Dance Central

It’s difficult not to feel a bit skeptical about Kinect. It’s been a good few years since the Nintendo Wii debuted, with its motion-sensing control scheme claiming to revolutionise gaming forever, before ultimately leading to a deluge of soulless crap that flooded the market and drowned the truly innovative titles the system has to offer from sight. Despite this, however, the Wii remains the most popular console in the world and these kinds of games still sell like hotcakes despite their dubious quality.

So it’s hard not to feel that Sony and Microsoft’s motion-control systems, the Move and Kinect respectively, are just gimmicks developed solely to try and prise away some of the Wii’s more casual users and cynical attempts at stealing some of the profits Nintendo has been raking in.

Which is why Dance Central is such a surprising title. Rather than being an under-boiled dance simulator like so many other games of its ilk, Harmonix’s first Kinect game is so exceptionally well made, it will warm the cockles of even the most cold-hearted motion-sensor-hating critic.

Don’t be fooled by the game’s genre; Dance Central is imbued with the impeccable design decisions found in Rock Band, Harmonix’s flagship rhythm-action franchise. The attractive menus are easy to navigate, using a combination of arm movements to move from place to place and select the 32 songs the game has to offer. Nearly every genre is catered to here, with artists featured including Lady GaGa (fuck yeah!), Beastie Boys, Nelly Furtado and Fannypack (hur hur). Harmonix once again flex their musical muscle by only including songs that they know will be fun to dance to.

And by God, is the dancing fun. Every song has three levels of difficulty, with each offering you the opportunity to practise the moves you’ll be asked to perform, all of which are unique to each track. You’re then thrust into the song good and proper where you need to copy the character (either a sexy cheerleadery type or stereotypical douchebag) as accurately you can to achieve as high a score as possible. Movement recognition is extremely accurate, meaning that you’ll rarely experience a missed move on Kinect’s part: it’s more likely that you’re to blame if such an occurrence takes place.

This accuracy means each song being intrinsically laced with fun. It doesn’t matter if you’re throwing your arms up to Lady GaGa’s ‘Poker Face’ (the easiest track in the game) or jerking like a spasmodic robot to Benny Benassi’s ‘Satisfaction’: you’ll have a massive grin on your face for the entire duration of the song. Add to this a hilarious freestyle section, where going mad is rewarded with a side-splitting playback of the flailing you’ve just done, and a signature finishing move for each song and you’ve got the perfect equation for unbridled fun. You’ll feel like you’re actually dancing, an experience simply non-existent when playing Dance Dance Revolution and numerous other titles.

It’s not just the person playing that will find things hilarious, either: everybody watching will be treated to some of the most pant-wettingly funny entertainment ever created as they watch their stiff, rhythmically-disadvantaged friends twist their hips, shake their asses and thrust their crotches while dancing to ‘Push It’ and ‘Maneater’. It’s so rare for a title to make both players and spectators laugh so much, with everyone involved copying the moves displayed on screen, be they playing or not.