Dance Central 3

Blimey, we’re onto the third Dance Central already? It doesn’t feel that long since we were enjoying the first title when Kinect launched. Back then, the idea of highly responsive dancing action was innovative, refreshing and a hell of a lot of fun. Last year’s sequel refined the formula further, so it’s with curiosity that we wonder what Dance Central 3 contains that will keep it fresh, especially considering the short release gap between this and the previous title.

Let’s begin with the new stuff and the stars of the show: the songs themselves. As expected, there’s a fresh new soundtrack, blending a mix of dance, electronic, pop and rap covering four decades since the 70s. As with all games that has its soundtrack as one of their main selling points, it’s highly subjective, but all the tracks have obviously been chosen with care. You’ve got your modern pop hits such as Moves like Jagger and Starships, hip-hop including 50 Cent and Vanilla Ice and your classic pop cheese favourites YMCA and the Macarena. All in all, it’s a pretty strong lineup. Most people will undoubtedly avoid Justin Bieber’s Boyfriend, but hey, you take the good with the bad. You can also port over songs from previous titles and use your DLC as well to further bolster your song library.

Also new is an expanded Party Mode, making it easier than ever for large groups to get into the groove. One or two players can take to the floor for a variety of new game modes. Crew Throwdown allows two teams of four to face off against each other in head-to-head challenges, dance battles and mini-games. Keep The Beat allows you freestyle your very own dance moves as long as you maintain the rhythm of the song you’re dancing to and Make Your Move is essentially HORSE: one dancer repeats a move until the Kinect maps it and the next repeats the process. Both these moves are combined into one routine and then both players have to dance them out. It’s an excellent use of the technology’s mapping software and adds a greater degree of creativity to multiplayer gameplay. It’s just unfortunate that this reviewer’s best move is awkwardly pelvic thrusting like a sexually frustrated mule in heat, braying like a distressed yak all the while.

There’s also a new Story Mode that really needs to be experienced to be believed. Kicking off with you descending by lift into a basement in an undisclosed location, you’re ‘scanned’ by a laser beam, the Kinect camera mimicking its movement in a deliciously metafictional touch. Once inside the room, you’re told to dance by two intimidating figures in suits. Afterwards, you’re told that that song was your inauguration into Dance Central Intelligence, a special agency tasked with travelling through time to observe dance crazes in different eras to prevent dance crimes being committed in the modern day. It’s a delightfully silly and outlandish addition and one that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The real meat and bones of Dance Central 3, obviously, is the dancing itself. It’s more or less a carbon copy of the titles before it – mirror the dancer on the screen’s moves as closely as possible. As such, it’s basically the same as previous titles, allowing you to rehearse songs before they’re played, a breakdown in the middle and being able to see and share your funny snapshots at the end of a routine.

However, there’s something here that does differentiate itself from the prequels: it’s much more difficult. Even on beginner difficulty, it’s extremely hard to get a five-star rating for the song you’re playing on. Whether it’s less accurate motion tracking or Harmonix thinking that we’ve all become dance experts since the first instalment, you’ll be struggling to copy most of the moves that are being thrown at you, whether it’s in rehearsal or performance mode. If you’re not ultra precise in your movements, you won’t get a good score.  It can become extremely irritating when you’re mirroring a certain routine exactly, but the game says your miles off, denying you the points you deserve.

The moves for the new songs are outstandingly complex, even on ‘warmup’ difficulty, with the previews for each song being enough to make you balk at their sophistication. The routines for some of the tracks – Get Low and What Doesn’t Kill You (Stronger) in particular – are ridiculously elaborate. This increased difficulty is enough to put you off even attempting a song or, even worse, give up halfway through one.  When it works, Dance Central retains its playability. When it doesn’t  work, it’s just not much fun. It’s not particularly innovative, either: there’s nothing like the amount of development between the developer’s flagship Rock Band installments. What you get here is basically the exact same gameplay as before – nothing more, nothing less.