You all should know by now that I'm a freak. A DDR Freak (www.ddrfreak.com) and I'm proud. But little do you know that there's more to the game of Dance Dance Revolution than just flailing your arms and dancing like an idiot. No, there's tons more. There's a dictionary of terms that inside DDR freaks like me use, and we like to capitalize on our gaming. One way to do this is to get good gear.

Gear you ask?

Yes, gear. You see, there's lots of Dance Pads out on the market now and it's hard to tell which one is the best. So let me help you.

The Dance Performance 2000 (Sounds like a machine) is quick and dirty way to learn DDR, but in short, lacks many things a hardcore player wants.

The pad is just a little bit smaller than a usual Arcade Pad and it's a soft pad. Arcade pads are metal and much more stable. The bad things about soft pads are that you can easily break them or tear their padding, and then there is the issue of whether or not the pad will stay on the floor or slide all over the place. DP2K (My clever shortened version of it) is mediocre to all of these areas.

The pad has the usual buttons, the up, down, left and right arrows, as well as X, O, Square, and Triangle buttons. Conveniently placed so you can select things from menus without another controller in your hands. You don't have to stomp on the arrows to get a response either. It's awfully responsive and works great, the slightest touch will give you the step you need. One complaint is that the separations between a step area and a button area is not clearly defined, leading you to hit a wrong step button by accident.

Another tiff with the pad is that it moves too easily. When performing Brilliant2U I end up on the other side of my room! No matter what moves you perform on the pad, it will slip and it gets really annoying after a while. It throws you off and you might even have to restart because of this. Another problem is that you cannot perform one of the more pivotal moves in DDR on the pad. The slide. Sliding in DDR is huge because it's easy and looks very cool, but because the surface of the pad is so sticky and firm (Even for a soft pad!) you'll end up falling if you try to slide. You will try to move your foot but when you do, the pad will literally come with you I imagine if a person were fast enough, he/she could end up injuring themselves.

Look at it this way, the wiring is good, and it'll last longer than the pad will.

In short, The DP2K is a beginner's pad. It's a nice pad to learn the basic steps and moves on but when the player becomes a more trying and more aggressive DDR player, this pad will be horrible. Buy the game, buy one pad, learn and become better. Once you become real good at the game, get a RedOctane Pad.

Recommended: Yes