I can finally say with a straight face that ITG does indeed rock

Spent some time at IZ yesterday. Played a few rounds of ITG, then went to play some more DDR. IZ's DDRs keep getting more and more fucked up, let me tell you. One of the Extremes was beyond fucked up. First of all, the straps that connect the P1/P2 platforms together was so loose, if you used P2, it'd visibly (and tactically) move quite a distance. It was such a mindfuck, I gave up after about 5 steps. The P1 side was just completely FUBARed to the point where I couldn't land a single freeze arrow causing a swift failure of Kiss Kiss Kiss.

Ok, so enough about DDR. When I went to play another round of ITG, the several members of the DDR Global BBS crew was there including foyboy21 and Metroid23. We played a few rounds of ITG which was a lot of fun. Everybody was really cool in person. foyboy owned me mightily in Centipede, but I managed to own him in ITG while we were playing Utopia (of course he didn't play half the song, so I guess it's just as well). Of course at this point I was so tired from the last 2 hours of arrow smashing that I was sucking hardcore in ITG. Then again, playing next to foyboy, most people would look like sucky amateurs anyway.

Bend Your Mind, which came up for me as a random selection was fucking insane. All kinds of PIU style quads/triads and crazy double freezes while having to hit other arrows with your hands. Some wild stuff, but lots of fun. The sensors just didn't seem sensitive enough on the P2 side for many of my attempts to register, and since I'm not very good at freeze steps into hand plants, I kept losing my footing on one of my feet during the freezes. I don't know whether to blame my aging joints, or just need more practice. I played a couple of other songs with foy that had all kinds of crazy 3/4 step songs and they were a lot of fun. All the crazy SM mods aside, this is an element that DDR doesn't have that's pretty cool and new. The sucky options menu seems a little less sucky now, and the timing window seems to be getting crisper all the time. Good stuff. I think ITG is finally transcending the point of being an "arcade Stepmania DDR rip-off" into being something pretty damn cool.

The new arrows rock. I tried both skins and they are very pretty. Foy said that they are now using 3D vectors instead of sprites like before which allows for nicer looking arrows (complete with a pretty shiny effect as they scroll) and better looking effects. Good shit.

Oh, and to Foy: for the record I may have said, "ITG sucks", but I *never* said it was gay. :P I reserve that for "USgay" mix.