Dance Central 3 Review

Let’s be perfectly honest here: I am no dancer. Yes, I like to have a little boogie-on-down when I’m out, had a couple of drinks and my mind clocks off for the evening, but there’s no way you will see me seducing a random,

mildly attractive woman by posing the question: “Would you like to dance?” like in some cheesy 80’s romance fick; for if I were to do such a thing, it would be more Carlton Banks than John Travolta.

For that reason alone, before I even inserted Dance Central 3 into my Xbox, I went to my window and closed my blinds air-tight for the sake of saving any shred public dignity I still had in me. I prepared in the best way I could, putting on some loose fitting clothes having an “Insert popular energy drink here” and frolicking towards my TV expecting to be horrendously embarrassed in what I had thought should have been a great review idea at the time.

I jumped straight into the Story mode and without hesitation threw my arm at the Easy setting, for this is no Guitar Hero. The story as whole isn’t terribly important as of course, being a music game, it’s all about the tunes. But breaking it down briefly, you travel through various era’s dancing to songs from that time period collecting “iconic” dance moves which need to be strung together to make a “trend,” with the outright goal of stopping the rival dance group back in present day, taking over the world by turning everyone into dance drones. Bizarre, yes, but it plays well and keeps things interesting so it’s not just, choose a song, get a score. It also encourages you to try and perfect the songs so you can pick up on the trickier iconic dance moves, freeing you to move onto the next era.

Dance Central 3 couldn’t be simpler to play. Like I said earlier I thought I was going to be embarrassed playing and sure, I was to start with but that’s like every game, you are naff until you practice up. Each dance move has a specific card that shows you what to do and you get a rundown of what to expect next; just like in Tetris where you can see what block will drop down next. You mirror the actions of the on-screen dancer and when you are slightly off, individual body parts glow red to signify what you need to adjust, and that’s it!

Seriously, after a few songs and going over a variety of dance moves it was quickly becoming a game I was enjoying rather than dreading. Half of the moves you perform you wouldn’t even consider using on the real dance floor unless you want to look like a tool, but once you get into the beat of the song and the rhythm of the moves, it almost becomes second nature to follow the eccentric dance moves that are all suited to their given song.

As in every good music game, you have the obligatory party mode where players can jump in and out of play when they so wish. The Kinect makes excellent use of voice commands giving you the ability to state a song vocally rather than scrolling through songs to find what you are looking for, bearing in mind I’m not sure how well that would work in a loud environment.

I can see Party mode genuinely working well at a party, surprisingly. What I mean is exactly like you would see in a cheesy advert for the game where one busty girl explodes, saying: “O-M-G I LOOOOVVEEEE THIS SONG” running over to the TV to ensure they get a front row position where everyone can see them flaunting their curvy bits – that’s how I imagine my parties would go anyway, sigh.

The tracklist has a stunning variety and I would easily go as far as saying it’s the best in recent music games. Plus the beauty of extra tracks, although somewhat expensive, being uploaded to the marketplace on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis gives this game an indefinite longevity. ALSO, you can import your songs from all the previous Dance Central games to this title, avoiding you switching discs every half an hour just to play that one song you perfected months ago.

Dance Central 3 isn’t for the hardcore achievement grinders nor the singletons reaching for another Kinect game to add to their collection. It’s for the party goers, the true dance freaks and the wannabe “Dance God” pretenders quenching attention to impress their mates with their killer Gangnam Style moves – but most of all it’s for the fun times being only 1% of the fun alone as had playing with mates. And hey, who doesn’t like a lot of fun? Let’s get it on.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.