Written by: Ian

 

 

 

Just Dance has been an absolute phenomenon on the Wii. Now it’s available for Kinect, does it do the Xbox’s camera attachment justice? The game brings its infectious 4 player dance grooves to Kinect, one of the few games to do so as of yet, and also boasts an impressive 51-track list. Will Ubisoft’s cheap but cheerful (and wildly popular) series have enough in store to leave Dance Central 2 quaking in its blue suede shoes?

 

 

The one area that bugs me in particular about the game is the total lack of any kind of single player modes or real progression. You can unlock a few bits and pieces by continuing to dance away, but nothing that playing multiplayer wouldn’t give you in the same time. It’s refreshing to have the game pretty much opened from the beginning, but beyond party play, there’s no real incentive to ever pick the game up and make a fool of yourself without others.

 

 

Just Dance on Wii could basically only register your right arm, despite the crazy shapes it made you pull off. With Kinect, the possibilities are much greater. There are no real tutorials as such, and from the videos it looks suspiciously like you only need a right arm again, as each dancer wears a neon glove on that hand. However, from repeated tries, the game does look at both arms, judging by my (albeit terrible) scores, and you can no longer fool the game when it asks you to spin or make really wild movements.

 

 

However, for all the improvements Kinect brings with its full-body tracking it then loses with accuracy. Many of the achievements rely on consistent scores, but this is pretty much impossible given the accuracy of the scoring system, which appears to award one of the scores (a simple X, OK, Good or Perfect) based either on magic or the roll of a dice.

 

Obviously, with a game like this, the emphasis is more upon having some fun as opposed to racking up good scores, but it was telling that my wife (a genuinely good dancer) was normally outscored by me (two left feet), who looked more like a fool, but had the gestures down a bit more, and was more conscious about staying in the part of the screen that Kinect was tracking me in.

 

The 51 songs will take a while to go through, and there’s also an excellent exercise (sweat) mode, rounding off the package, as well as unlockable mini-games such as ‘Simon Says’ and a Jamaican mash-up. Unfortunately, selecting any of these things, at least without resorting to a controller, is a massive nightmare.

 

 

The game’s menu options are packed closely together, and the game has a nasty habit of letting you think you have the right one, then choosing something completely different when you swipe. It’s really the worst menu system I’ve seen so far on Kinect, and I was glad the game lets you seamlessly swap to controller, because without that, I’d have knocked at least a whole point off the score, it got my goat up that much.