Get your groove on
There are some tricky moves to master - even early on in the game while choosing the easiest settings - but once you start chaining them together you can’t help but get carried away with the beat, get your groove on and get really into some of the routines. Jump into a "Dance Battle" and the feeling is electrified as you compete head-to-head with another player to perform moves for points. The "Dance Battle" mode reminds us of Breakdance battles in the 80’s, where one dancer steps forward and the other one watches and then the other dancer takes their turn to out dance them. It’s a great mode if you’ve got other people to play with, though it's a shame you can't play it online.So, as far as gameplay goes, we can’t really fault Dance Central; Kinect performs brilliantly and it’s a lot of fun trying to nail routines. The only thing that you can really be critical of is the song list, which isn’t going to appeal to everyone. It’s clear that developer, Harmonix, has thought carefully about which tracks to include, by choosing music that spans the generations. From 70’s classics like Funky Town to Lady Gaga and Poker Face, there are a lot of familiar tunes among the initial 30+ soundtrack. Nestled among the likes of 2007 hit record, “Crank That” by Soulja Boy you’ll find Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It”, alongside Kylie Minogue’s “Can't Get You Out of My Head” and Kool & The Gang’s 70’s hit “Jungle Boogie.” With more tracks to come via DLC there's hope that more popular tunes will make an appearance, but it would have been nice to see many more tracks available from the outset. It would have also been a good idea to include choreography that was actually used by the artist. The PlayStaiton Move game, SingStar Dance does this with the likes of The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” How much fun would it be to actually perform Beyonce's "Single Ladies" routine?
Over the years, we’ve played many dance games, from Bust a Groove right through to dance mat games such as Dancing Stage Unleashed. Dance Central blows them all off the dance floor in terms of performance and the way you interact with the game. In fact, after spending a lot of time shaking our booty over the holiday period, we doubt it will ever be the same again playing a dance game without true, full body, motion-sensing. Dance Central perhaps lacks some of the high production values of a game like Rock Band, or Guitar Hero, which Harmonix has worked on in the past, but it brings dance crashing into living rooms with a great deal of style.
