Dance Central 2 Review

Just over a year ago Kinect for the Xbox 360 launched and a new wave of motion controlled games flooded the market, PlayStation Move was partly to blame but Microsoft’s Kinect was the device launched closer to Christmas and with a bigger advertising campaign.

Out of all of the launch titles for Kinect, Dance Central stood out from the crowd even before its launch and garnered the best critical reception, often being cited as the main reason to own a Kinect. This was High praise to live up to for any game, let alone one with the weight of a brand new accessory on its shoulders.

Dance Central 2 lives up to the reception of its predecessor and then some, (at time of writing) Dance Central 2 has 86% on aggregate site Metacritic while the original game has 82%. But scores aren’t everything and mean nothing if the game doesn’t actually build on and improve the first game’s strong points while fixing it’s low points. That is (in theory) the point of a sequel, to fix the previous game’s flaws while improving its pros.

It’s safe to say Dance Central 2 hits the nail on the head in those respects, the gameplay is similar to the first game as would be expected.
You mimic the actions of the dancer on screen as though looking at a mirror and as you do, there are a handful of indicators to let you know if you’re doing the moves correctly or not such as: a ring of light at the dancers feet change colour (Red for bad, right up to green for good and purple for flawless) and the limbs on the dancer will glow red if you’re not moving a certain arm or leg properly.

It’s a simple yet effective system and helps you to keep on track without having to look away and lose focus from where your eyes should be – the right side of the screen for the upcoming moves. Here is where you’ll see what moves you’ve got to ace and prepare for them.

Again, it’s almost identical to Dance Central and that’s fine as it works as intended.
Similar to the original game, the biggest flaws we could find with Dance Central 2 was in the Break It Down mode; the game’s training mode.
In Break it Down an instructor talks you through a dance routine, move by move and for the most part it’s helpful and you genuinely can master some of the more difficult moves easier than if you just had a bash at them yourself.
Occasionally though it can get frustrating, you will be completing a move perfectly, by your observation at least, while the game keeps telling you that you’re wrong.

Developer Harmonix have tried to fix this problem from the original by including the option to record yourself attempting the move and then playing it on screen beside the in-game character. IT’s a neat touch but not incredibly practical.

Another flaw we found with the game, depending on your own view is that most of the dance routines felt very feminine and quite embarrassing for men to do. Again, this is more of a personal preference but still an annoyance.

Multiplayer has been improved this time around to our delight, dance battles now don’t force each player to take turns while the other stands aside idly but instead both players now dance at the same time, side by side.
It sounds like a tiny change but it really should have been that way all along, forcing players to take turns felt very archaic and broke up the fun of making a fool of yourself while your friend done the same.
Now you can both embarrass yourselves at the same time, everybody wins.

One addition that’s very welcome is voice commands through Kinect that work in the menu’s and in Break it Down mode. It works the same way voice commands work on the Xbox Dashboard (Most Irish Xbox owners wouldn’t know as Microsoft has made voice unavailable in Ireland for now) which is by saying “Xbox” and then a command, i.e. “Xbox Dance, Song – followed by a song title, difficulty – followed by easy, medium or hard and then Xbox Dance. It sounds long-winded when spelled out like that but it is quite useful and a bit of a no brainer too.

The real star of the show here is the choice of songs included on the disc, a massive step up from what was included with Dance Central. It feels a lot more diverse while still having enough mainstream music to keep almost everyone happy. 44 songs are available to you right off the bat with a potential for 32 more if you import the songs from the original Dance Central. To do this however it will set you back 400 Microsoft Points or free if you pre-ordered the game, we feel it should be free but such is the way of DLC etc. these days.

The game features a kind of story mode in the new mode called ‘Crew Challenge’ which loosely features you as a newcomer to the city/dance scene and you have to dance to impress the 5 dance crews, each with their own style of music and fashion.
It’s a nice addition if a little hollow but it does help to lend some personality to some of the 10 characters, 5 of which are new, 5 returning for more dancing since last year.