One Step Closer To Heaven

Over the past few days I’ve been trying to step beyond the 3-foot songs I’ve been mastering so far, and stretching my wings/feet further to the 4 and 5 foot categories. This has been an interesting challenge because it has involved getting much faster, as well as learning a few of what I call “special moves”. My own terms for some of these (since I don’t know the standard DDR slang) are half-beat triplets, forced foot-switches, and sequential diagonals. Half-beat triplets are when three steps need to be taken in the time normally taken for two. Forced foot-switching is when a holding step with one foot means you’re left to use the other foot for steps on all 3 remaining buttons (which can mean, for instance, having to use your left foot on the right button). Sequential diagonals aren’t particularly special – it means jumping on two buttons in a diagonal a few times – but on 4-foot and higher difficulties you’re expected to do this faster and more frequently, sometimes with many in a row. Maybe these don’t have terms in the DDR communities since they’re seen as being easy and standard anyway – if so I don’t care; I’ve named them now, and they’re still special to me. My precious babies…

So, progress wise I feel I’m doing well. I can get As in quite a few 4-foot songs now, though admittedly not always reliably. Since I don’t have that many songs with 4-foot available I decided to try and do some 5-foot songs too, and was quite surprised with how well I could do – a couple of As and Bs, as well as a few Cs, and most surprisingly an AA on one song. So either I’ve got some very easy 5-foot songs, or I’ve been doing some pretty fiendish 4-footers (I think possibly the latter given the trouble I had breaking into this level, though the AA 5-foot song is obviously very much simpler than others).

However, this progress has come at a price, and that price is hard work. After the first 30 minutes I spent solely doing 4-foot songs my legs felt like jelly and I had to take a rest before I could continue. I’ve gotten a bit more used to them now, but the two hour sessions I tend to do have still been very exhausting, with need of frequent breaks and breathers. And it’s not just physical exhaustion either – the concentration on timing in this game can really exhaust you mentally. By the end of the two hours I find that although I could maybe keep going physically, mentally I’m just incapacitated. I can’t concentrate on the steps enough to time anything right or prepare for different moves, and the arrows just flash by whilst I whimper pathetically. I’m going to have to give up on my habit of writing up a report right after playing – I just can’t gather my thoughts properly, let alone try to think of interesting or witty comments (that’s hard enough for me anyway). My left ankle’s also been playing up a bit. I sprained it a few months ago trying to learn to ice skate – that was an even more embarrassing and pathetic event than trying DDR (it doesn’t help when 8 year olds pick it up in seconds, whilst after an hour you’re still clutching to the barrier in mortal fear). Sometimes after heavier gaming my ankle starts aching again, but (un)fortunately this shouldn’t get in the way of continuing to play.

I’m still making what I consider to be silly newbie mistakes, like mixing the up and down arrows, and completely mis-timing certain jumps. I’m also really terrible at songs where the arrow speed is frustratingly slow, or where the speed changes dramatically at several stages in the song. But in spite of these troubles I am still pleased with how far I’ve gotten to date. I’m now doing well in songs that looked utterly impossible ten days ago. Sometimes I find myself not needing to concentrate as much on the game, and just let my feet glide over the buttons themselves. The game’s coming a lot more naturally to me now. Lyrics have been getting stuck in my head a lot, and some mornings I wake up seeing arrows and imagining steps in my mind, which is perhaps a sign I’ve been playing too much. But it’s getting me one step closer to heaven (baby), which is one step closer to you. However, Billie Jean is not my lover (she’s just a girl), and as I try to make my way to the ordinary world, I will survive, in the gay bar, gay bar. Mah-na mah-na (do do-do do).

There are frustrations though. Many of them are to do with problems revolving around the Stepmania program itself, and though I won’t let that interfere with my overall rating of the DDR genre, permit me a little rant. I was told there was an “Event Mode” whereby you wouldn’t have to play 3 stages at a time, you would just keep selecting songs endlessly (otherwise it takes you to the high score and credits screen after 3 songs and you have to go through the very poor menu system to start again). I figured this would be a popular option, and searched in all the usual places – general options, gameplay options, machine options, miscellaneous… Where did I eventually find the damned thing? “Coin Options”. Why for the love of god is there such a things as coin options?! Why is such an important gameplay feature in there? Coin options has other things in it like how many “coins” you need for a “credit”, and how many games you can have per credit (coins are “inserted” simply by pressing a button – thankfully this whole system can be turned off). There’s even a book-keeping screen so you can keep track of how many “coins” you’ve “spent”. Why, I ask? Why?! Who the hell would want to play at home pretending that they have some slot machine on their computer? Or are there weirdos that actually build a whole DDR machine in their houses with full metal pads and coin slots and everything? If so, are these people allowed to breed? What is wrong with people that they would actually choose their game at home to have all the stupid set-up quirks of an arcade game? Do they get some sadistic pleasure from this, or are they actually imagining themselves in an arcade area surrounded by adoring fans as they play? I’m reminded of my original biased conceptions from three weeks ago of what home-playing DDR fans “must” be like…

Also, the difficulty ratings are so very poorly laid out. I can understand that some 4-foot songs are like 5-foots and so forth – I can excuse some subjective ratings on that. But on top of that are the game classifications of Light, Standard and Heavy difficulty areas. It would be logical for the game to simply put all 2 and 3-foots into Light, 4 to 6-foots in Standard and 7-foot or above in Heavy, or something along those lines at least. Instead the people designing the step-charts have to choose which foot level goes into which difficulty ranking, meaning even further confusion over difficulty levels. There are 2-foot songs in Standard and 5-foot songs in Light. To confound the issue even more, although you can switch difficulty levels within the music menu, what songs are currently displayed is purely dependant on which songs fit the difficulty you’re currently showing. So if you’re in Light mode certain easy 3 or 4 foot songs won’t show up unless you switch over to Standard. This makes it a giant nuisance to navigate through the music looking for ones you’re able to play – in the end you have to try and memorise what foot ratings the songs are given on the different difficulty levels. This isn’t easy with several dozen tracks. It’s all so frustrating when it could be solved with a far simpler system!

On a final note, I went out to a danceclub last night for a friend’s birthday. The DJ was playing lot of 80s stuff, and at one point Billie Jean came on. I was pretty shocked – it’s not a song often played in clubs, but more importantly it’s the song I’ve been playing the most of by far in Stepmania, and the first 4-footer I got an A in. So after getting that A I was wondering just how good my dancing to this song would be. I didn’t have my dance mat with me unfortunately, but I tried dancing to some of the steps I remembered – doing my half-beat triplets and forced foot-switches. I avoided doing any sequential diagonal jumps, since that sort of thing might have drawn too much attention… Overall I’m sure I looked very silly, but thankfully the club was dark and the few people that knew me there were already quite intoxicated. Also, I’m guessing it’s just as silly looking as my normal dancing. I did get some compliments for my dancing that night actually, but I think it was more for effort than style.

Positives: Still improving my skill at this. Y’know, that’s been about the only positive there’s been to the genre so far. Oh yeah, and my mat doesn’t stink as much any more (even though I probably do – so sweaty!)
Negatives: Frustration with Stepmania itself aside, and ignoring the current pain in my ankle, the biggest negative has to be with how this game creeps into you when you play it too much. I’ve generally been doing 2 hours every two or three days, with extra hour sessions when I get the chance. Any game played this often will get into your dreams and subconscious thoughts, and it’s not particularly nice. For people playing this game every day it must simply be a part of their life, always somewhere in the back recesses of their mind, and that’s pretty freaky from my perspective…
Overall so far: This game still hasn’t gripped me, and I still don’t see the general appeal behind the genre. It is no longer an interesting peculiarity and is more and more becoming hard work. I’m toiling at it purely for the aim of achieving better scores. Could someone point out where the fun is?

3 comments August 20th, 2006