Review: Dance Central 2

Tweet

I am not a very proud man. Having two children and dealing with the trials and tribulations associated with that is a great way to make anyone feel small and useless. Have you always wanted to feel that way if you don’t have kids? Fear not – Dance Central 2 is here to help you out!

I kid, I kid. Like me, if you have no rhythm and have repeatedly demonstrated that you can’t dance at all, your first time playing Dance Central 2 will not magically change that ability. Even after “dancing” to four songs I was not farther ahead than I had been before I started. Except I learned that when I dance I don’t move my feet at all. So, that’s good. Right?

Gameplay

Dance Central 2 uses the Kinect, turning you into the controller. In addition to letting you use your voice to control some aspects of the game by saying things like “XBox, dance”, the interface has you using your right hand to access menu items and using your left to cancel them. I found that for the most part this worked okay, but in some areas like the song selector, the invisible hit target for long lists is a bit too narrow and requires more precision than I’m used to (full disclosure: I’ve been using Kinect for two days now so your mileage may vary).

The first game mode is Normal mode which lets you pick your dancer, your song, your environment, etc. and lets you get in there and get your freak on (Missy Elliot’s Get Your Freak On is one of the songs in Dance Central 2).

There is a super helpful “Break It Down” mode which shows you the moves you did poorly on and gives you a chance to practice each of them one at a time and requires you to “nail” a move three times before Dance Central 2 deems it no longer a thorn in your side. One of the moves, a basic side to side arm pull, was impossible for me to pull off even in practice (I even took off my bulky sweater to try to get it right). After failing a move in Break It Down mode, you’re given the chance to slow things down so that you can try it at a different time signature, sort of like when you watch a fitness show and one of the people in the back is doing only half the exercise. To access these sub menus, you just say things like “XBox, slow it down” and hey presto, you’re good to go. Unless you suck. Like me.

A really neat feature of Dance Central 2 is Fitness Mode, which mixes available songs by length and difficulty. The Warmup playlists lasts 20 minutes and the Long Haul one is about 50. Note: for me and my first go, just playing it on Normal mode equated to Fitness mode for me and even after dancing to the the first song on the easy mode, I was sweating.

At The Games Day Podcast, we’re huge fans of local multiplayer and in a weird way, Kinect is spurring that play style forward. Notably, Dance Central 2 has local multiplayer that pitting players against one another’s routines in a dance off.

Graphics

Dance Central 2 has a cell shaded art style during the opening cinematic. In the game however, characters seem fleshed out but not at all realistic. Not that it’s a big deal – you’re playing a video game and looking at motion to copy it, not fashion or realism.

The visual effects are pretty cool in that it shows you when you land a move and the boombox behind the dancer is covered in stars that light up the better you do, exactly the same way as the star system works in other Harmonix games.

After a bit of dancing, there is also a cool Freestyle mode where you can go crazy and the Kinect takes about 10 pictures of you rapidly while it measures your movement in pink squares onscreen. It then turns them into embarrassing snapshots you can share with your friends via Microsoft’s Kinect Share website.

Audio

Dance Central 2 comes with 44 songs on the disc and unlike some of Harmonix’s other games, are all unlocked from the start. If you own the original Dance Central game, you can import all 32 of those songs for 400 MS fantasy bucks.

The game includes a lot of great tracks like Sandstorm (Darude), Baby Got Back (Sir Mix-a-Lot), Born This Way (Lady Gaga), and Mai Ai Hee (O-Zone) that are (I can’t believe I’m typing this) pretty darn fun to (attempt) to dance to.

Conclusion

Dance Central 2 is actually pretty good. I say it that way because I’m not really a rhythm game kinda guy, and especially am not a dancing kind of guy. Unless I’m doing it with my kids. I can see myself playing it in the future not necessarily to five star all the songs and get 1000 gamerscore, but as a way to dance for 15 minutes a night and get a bit of cardio in. It’s in no way a fitness-only game with stats, markers, and more, but it does make you sweat and that’s good enough for me.

Psst: if you have a girl or partner who isn’t into video games, this might be the one that brings them over. Not only is it a great way for the two of you to bond, but it’s also a hell of a workout for both of you and if they’re into pop music, is full of tunes that’re probably already on their iPod.