Pulsen

The best thing about this game is by far the mapping! I really enjoy how the music fits with the maps, and the difficulty level is really consistent, which is difficult to come across in something like stepmania, (and even occasionally in honest to god DDR.) Great for a workout and very technically easy to get working. I like their workout mode particularly- it sorts songs by level and then gives you a small handful to pick from so song selection can be quick and you don't have to stop, really. That's a new approach to workout modes and it works here fantastically!

Stepmaniaでいいじゃん

เป็นเกมส์ที่พัฒนามาจาก stepmania ซึ่งเพลงจะไม่สามารถเพิ่มแบบstepmaniaได้ จะเป็นเพลงที่ทางผู้พัฒนาเขาทำลงมาให้เล่น (ตัวอย่าง DJMAX) ลอฃงเล่นเพลงแล้วก็ถือว่าใช้ได้เลยทีเดียวไม่เสียดายเงิน

Guys.... Never stop doing what you're doing. Let's get into this. I am probably THE MOST (arguable) hardcore rythm gamer out there. I have definitely played it all with the exception of OSU because frankly, its just not viable without a certain peripheral like Guitar/DJ Hero. This game gets a lot of comparison to stepmania and rightfully so. The Kicker: This game offers things that other indie games do not, Consistency. NOT ONCE have I felt I dropped a combo because of a misplaced, very random note. Not to mention that some of the challenge modes of the songs offer very unique twists such as; -Twisting notes -Skipping around the screen to the beat -Flipping the note gates around -Bending the path -and many more.. Great game. Only reason I even wrote a review was because just finished the challenge mode on Nyan Cat and felt compelled to. I will be pushing this to freinds and members of my community. Starting tonight you can view step setups on my stream. twitch.tv/xbootlegx

Exactly what I am looking for in a dance pad game. Lots of songs, lots of difficulty levels, lost of customizability. Good for working out or playing for high score. The music is very video gamey, featuring a lot of dance tracks that sound like they were inspired by NES game style music, which is fine by me. Good songs to dance to.

(note, the developer comment on this is referring to a review I did for this years ago, this one you're reading is a completely different review) I revisited this game after a few years to see how this game holds up and it unfortunately is worse to use today than it is back then. Not to say that much has changed here, but the world of customizable rhythm game clients has grown around it, and this is just unusable by comparison. I understand that this isn't an 'engine', and it's a 'game', but the main problem comes from this game running on an unmodifiable version of the Stepmania 5 engine. The SM5 engine is pretty decent by itself, but the problem is that when you close it off and remove features from it, it loses a lot of its appeal. For example, you can't add any noteskins to this. You can't view or modify any of the charts in a chart editor. You can't enable assist clap or autoplay. You can't enable c-mod. It doesn't seem like you can even use a normal scoring system even after fiddling through the options. It would always give me 100% as long as I hit every note (there was an option in the gameplay settings that supposedly let you change the scoring system, but I didn't notice a difference. maybe it didn't work). There were other small annoyances I would run into while browsing through the song list (including crashing, hell yes, that's early access baby), but you get the idea. It's unfortunate because stylistically, it's all pretty decent. The charts are good (and there's a lot of them. The store page says 85 songs but I counted over 100), the noteskins aren't terrible (mines could use a different texture), and the menus look neat, also. The song list I'm not a fan of (1/3 of the track list is Renard under various pseudonyms, the rest isn't much better), but if you dig the music, the charts are not bad at all. So are these fancy charts worth putting up with the game's annoyances? Not for $15, I would say. And you might be thinking "Hey, $15 isn't even a lot!", and for a rhythm game, it really isn't. But you have to consider just how many good stepmania song packs and themes are available for free right now. There's an endless amount of them, with a lot of them looking just as nice as Pulsen does. This is a tough sell even if everything was perfect, so the problems amplify my hesitancy to recommend this 100 times over. If you don't care about stepmania at all, and you want an easy all in one package of dancing goodness... buy In the Groove on the PS2! Or this. But if you are already familiar with stepmania or openitg, this probably won't impress you.

Sure it people compare it to stepmania, I have played both. Personally I prefer this the arrow maps are all carefully made and the music is good. They have recently released a path which is a vast improvement over the previous version. There are a lot of special effects like invisible notes random speed boosts and slow downs and frankly they made it pretty unfair. The recent path has got rid of a lot of this nonsense so now it is more pure and I guess a bit more like stepmania but better. Definitely recommend it :)

Lots of fun~! Would recommend! I did recieve this Pulsen game for free, as a gift from one of my friends on Steam. Harder than the original DDR! Pulsen offers more difficulty levels than the original DDR game. What's cool with some of the newer updates is that you can see the scoreboards of your past games and see your friends' scores, and you can save past games to challenge yourself to beat your past score. The only thing that is con that I've experienced so far is little bugs like the game crashing when START and SELECT are both selected at the same time during the ending scoreboard of a game. Another one is sometimes the songs don't sync the songs I've already played, so I don't see a score or earn points to unlock new songs. With that glitch, I just had to use "cheat mode" and just unlock all the songs so I could play them all without having to reinstall the same. What I would like to see in the future of Puslen is for them to add in a work out/gym/exercise mode where the game can count calories/burn fat, etc.

[h1]Step to This[/h1] I've owned Pulsen for some time now, but it is only recently I've been able to enjoy it the way I've always wanted to. With the addition of the Songs Don't End option and Workout Mode the game has become exactly what I needed. I'm an old DDR fan (34 years old as of this writing) who fell out of the habit as I got older and moved around. I've gained 60-70 pounds since then depending on when I weigh myself, and let me tell you, most of it is not muscle! :D I have a dad gut, and now that I'm getting older cholesterol is a real concern that I have to deal with. The best way is through regular exercise, not medication. The problem is, I've never exercised in my life unless someone was holding a proverbial gun to my head. I am former military and in that circumstance I could be fired for not exercising regularly, so I did. I never enjoyed it, though, and always did the bare minimum I could get away with. When I think about DDR, Stepmania, and now Pulsen, I don't think about exercise. I think about how much I love the music and how easy it is for me to get into the gameplay of stepping in time with the songs. It short circuits my innate aversion to taking good care of myself :P I'm going to start keeping an "exercise" log of all my sessions in Workout Mode detailing how many songs I did at what difficulties each day, and I do plan on making this a part of my daily routine. I work from home and have literally no excuse not to now that I have a fun activity that could add years to my life. I have a 3 year old now and I'd love to stick around for her as long as possible, and as far as I'm concerned the Pulsen team are saints for helping me do that in a way that is unique to this sort of game. They're filling a niche and doing a damn fine job of it. [h1]Bottom Line[/h1] I know I sound dramatic, but I mean every word. I can't recommend this game highly enough for people who once loved DDR and wouldn't mind stepping up to the mat once again. [h1]Side Notes[/h1] Yes, you can download Stepmania and play a huge number of songs for absolutely free as many other reviewers have pointed out, but I don't feel like the Pulsen team is asking too much at $15 for around 100 original songs with at least 5x original step charts per song. The problem with Stepmania and any community project is that there is no quality control, the song charts you download might be good, or they might be awful, or they might not even be designed for human feet at all (keyboard play only). You don't know sometimes until you try them and that means wasted time. If you're an adult and realize how precious your time is, buying Pulsen is a good way to avoid a lot of hassle finding new quality music to step to. I'm not sure every song in Pulsen is completable on a mat at every setting, but every song is completable on at least some settings, and that is enough for me.

If your a fan of DDR or Stepmania this game is perfect. Unlike using emulators (Stepmania) the quality of the songs/stepfiles is top notch! I've been a fan of stepmania for years and I'm really enjoying this game!