Cute Chronicles – Just Dance 4 Prom!

Su-per cutesy happy fun casual gaming time!

My high school prom, if you could call it that, was a boat party. They had hired out the inside of a boat for us on the River Thames, the inside quickly becoming a heated mass of bodies. They hadn’t reserved the outside bar areas though, which were still open to the general public, meaning that drunken businessmen were scattered amongst teenage girls.

Luckily the Just Dance High School Prom was a much more pleasant experience. It was appropriately located at a central London venue which half-looked like a fancy hotel, but was also an educational centre. The prom itself took place in a convincing school gym-looking room – large open space, wooden floors, temporary starry dance floor, decorations and lots of disco lights. It was like stepping back ten years in my own timeline – we were even appropriately dressed for the occasion.

Dotted around the room were Wiis set up with Just Dance 4 – the latest instalment in what is easily the most colourful, accessible and laugh-out-loud dance game currently available. Of course, pretty much the first thing Fran and I did was elbow others out of the way (not really, we politely waited in the short queue) for a go.

Just Dance 4 is more of the same fun gameplay with crazily-dressed characters busting moves which are easy enough to follow, but infinitely more fun when you do them with the same amount of pizazz as the dancer on screen. The dancers are coloured, cell-shaded footage rather than clunky 3D animation, something which I’ve always felt is Just Dance’s strong point – the dancers look much more natural this way even though they don’t really have any features.

The game also retains its cheeky sense of humour and silliness, as seen when Fran and I did ‘The Final Countdown’, apparently as Mexican wrestlers facing off against each other. There’s a mix of cheese, pop and other genres on the soundtrack, with Maroon 5 and Carly Rae Jepsen sitting alongside One Direction, Nicki Minaj, Barry White, Stevie Wonder and even Las Ketchup.

We only played the Wii version as the Xbox Kinect version was behind the VIP cordon, along with some celebrities my out-of-touch self didn’t recognise. I did recognise Fatboy from Eastenders, though. When we weren’t dancing, Fran and I were munching on little pots of Mac & Cheese, watching the energetic Bogus Brothers do one or two sets along with cosplaying Just Dancers, and taking silly photos in the photo booth upstairs.

Unfortunately we had to leave because Fran’s bus back home was soon to turn into a pumpkin, but our experience was enough to say that Just Dance 4 is going to be a fantastic game to play with friends, just like the last three. I look forward to playing it again and mastering all the dances, especially the barrel roll in ‘The Final Countdown’!