We Dance

Susan: On a blindingly sunny afternoon, Fran and I headed to the heart of Soho to an unassuming yet bright purple door. This door was to take us to a preview of the latest party/dance game for the Wii coming in the summer: We Dance. It was hot outside, but I was convinced that it wasn’t as hot as our dance moves, especially Fran’s trademark ‘Broken Frandroid’. After a short wait in reception, we were taken upstairs into a small room set up with a Wii console and two dance mats. Rather distractingly, a huge Duke Nukem statue was in the corner with a cigar in his mouth, just waiting for us to dance for him. Ahem.


As the title would suggest, We Dance is from the makers of We Sing, the karaoke game for the Wii. It promises to offer the same ‘jump in and play’ mechanics as well as offering something a little more advanced. With other Wii dance games such as Just Dance, what does We Dance do differently? Our friendly representative cheerfully took us through the basics of the game to explain.

We Dance’s start screen welcomed us with bright block colours and a cast of characters who were silhouettes in funky clothing. A simple pop beat played in the background and a surprising number of options showed up on the screen. As well as the usual ‘We Dance’ mode, which is the game’s main mode, there was a warm up mode, training mode, a mini game mode and a jukebox mode. The presence of the dance mats was a surprise, since I hadn’t expected there to be any specific footwork involved. Still, nothing to do except jump right in, then…


Fran: Susan did the jumping right in part first as I am always cautious of new dance games especially when there is a dance mat involved. I have always been a DDR fan with your up down left right button but this mat had the diagonals as well. It reminded me of the 8-way dance mat that came with the PS2 game Dance:UK. I was rubbish at it, so I knew I was going to be rubbish at this. Though this game also had the added bonus of using the Wii remote for added arm fun. This was when I also discovered my arms were stupidly long…

There were three game difficulties – Easy, Medium and Hard. Easy used arms only, Medium used legs only and Hard used both legs and arms… The music selection instantly won me over – Slam by Pendulum – Rhythm is a Dancer by Snap – it was as if they invaded my iPod – yes, even the Spice Girls were there!

Susan seemed to be better at Medium’s ‘legs only’ mode though my eyes were starting bleed from watching her attempt the Hard mode, mainly because I was trying to work out the scoring mechanism for the game. There didn’t seem to be an indication for arm movements. You copied your chosen character’s dance moves, but unlike the game ParaParaParadise, which told you where the next arm move was going to come from, this game showed you nothing, even on the arm only mode. I guess you are meant to learn the dance in the Easy mode, then learn the leg part in Medium mode and then put it all together for the Hard mode finale. Either way, watching Susan pull off many typical boyband ballad arm waves made me have a chuckle at her expense.

Susan: At first we had been worried that ‘arms and feet’ mode meant using both your arms and your feet on the dance mat in some kind of crazy DDR Twister game, but thankfully it didn’t. It was just ridiculously difficult, which explains why you’re really meant to build up to it. Fran laughed particularly hard when I made the jump from easy to hard mode on a 5-star difficulty song, which involved trying to match the arm movements of my silhouette dancer with the crazy footwork that the mat made me do. To save my dignity, let’s explain why this was particularly difficult.

As a casual dance game player, I’m used to the classic ‘scrolling arrow’ format used in games such as DDR. The arrow scrolls up the screen and when it hits a certain point, that’s when your foot is supposed to hit the corresponding arrow on the mat. We Dance uses a slightly different system. On the screen is your central dancer and in the corner is a matching character standing in the middle of a diagram of the dance mat. Instead of scrolling arrows, you get blossoming arrows that come out from your character to match the dance mat. In theory, this should make it easier because you get to visually see on the screen where you should be stepping. One arrow heads to the bottom right, so therefore your foot goes bottom right. To help you along with the fancy footwork, arrows are either blue or pink depending on which foot you should be using to make the step. Helpful, but for someone very used to a different system, it takes more time than we had to adjust to it. Exhausted and convinced that I had somehow sprained my foot, I kicked the mats out of the way and left Fran to have fun in ‘arms only’ mode. From the moment she saw the playlist, it was only a matter of time before she grabbed the Wiimote in a fever.

Fran: So this is when I noticed my arms are particularly long. Whilst frantically waving my arms around, I did feel that I was going to smack Susan in the face. I did my very best to copy my chosen character but to be honest, I can dance far better than these silhouetted ‘backing dancers’.  I boogied my way through Wigfield’s Saturday Night and various other 90’s audio gems, I beat the high scores already recorded on the game… not sure how I did that. I can only assume the shapes I was throwing were so awesome that it had to give me points whether correct not.

Susan: As well as the silhouette dancers, there’s a small version of the original video of the song in the background. I amused myself by watching terrible 90’s dance videos from the safe vantage point of a nearby sofa while Fran strutted her stuff and occasionally swore whenever the game berated her performace. Unless you know the dance very well at the higher levels, you’re likely to fail miserably.

Amusingly, at the end of each song you’re given a rating demonstrated by a pair of shoes. The rattier the shoe, the worse your dancing was. Apparently a huge pair of Dr Marten-esque boots (me) indicates that there is room for improvement while a sparkling disco boot (Fran) indicates more success.

We didn’t really explore very much beyond the main game mode, partly because there was enough there to entertain us and partly because some of the other game modes weren’t yet available on the code we were playing. From what we saw, We Dance is shaping up quite nicely as a party game with the inclusion of the mats an interesting twist. Those willing to invest in perfecting their moves will find the ‘feet and arms’ mode a challenge but ultimately, the game is at its best at its most casual, enjoyed with friends and not being too concerned about making the right steps or with the novelty of the mat. However, We Dance does impress with its extra game modes that aren’t usually seen in dance games of its kind, and its playlist is unusually good, perhaps this dance game with an added twist will stand out when it hits shelves this summer.


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2 responses to “We Dance”

  1. arc14716 avatar
    arc14716

    Is there video available of you two playing this game? That would be fun to watch. Anyway, nice job on the blog ladies. I think I need to tell someone at work about this game. Would be fun to watch some of my co-workers playing this game. As for myself, I think I would have a hard time adjusting to its play style. I’m more familiar with the DDR style and would have a hard time getting used to the way they do it on this game. No doubt it would take anyone a while to get used to it before they finally caught on. It does make a good casual game to play with friends at parties. So far, the game looks like it’s heading in the right direction. Enjoyable blog, by the way, ladies.

  2. Bruno (daiphoenix) avatar
    Bruno (daiphoenix)

    And duke is watching over, lol, that is just priceless…

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