In late June 2009, the world was in shock when the King of Pop, Michael Jackson passed away. The Pop singer and the most successful entertainer of all time made a huge impact Jackson on the music industry and had millions of fans all across the globe. All we have now are the memories of his performances over the years and all of his albums to enjoy. Can we have a different memento to remember the King of Pop? Ubisoft tries to do just that and attempts to replicate Michael Jackson’s legacy with its latest dancing game for the Wii, Michael Jackson: The Experience. Can this game live on as a tribute or should it just “Beat It”?

In Michael Jackson: The Experience, You have over 20 of Jackson’s songs to choose from. This includes all the fan favorites such as “Thriller”, “Beat It”, “Bad”, “Smooth Criminal”, and “Billie Jean”. Some songs do feel out of place though. Ubisoft included some softer, slower songs that feel out of place with minimal dancing. It is a sort of tribute to the music of Michael Jackson, but it’s not a karaoke game that we all expected it to be when it was announced; it’s a dancing game.

The game’s graphics are alright. It seems as though it’s all FMV on screen that you have to mirror in dancing. The backup dancers are faceless and look like rejects from a different dancing game. The Michael Jackson clones in all the different songs do look pretty creepy for what they are. Michael Jackson: The Experience has a lousy presentation overall. The menus are plain and the song selection looks like a cheap karaoke machine. iTunes has a better interface than this game with album art.

There are unlockables, but not stuff that you’d want. The first thing you unlock after playing is a video of professional dancers telling you that you should always stretch and get warmed up before dancing. Would have been helpful telling me before you start playing. Then after a few more songs, you unlock maybe one video that shows you some dance moves from a song slowed down step by step. While you think this would be helpful, it’s really not. The game doesn’t show you how to dance with the controller. The lack of any tutorial mode is frustrating enough and to unlock these videos without telling you how to dance with the Wii controller is even more maddening.

Then there’s the gameplay itself, which is a complete and utter mess. When playing the game, you only use a single Wii remote to read your dance movements. When playing a song, you attempt to try and copy the moves in the game that are guided by certain on-screen prompts and virtual dancers that you have to mimic. Sounds like fun, right? It’s not. Half the time your moves won’t even read correctly. The fun quickly dissipates as you see “OK” repeatedly when you know you hit it spot on. The scoring system seems brutal. Getting stars seems like a mundane task, especially to unlock the “unlockables”.

The game does have up to four players in multi-player. Each person can pick their dancer depending on the song. They can either be Michael Jackson or the weird backup dancers. Although this is fun for a while and gets your heart pumping, the game fails to recognize most of your movements and seeing a low score does not end well. The lack of bonus modes or any history pieces about Michael Jackson is pretty odd considering the game’s name is Michael Jackson: “The Experience”.

The King of Pop deserved way better. To call this The Experience is blasphemy. The dancing controls are awful, and the visuals are lacking. It seems as the Ubisoft was just cashing in on Michael Jackson’s death because they knew people would buy it. Honestly, you are better off watching and dancing to Michael Jackson’s music videos on Youtube to remember him by.

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