Current mood:

cheerful

Pump It Up! Zero

So good, so long have been waiting for the next Andamiro's release. This new version of PIU is the heaven for the Speeder Stylers. For the ones who haven't heard of Pump It Up (PIU), this is a game were you use your feets to play at the rithm of the music. It's pretty much like DDR and the like, but it uses 5 arrows instead of just 4, enabling a more fluid, natural and challenging gameplay. You can found the official website at: http://www.piugame.com/

This new version it's a great change from the previous version, Exceed2. For starters, the graphics were greatly revamped, as so was the interface. Now at the select song screen you can see bits of the featured Background Videos from the song you're selecting. The BPM is now shown, and the way you choose the channels and dificulties is completely new. For one time again, the players can choose diferent levels for the song.

There is also several changes into the game modes. First, we have the same two modes from Exceed versions: Arcade Station and Remix Station. They are almost the same as their predecesors. 20 new songs were added to the Arcade Station and 3 to the Remix Station. There were some removals too. The new songs are:

[Banya Channel]
BanYa - Beat Of the War 2
BanYa - Moonlight
BanYa - Love is a Danger Zone pt. 2
BanYa - Phantom
BanYa - Papa Gonzales
BanYa - Jump

[K-POP Channel]
Drunken Tiger - Emergency!
Cho PD - My Friend
Eugene - Wutering Heights
Lazy Bone - Do It Yourself
Turtle - What's Going On?
Eun Ji Won - All Famy
Louis - Chung Hwa Ban Jeom
Spooky Banana - Mr. Fire Fighter
T.o - Footprints
JTL - Enter the Dragon
Perry - STORM
Mina - Turn Around

[POP Channel]
Pandera - I love You Baby
Cachy Huang - Up Up

[Remix Station]
BanYa - Love is a Danger Zone 2 Full
BanYa - K-Hip-Hop Mix VOL.1
BanYa - K-House Mix VOL.1

Worth to comment is that, as Exceed2 Featured Banya's Canon-D as the main song, we got this time a new remix called Love is a Danger Zone 2. This song is wicked and totally cool, and it's a great challenge for the ultimate top players, featuring a maximun of 23 difficulty rating for the Remix version (3 more than Canon-D).

All the new song's are extremely challenging. Seems Andamiro made contact with the top tier players around the world, saw what they were capable of, and decided it was time to increase the challenge. This level of hardcore gameplay will put at test stress the machines, which seems the most solid and sturdy to date.

Also, a new channel was open as a big fanservice. It's the 'Another' Channel, that features some songs with extremely insane steps!!! This is were PIUZ touches the insanity. All of this new steps are unlockeable via the Mission mode.

Mission mode is the substitution for the "Battle Mode", Which I see as a bad loss. Anyway, Mission modes is about doing some songs with mods that will challenge your dancing skills. If you manage to clear the stages, you'll unlock some rewards as new arrow skins, new step charts for another channel... maybe some surprises that Andamiro is still having on their sleeves.

Maybe you'll think that this new release is only for professionals then. Think it twice!!! The last game mode is Easy Station, which will guide you from a rookie begginer on the dance flor, to a hardcore player. Multiple helps, guides and a easy going gameplay will not discourage you from learning some cool moves.

Going to the technical realm, the platfor has changed from Andamiro MK-5 to a MK-6. A comparision between them shows why they new machine performs a lot better:

[Andamiro MK-5]

-CPU INTEL CELERON 1 GHZ

-RAM 128 MB

-NVIDIA NV11 GRAPHIC CARD

-640 X 480 @ 60 HZ VIDEO OUTPUT

- >40GB HDD

[Andamiro MK-6]

-CPU INTEL CELERON 2.4 GHZ

-RAM 256 MB DDR (Up to 4GB)

-NVIDIA GEFORCE FX 5200 128MB VRAM GRAPHIC CARD

-640 X 480 @ 60 HZ VIDEO OUTPUT

-40GB HDD

Not only a new engine but a whole new machine, a brand new experience. I only played it twice, because where it shows, it crowds. But seeing its performance is delightfull, the best version to date. If you love Dance simulation games and see one of this cabins, don't think it twice. You'll not regret it.