I’m not sure if my skill at this song is due to me knowing it well, it having a strong bass beat, or perhaps me having some as yet undiscovered magic paedo powers.

But regardless of my great progress with 3-foot songs, doing well on the 4-foot difficulty level seems as elusive as a DDR fan in a conversation. I can barely last half a minute in Billie Jean before my health bar drops to zero. Other songs have bewildered and dismayed me ever more. I still have some difficulty with certain areas of the 3-foot songs – such as whenever the arrows change speed, or when I have to press two arrows at once that aren’t opposite each other (left + down for instance). Hopefully with all of this practise shall make perfect, but a part of me worries that these early advances have just been me getting to grips with how to play, and at some point soon I’ll hit a wall where improvement will become far harder and require tedious amounts of practise.

I’ve downloaded a lot more songs, though it does seem to be generally hard to find tracks I like. Still, I’ve got around 120 songs now and there are a fair few I love in there, though most of it I haven’t tried yet. Some of the most fun stuff is the different TV themes, like Fraggle Rock and Captain Planet. I downloaded a number of DDR mixes, but I simply don’t recognise the vast majority of the songs, and trying to dance to them always turns out to be futile. If I don’t know how the music goes my timing is all out. I’m hoping at some point to get the DDRExtreme 80s Mix, which looks like it’ll offer me a lot of fun.

Now I’m slightly ashamed to admit this, but I’ll be open about it – I did catch myself smiling when playing this today, and whenever I got an A on 3-foot difficulty Billie Jean I jumped in the air and shouted “yes!” I am beginning to enjoy this, especially the challenge of improving myself. I need to give this time to develop more, and see if when improvement comes slower I’m still enjoying myself, but at the moment I can say I’m having fun.

I do still feel shame though. I’ve kept this whole thing a dirty secret from my housemates – I’ll let them think what they want about the thumping noises and the loud music. The few friends I’ve told that aren’t into video games have given me weird looks, and when I stress that it’s only for a web-site they look at me weirder. It’s not that I really care what they think of me, but there is a part of me that’s looking at myself and thinking exactly the same way. I’m dancing at home, on my own, sober. The idea that someone would willingly choose to do this on a regular basis is still disturbing. But it’s only been half a week’s play so far, and perhaps there is more that this game has to offer that will keep me hooked. For now the absurdity will continue, and I’ll just blame it on the boogie…

Positives: “The power is yours!” I loved Captain Planet as a kid. Now as a grown-up (physically at least) I can appreciate how awfully and wonderfully cheesy it was. Being able to dance to stuff like this is fantastic, and is by far the best highlight of this game. Part of my desire to improve is stemmed from the fact that I have more songs I want to dance to that can only be played on higher difficulties.
Negatives: This game is very poor for beginners. The step files mixed by fans tend to be aimed at very high, sometimes stupendous, difficulty levels. They are also sometimes mis-labelled, badly rated for difficulty, and even poorly timed to the song. Trying to get the most out of this game requires a *lot* of effort and searching around.
Overall so far: There is promise and there is despair, but for once the two seem to be on a more even level. The game is opening up, and as I more properly get into it now I will be in a better position to judge it highly or harshly.

Sorry if the updates haven’t been of much interest to date as I get to grips with this thing, but I can promise that my next session should provide a more interesting report. For I shall not be alone, and I do not intend to stay sober…

Entry Filed under: StepMania