Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The entire reason that I even wanted to get Kinect was this, for after watching them demo it on stage live at E3 I had full hope in what Kinect can do. I was not disappointed. From start to finish this game is a lot of fun to play and because of downloadable content I have a feeling it will have a long shelf life. Let me see if I can break it down to explain why this game is as amazing as it looks.
Menus: Menus are easily navigated and, because of a certain situation where my mother had friends over for the evening, even they were quickly able to pick up how to go through the menus. Its simple, hold your arm out to the right or left and make a slapping motion to select. This already made the game better. I played Kinect Adventures and I found the menus a little frustrating because you have to hold your hand there while it figures out that's what you want, but with Dance Central its just a quick swipe and you move on. Outside of that, all of the menus are very clear and easily navigated to find what you want, that hardest part of which was selecting songs (going up and down the list).
Gameplay: The no control experience is really shown off at its best here as you actually get a good workout moving your body to the beats. Yes, you will have to get off of the couch and start moving back and forth to the rhythms. Overall the Kinect cameras will do a wonderful job at figuring out your motions and, because the game was designed this way, you won't notice any lag. That's right, you dance in time with the person on screen (literally mirroring their actions) and then the game will take a moment (to which you won't notice because you are dancing) to decide how well you performed the action. In other words, don't worry about lag time because Harmonix has already factored that in perfectly, thus making gameplay smooth and easy to pick up on for even a beginner. Again, my mother's friends were very quick on picking up how to play the game.
Difficulty: This game ranges from anyone can do this easy (the first song) to ridiculously hard yet really cool looking moves (last song). It will give you a workout and it never tends to bore because of the variety of songs as well as dance moves. One thing that I also like about the game is that it forces you to start on easy and work your way up to hard. For a pro dancer (almost no one who will buy this game), that means you are forced to learn the different basic moves for the dance and then they get more complicated. That's right, the difficulty is actually used in this game to teach you the set-up for the next step. It works beautifully at getting you dancing to what was in the music videos.
Visuals: From start to finish this game is amazingly colorful and even the opening movie is rather fun to watch. On the other hand, none of the visuals block or distract the player from what is going on or seeing the next move. In fact, the set-up is so perfect that when you start getting your friends in there to dance along side you, it just feels natural for everyone. Now, I will also give this simple argument for visuals as well, because I am a fan of the hip-hop look the game sports (and thank God for that, Classical dancing would be so boring in a party game). If you don't like the hip-hop sort of streets style, then the visuals might not entertain you as much.
Overall: This game does what it says. It will teach you how to dance the moves from the music videos and it will go fairly smoothly along a learning curve as well. The use of the technology is impressive and it is probably the best party game out there since Guitar Hero became known as a party game (Honestly this one is better, because anyone can just start dancing and having a good time). It works great among all ages and all backgrounds since everything is done with visuals and because of the no-controller feel anyone can easily pick it up and start playing (though don't get me wrong, it is not easy to master).
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Dance Central, exclusively for Kinect for Xbox 360, is the first real dance video-game experience that is fun, social and for everyone! Brought to you by Harmonix, the developers who created the world-wide blockbuster Rock Band. Take it step-by-step with Break It Down or jump right in and start performing for your family and friends. Either way, you won't just learn dance moves, you'll own the dance floor!
