Definitely a peak DDR game. DDRMAX is pretty much a soft reboot of the series in a lot of ways. The setlist is almost entirely brand new, the announcer dude has been replaced, the rendered dancers have been replaced by FMV shots of various vibes, and the game has a brand new focused goal of getting players to challenge themselves and push towards new limits.
The setlist, while actually smaller than 5thmix, is way more dense with bangers to make pretty much a quintessential DDR setlist. They got funky grooves, sugary speedcore, eurobeat, J-pop, penis music, whatever the fuck you'd classify telephone operator as, the setlist is just fuckin LOADED dude. quality over quantity for sure. My personal favorite song in the setlist is www.blonde girl, that shit goes directly into my bloodstream dude fuck yeah
The biggest tonal change of DDRMAX just comes from its difficulty. This game is HARD, dude. I'm still not that great at DDR with my skill mostly capping out around the high 8-low 9 mark for heavy charts, and I found I wasn't able to clear a lot of the heavy charts in this game. I've noticed that compared to the earlier generation of DDR, this game is much more punishing with misses and it was extremely common for me to slip up and watch my entire health meter just plummet right into danger booing territory. Considering the fact that this is the 6th mix in the series and I'm sure that the people living in arcades at an eternal DDR grind needed something new to eat so konami had to deliver the goods, but it does come at the cost of feeling like quite a difficulty spike. The game doesn't even have foot ratings anymore, so you just kinda have to eyeball a weird 5 point graph to predict how difficult the song might be. Honestly I am fine with the lack of foot ratings because that lack of info definitely made me more willing to experiment and try things that I otherwise might have been scared off by a high foot rating to try.
Self-improvement is the name of the game here, and DDRMAX actually is genius in how it very subtly leads dedicated players to its true goal that they should strive to clear: take the MAX 300 challenge. The game slowly leads you on through notifications that there's something hidden in this game, and only by mastering the game can you find and clear it. By getting a final stage full combo on any heavy-difficulty song, your game will be greeted by the EXTRA STAGE, where MAX 300, the legendary 10-foot boss song, will be your only selection. It's an incredibly difficult song, moving at ludicrous speed and requiring fast reading and faster footwork to actually stand a chance against. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't clear it myself, though I one day hope to be able to. I can read the notes just fine, I just have slow-ass gamer legs that can't keep up with the heat that song demands. I could clear it in training with the speed set to 2/5 though!!!
This game basically marks where DDR starts cranking up the heat, both metaphorically and literally. Despite the arcade versions remaining on system 573 hardware based off the PS1, the console versions are now on 6th gen hardware. I will admit, the slower PS2 saving times definitely give me some time to breathe after hard songs, so that's pretty cool. I've already been deeply sunk into the DDR realm at this point, and these games just keep staying as fun to play now as they were when I was starting.
(that all being said, pour one out for the redoctane ignition 2.0 pad I was using for all of my DDR sessions up to this point, the DDRMAX heat caused a tear in the fabric that my attempts to recover only ended up worsening. Shoutouts to Tom James, legendary game localizer and the tony hawk of dating sims, for supplying me with the dance pad that got me this far down the rabbithole, and I'm glad I was able to use it to play tokimemomix, but alas, she has reached the end of her times. Now I am using a DDRgame bootleg TX-2000 hard pad that I've coupled with an assload of penny mods and controller converters to work across all my consoles at a tolerable level. It was actually one of the lead directors at Epic Games of all people that helped me get this replacement pad, so I guess my DDR pads are always going to have some sort of game industry connections, for some reason.)
The setlist, while actually smaller than 5thmix, is way more dense with bangers to make pretty much a quintessential DDR setlist. They got funky grooves, sugary speedcore, eurobeat, J-pop, penis music, whatever the fuck you'd classify telephone operator as, the setlist is just fuckin LOADED dude. quality over quantity for sure. My personal favorite song in the setlist is www.blonde girl, that shit goes directly into my bloodstream dude fuck yeah
The biggest tonal change of DDRMAX just comes from its difficulty. This game is HARD, dude. I'm still not that great at DDR with my skill mostly capping out around the high 8-low 9 mark for heavy charts, and I found I wasn't able to clear a lot of the heavy charts in this game. I've noticed that compared to the earlier generation of DDR, this game is much more punishing with misses and it was extremely common for me to slip up and watch my entire health meter just plummet right into danger booing territory. Considering the fact that this is the 6th mix in the series and I'm sure that the people living in arcades at an eternal DDR grind needed something new to eat so konami had to deliver the goods, but it does come at the cost of feeling like quite a difficulty spike. The game doesn't even have foot ratings anymore, so you just kinda have to eyeball a weird 5 point graph to predict how difficult the song might be. Honestly I am fine with the lack of foot ratings because that lack of info definitely made me more willing to experiment and try things that I otherwise might have been scared off by a high foot rating to try.
Self-improvement is the name of the game here, and DDRMAX actually is genius in how it very subtly leads dedicated players to its true goal that they should strive to clear: take the MAX 300 challenge. The game slowly leads you on through notifications that there's something hidden in this game, and only by mastering the game can you find and clear it. By getting a final stage full combo on any heavy-difficulty song, your game will be greeted by the EXTRA STAGE, where MAX 300, the legendary 10-foot boss song, will be your only selection. It's an incredibly difficult song, moving at ludicrous speed and requiring fast reading and faster footwork to actually stand a chance against. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't clear it myself, though I one day hope to be able to. I can read the notes just fine, I just have slow-ass gamer legs that can't keep up with the heat that song demands. I could clear it in training with the speed set to 2/5 though!!!
This game basically marks where DDR starts cranking up the heat, both metaphorically and literally. Despite the arcade versions remaining on system 573 hardware based off the PS1, the console versions are now on 6th gen hardware. I will admit, the slower PS2 saving times definitely give me some time to breathe after hard songs, so that's pretty cool. I've already been deeply sunk into the DDR realm at this point, and these games just keep staying as fun to play now as they were when I was starting.
(that all being said, pour one out for the redoctane ignition 2.0 pad I was using for all of my DDR sessions up to this point, the DDRMAX heat caused a tear in the fabric that my attempts to recover only ended up worsening. Shoutouts to Tom James, legendary game localizer and the tony hawk of dating sims, for supplying me with the dance pad that got me this far down the rabbithole, and I'm glad I was able to use it to play tokimemomix, but alas, she has reached the end of her times. Now I am using a DDRgame bootleg TX-2000 hard pad that I've coupled with an assload of penny mods and controller converters to work across all my consoles at a tolerable level. It was actually one of the lead directors at Epic Games of all people that helped me get this replacement pad, so I guess my DDR pads are always going to have some sort of game industry connections, for some reason.)