It feels like we’ve been here before. Harmonix creates a new music game craze with an incredible playlist and an intuitive to learn, yet difficult to master set of gameplay rules, and rides that success to not one but two sequels, each gradually adding more depth and features with clever tweaks of the formula, while staying true to its roots. The question is, does this story end the same way for Dance Central the way it did for Rock Band and Guitar Hero? Are we tired of this already? To be fair, Harmonix has avoided the pitfalls of band centric versions in favor of maintaining more a widely appealing variety of songs, but the fact that each version of Dance Central has only been spaced out a year apart from each other still risks milking the cow dry. Ultimately that is for the market to decide, but Dance Central 3 comes across as a perfection of the craft to the same level as Rock Band’s third edition achieved, and music game fanatics are all the better off for it.
The basic idea of Dance Central remains intact. Mirror the on screen dancer’s movements in order to rack up the points and stars. Do well enough and you pass. All of the dance moves are broken into segments represented by flash cards, and you have the opportunity to rehearse them one by one until you’re ready to perform. A nice touch for those who have only played the first game is that now you can control rehearsal with voice commands, telling it to “slow down” or go to the “previous” segment, a lot more convenient that waving your arm around hoping to get its attention. Also returning from previous versions is the main 1 vs. 1 battle mode and a fitness mode, which now tracks your calories and time across the board in all game modes in addition to giving you a playlist to work through, as well as allowing you to set targets for activity and calories burned.
Where the true remixing comes in is in the brand new Crew Throwdown mode. This expands the dance battle concept to up to 8 players in two teams of 4 each. You each choose a side and take your pictures to start, and once you’re ready you jump into a mode where two at a time step up to the floor and compete not only in standard dance battles but mini games like “Keep the Beat” and “Make Your Move” where you either have to keep rhythm or invent dance moves for your opponent to imitate, much like HORSE in basketball. Of course the usefulness of this mode depends on whether you can drag enough friends together who won’t be too embarrassed to play and whether you have enough floor space to accommodate everyone. The same might also apply to the new Party Mode, which you might guess is geared towards constant play with random playlists and drop in and drop out ability, so you can have people just walk up, play a random song, then maybe a friend can join in with a high five and bam, you’re in a co-op session, all without have to wave around clumsily through Kinect menus or hope it can hear your voice commands over the crowd. Very handy indeed.
While Dance Central 2 introduced a bit of a campaign mode itself, this sequel actually bothers to put in the effort to craft an actual story around it. It actually kind of reminds me a little of Elite Beat Agents, only instead of solving people’s mundane problems or an incoming asteroid through dance, the game ties together the various era’s of music in its 46 song collection through you guessed it… time travel. The idea is you have to go back in time and help the black suits in Dance Central Intelligence discover the moves of each era’s “dance craze” in order to stop an evil Dr. Tan from taking over things and doing what exactly I’m not sure. So not only do you have to pass each song and collect enough stars to progress to the next area, you need to nail specific moves in the songs in order to piece together the craze. It’s nothing to write home about, but it’s cute enough to keep you motivated to get through every song instead of just going straight through the whole list in boredom.
If you were expecting vastly upgraded visuals in Dance Central 3 for some odd reason, well you won’t find it. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is it’s still silky smooth to make it easy to match your movement to it, though to give it some credit the backgrounds for each era seem to have more details and people in them than before. Soundwise a music game is only as good as its selection and I can tell you that it is broad and covers a lot of ground. The 70s has can’t miss hits like “YMCA” and “The Hustle” while the 80s are represented by “Let the Music Play” and even some New Kids on the Block. You’ll even learn to Macarena all over again before shifting to modern stuff, with a mix of pop and hip hop. You’ll be pleased to know that while not included on the disc, Gangnam Style is among the first DLC tracks coming out for the game. By the way, you’ll be able to import all your songs from Dance Central 1 and 2 care of the codes included with those games and a small fee, of course.
So we return to the question posed at the beginning. Has Dance Central jumped the shark? I would say not. The new additions are certainly welcome, practical and not gimmicky at all, though for solo players the new multiplayer and party modes probably won’t mean much to you. That said this game includes the largest collection of songs yet and will keep you occupied for hours. If you love Dance Central and want more of this, I absolutely recommend it. Besides what else are you going to do with your Kinect?
Gameplay
Graphics
Sound
Overall
