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Games developer Harmonix are probably best known for creating first the Guitar Hero and then a few years later the Rock Band series of games. After successfully getting us to look ridiculous playing on our ever growing collection of toy plastic instruments they then turned their attention to Microsoft’s motion sensor, Kinect with the game Dance Central. This game was regarded by many as being the best of the Kinect launch titles but that was over a year ago and with a market now saturated with Kinect dance games is Dance Central 2 really worth shelling out for, especially if you already own the original game?
The gameplay in Dance Central 2 really could not be any simpler. You stand directly in front of your selected dancer and attempt to copy their onscreen moves. To help you out there is a scrolling list alongside informing you of which moves you will be required to pull off next. At first this does seem to be quite a lot of information to take in but after just a few games it all becomes sort of second nature. I found myself automatically glancing down the moves list without even thinking about it within 10 minutes of first playing the game. The main thing which makes Dance Central 2 stand out from its competition is its control system and in particular the excellent use it makes of the Kinect controller. In the case of most Kinect games that I have played this controller has either felt like a shallow gimmick or its support appears to have been a tagged on afterthought as it was in the case of Sega’s Virtua Tennis 4. However, in Dance Central 2 this is most definitely not the case as the game makes total use of this system and playing it never feels weird, unnatural or gimmicky in any way. The game scans your entire body and this can be seen in a small window located at the top corner of the screen. As you attempt to mimic your dancer the game rates you depending on whether you are nailing the moves, doing OK or failing altogether. As Dance Central 2 is monitoring your whole body there really is no way you can cheat in this game. Have a leg bent when it should be straight or a hand down when it should be up then this game will know and the outline of the offending body part will flash red to let you know that you need to improve. Compare this to other games such as Just Dance on the Nintendo Wii (which I managed to play standing virtually still and waving one hand around) and Dance Central 2 has a far more effective motion detection system than similar titles.
I have never been into dancing or dance music so initially I found playing this game something of a learning curve as I familiarised myself with the genre. I had absolutely no idea what a ‘’soldier whammy’’ even was let alone how I should possibly go about ‘’crankin’’ one. I felt this game lead me in gently as I began playing in easy mode on some of the lower difficulty tracks. I honestly found it all very user friendly and if a lifelong metalhead like myself could get into a dancing game then fans of this genre will have no problem whatsoever. For those wanting more of a challenge selecting Dance Central 2’s higher difficulty settings will more than satisfy them. I attempted some of these myself but as the famous line from the 1973 classic Enter The Dragon goes ‘’there is a point you will not go beyond’’. For me this point was attempting to beat Casacada’s Evacuate The Dance Floor on the games hard difficulty.
The track selection in Dance Central 2 is amongst the best I have come across in a game of its kind. There are around 40 tracks taken from different dance genres dating back over the past few decades. Also if you own the original Dance Central you can import its tracks into this game by use of a code located on the back of the games instruction manual. This will cost you 400 Microsoft points (around £3) which is well worth doing as there were some really good songs on the original game. One word of warning though, these codes can only be used once so I would not recommend buying a second hand copy of the original Dance Central if you wish to do this. Single tracks can be bought and downloaded from Xbox Live but these cost 240 Microsoft points (around £1.75) each. I honestly thought this was very expensive and unless there was one particular track you were desperate to have in your game I would not recommend building up your libraries in this way.
There are a few different game modes in Dance Central 2. There is a fitness mode which supposedly counts your calorie burning. I have no idea how accurate this is but with workouts ranging up to 50 minutes you would certainly have done some work by completing that. There is a tutorial mode for those wishing to nail every move in a certain routine as well as some great simultaneous 2 player modes which were noticeably absent in the original game. You can go head to head in the dance off mode or dance together as part of a crew. If you want to fall out with someone then I can recommend trying the 2 player crew challenge mode. At the precise moment you bang violently into one another it becomes apparent that one of you has jumped in entirely the wrong direction. As you are being judged as a team then whoever has made the mistake has therefore let the team down and your combined score is going to suffer. One thing I would note about the simultaneous 2 player modes is that although they are by far the most fun you can have in the Dance Central series they do require quite a lot of clear open space. I managed to clear our front room of all furniture with the exception of a 3 piece suite and a TV, this gave a useable clear area around 3 metres (10ft) squared and in the games 2 player modes pretty much all of this space was required. I cannot see many homes having this kind of clear area in a bedroom or spare room which is where I would imagine that some people would want to be playing a game like this.
The main thing that which really struck me about Dance Central 2 was just how much fun it was to play, I expected to tire of it pretty quickly but I honestly did not. I did mostly play it with other people but I would imagine that playing it solely in its single player modes may become repetitive pretty quickly. The feeling of fun that Dance Central 2 undoubtedly manages to create is mainly due to the fact that although the game is very competent at what it does it never seems to take itself all that seriously. Some of the routines are clearly designed to make you look like a complete idiot. Some of these moves are without doubt the campest things that I have come across in any video game. It is pretty much impossible to look and feel anything other then totally ridiculous as you attempt to pull off moves such as ‘’tug of war’’ or ‘’concert jump’’. Add to all this the freestyle breaks which record a few seconds of you in action and then play it back in a pop video style clip at the end of your game and Harmonix have made sure that anyone playing Dance Central 2 is going to enjoy themselves whether they like it or not.
Unlike its predecessor Dance Central 2 supports Kinects voice recognition system. Simply calling ‘’Xbox dance’’ followed by the song title should bring up the desired track. Unfortunately this does not always seem to be the case, you will get a song it just might not be the one you actually requested. Other features in the game can also be selected using the voice command feature but it is not something that I personally bothered with. This really is a pointless feature and a total gimmick to be honest as apart from the fact that its function seems to be a bit hit and miss, the games hand operated menu control system works perfectly fine.
Dance Central 2 genuinely looks and sounds great and has no technical issues whatsoever. One particular thing that did grab my attention was the selection of backgrounds in the game. Apart from the usual nightclubs and parks that you would expect to find in a game of this kind, here there are locations such as subways and even a large open decked ship with a helicopter landing behind you. None of this really blows you away but these are really nice touches which I thought finished the look of the game off nicely.
Overall Dance Central 2 is the single best reason for owning a Kinect. It’s a ridiculous amount of fun and it can be played by pretty much any able bodied person, regardless of gaming ability. If you can stand up and are lucky enough to have movement in all of your limbs then you can play this game and it is guaranteed to liven up even the dullest party. However please take note of how much space you really need to play it, I found the playing area required extremely surprising to be honest as it was not something I had given even the slightest thought to before buying the game. Harmonix have again totally succeeded in getting us to have fun whilst looking ridiculous and this time they did not need Fisher Price instruments to do it. There is no online versus mode in Dance Central 2 which may be an issue for some. Personally though I found making a fool of myself in the comfort of my own front room was quite enough, I had no desire whatsoever to broadcast myself across the internet playing this game. In fact the only real issue I had with Dance Central 2 was with wiping the stupid grin off my face whilst playing it.
9/10
The gameplay in Dance Central 2 really could not be any simpler. You stand directly in front of your selected dancer and attempt to copy their onscreen moves. To help you out there is a scrolling list alongside informing you of which moves you will be required to pull off next. At first this does seem to be quite a lot of information to take in but after just a few games it all becomes sort of second nature. I found myself automatically glancing down the moves list without even thinking about it within 10 minutes of first playing the game. The main thing which makes Dance Central 2 stand out from its competition is its control system and in particular the excellent use it makes of the Kinect controller. In the case of most Kinect games that I have played this controller has either felt like a shallow gimmick or its support appears to have been a tagged on afterthought as it was in the case of Sega’s Virtua Tennis 4. However, in Dance Central 2 this is most definitely not the case as the game makes total use of this system and playing it never feels weird, unnatural or gimmicky in any way. The game scans your entire body and this can be seen in a small window located at the top corner of the screen. As you attempt to mimic your dancer the game rates you depending on whether you are nailing the moves, doing OK or failing altogether. As Dance Central 2 is monitoring your whole body there really is no way you can cheat in this game. Have a leg bent when it should be straight or a hand down when it should be up then this game will know and the outline of the offending body part will flash red to let you know that you need to improve. Compare this to other games such as Just Dance on the Nintendo Wii (which I managed to play standing virtually still and waving one hand around) and Dance Central 2 has a far more effective motion detection system than similar titles.
I have never been into dancing or dance music so initially I found playing this game something of a learning curve as I familiarised myself with the genre. I had absolutely no idea what a ‘’soldier whammy’’ even was let alone how I should possibly go about ‘’crankin’’ one. I felt this game lead me in gently as I began playing in easy mode on some of the lower difficulty tracks. I honestly found it all very user friendly and if a lifelong metalhead like myself could get into a dancing game then fans of this genre will have no problem whatsoever. For those wanting more of a challenge selecting Dance Central 2’s higher difficulty settings will more than satisfy them. I attempted some of these myself but as the famous line from the 1973 classic Enter The Dragon goes ‘’there is a point you will not go beyond’’. For me this point was attempting to beat Casacada’s Evacuate The Dance Floor on the games hard difficulty.
The track selection in Dance Central 2 is amongst the best I have come across in a game of its kind. There are around 40 tracks taken from different dance genres dating back over the past few decades. Also if you own the original Dance Central you can import its tracks into this game by use of a code located on the back of the games instruction manual. This will cost you 400 Microsoft points (around £3) which is well worth doing as there were some really good songs on the original game. One word of warning though, these codes can only be used once so I would not recommend buying a second hand copy of the original Dance Central if you wish to do this. Single tracks can be bought and downloaded from Xbox Live but these cost 240 Microsoft points (around £1.75) each. I honestly thought this was very expensive and unless there was one particular track you were desperate to have in your game I would not recommend building up your libraries in this way.
There are a few different game modes in Dance Central 2. There is a fitness mode which supposedly counts your calorie burning. I have no idea how accurate this is but with workouts ranging up to 50 minutes you would certainly have done some work by completing that. There is a tutorial mode for those wishing to nail every move in a certain routine as well as some great simultaneous 2 player modes which were noticeably absent in the original game. You can go head to head in the dance off mode or dance together as part of a crew. If you want to fall out with someone then I can recommend trying the 2 player crew challenge mode. At the precise moment you bang violently into one another it becomes apparent that one of you has jumped in entirely the wrong direction. As you are being judged as a team then whoever has made the mistake has therefore let the team down and your combined score is going to suffer. One thing I would note about the simultaneous 2 player modes is that although they are by far the most fun you can have in the Dance Central series they do require quite a lot of clear open space. I managed to clear our front room of all furniture with the exception of a 3 piece suite and a TV, this gave a useable clear area around 3 metres (10ft) squared and in the games 2 player modes pretty much all of this space was required. I cannot see many homes having this kind of clear area in a bedroom or spare room which is where I would imagine that some people would want to be playing a game like this.
The main thing that which really struck me about Dance Central 2 was just how much fun it was to play, I expected to tire of it pretty quickly but I honestly did not. I did mostly play it with other people but I would imagine that playing it solely in its single player modes may become repetitive pretty quickly. The feeling of fun that Dance Central 2 undoubtedly manages to create is mainly due to the fact that although the game is very competent at what it does it never seems to take itself all that seriously. Some of the routines are clearly designed to make you look like a complete idiot. Some of these moves are without doubt the campest things that I have come across in any video game. It is pretty much impossible to look and feel anything other then totally ridiculous as you attempt to pull off moves such as ‘’tug of war’’ or ‘’concert jump’’. Add to all this the freestyle breaks which record a few seconds of you in action and then play it back in a pop video style clip at the end of your game and Harmonix have made sure that anyone playing Dance Central 2 is going to enjoy themselves whether they like it or not.
Unlike its predecessor Dance Central 2 supports Kinects voice recognition system. Simply calling ‘’Xbox dance’’ followed by the song title should bring up the desired track. Unfortunately this does not always seem to be the case, you will get a song it just might not be the one you actually requested. Other features in the game can also be selected using the voice command feature but it is not something that I personally bothered with. This really is a pointless feature and a total gimmick to be honest as apart from the fact that its function seems to be a bit hit and miss, the games hand operated menu control system works perfectly fine.
Dance Central 2 genuinely looks and sounds great and has no technical issues whatsoever. One particular thing that did grab my attention was the selection of backgrounds in the game. Apart from the usual nightclubs and parks that you would expect to find in a game of this kind, here there are locations such as subways and even a large open decked ship with a helicopter landing behind you. None of this really blows you away but these are really nice touches which I thought finished the look of the game off nicely.
Overall Dance Central 2 is the single best reason for owning a Kinect. It’s a ridiculous amount of fun and it can be played by pretty much any able bodied person, regardless of gaming ability. If you can stand up and are lucky enough to have movement in all of your limbs then you can play this game and it is guaranteed to liven up even the dullest party. However please take note of how much space you really need to play it, I found the playing area required extremely surprising to be honest as it was not something I had given even the slightest thought to before buying the game. Harmonix have again totally succeeded in getting us to have fun whilst looking ridiculous and this time they did not need Fisher Price instruments to do it. There is no online versus mode in Dance Central 2 which may be an issue for some. Personally though I found making a fool of myself in the comfort of my own front room was quite enough, I had no desire whatsoever to broadcast myself across the internet playing this game. In fact the only real issue I had with Dance Central 2 was with wiping the stupid grin off my face whilst playing it.
9/10
Cheers Chris! :)
Another review from pete! Grand indeed!
Nicely written :-)
Nicely written :-)
Thanks pb, various members of our family played DC2 over Christmas including my 5 year old niece, my wife and my mum and all of them were managing to play it on it's easy setting on lower difficulty tracks with no problem at all.
Nice review. The Dance Central games are great, though they still seem a bit tough for kids.
I find they're designed more around gamers, while the Just Dance games are more for anyone to play but don't give the gamers as much satisfaction as far as scoring goes as they're more freeform.
Reminds me I need to do a review for Just Dance 3 and Just Dance Kids on Kinect though.
I find they're designed more around gamers, while the Just Dance games are more for anyone to play but don't give the gamers as much satisfaction as far as scoring goes as they're more freeform.
Reminds me I need to do a review for Just Dance 3 and Just Dance Kids on Kinect though.
Games developer Harmonix are probably best known for creating first the Guitar Hero and then a few years later the Rock Band series of games. After successfully getting us to look ridiculous playing on our ever growing collection of toy plastic instruments they then turned their attention to Microsoft’s motion sensor, Kinect with the game Dance Central. This game was regarded by many as being the best of the Kinect launch titles but that was over a year ago and with a market now saturated with Kinect dance games is Dance Central 2 really worth shelling out for, especially if you already own the original game?
The gameplay in Dance Central 2 really could not be any simpler. You stand directly in front of your selected dancer and attempt to copy their onscreen moves. To help you out there is a scrolling list alongside informing you of which moves you will be required to pull off next. At first this does seem to be quite a lot of information to take in but after just a few games it all becomes sort of second nature. I found myself automatically glancing down the moves list without even thinking about it within 10 minutes of first playing the game. The main thing which makes Dance Central 2 stand out from its competition is its control system and in particular the excellent use it makes of the Kinect controller. In the case of most Kinect games that I have played this controller has either felt like a shallow gimmick or its support appears to have been a tagged on afterthought as it was in the case of Sega’s Virtua Tennis 4. However, in Dance Central 2 this is most definitely not the case as the game makes total use of this system and playing it never feels weird, unnatural or gimmicky in any way. The game scans your entire body and this can be seen in a small window located at the top corner of the screen. As you attempt to mimic your dancer the game rates you depending on whether you are nailing the moves, doing OK or failing altogether. As Dance Central 2 is monitoring your whole body there really is no way you can cheat in this game. Have a leg bent when it should be straight or a hand down when it should be up then this game will know and the outline of the offending body part will flash red to let you know that you need to improve. Compare this to other games such as Just Dance on the Nintendo Wii (which I managed to play standing virtually still and waving one hand around) and Dance Central 2 has a far more effective motion detection system than similar titles.
I have never been into dancing or dance music so initially I found playing this game something of a learning curve as I familiarised myself with the genre. I had absolutely no idea what a ‘’soldier whammy’’ even was let alone how I should possibly go about ‘’crankin’’ one. I felt this game lead me in gently as I began playing in easy mode on some of the lower difficulty tracks. I honestly found it all very user friendly and if a lifelong metalhead like myself could get into a dancing game then fans of this genre will have no problem whatsoever. For those wanting more of a challenge selecting Dance Central 2’s higher difficulty settings will more than satisfy them. I attempted some of these myself but as the famous line from the 1973 classic Enter The Dragon goes ‘’there is a point you will not go beyond’’. For me this point was attempting to beat Casacada’s Evacuate The Dance Floor on the games hard difficulty.
The track selection in Dance Central 2 is amongst the best I have come across in a game of its kind. There are around 40 tracks taken from different dance genres dating back over the past few decades. Also if you own the original Dance Central you can import its tracks into this game by use of a code located on the back of the games instruction manual. This will cost you 400 Microsoft points (around £3) which is well worth doing as there were some really good songs on the original game. One word of warning though, these codes can only be used once so I would not recommend buying a second hand copy of the original Dance Central if you wish to do this. Single tracks can be bought and downloaded from Xbox Live but these cost 240 Microsoft points (around £1.75) each. I honestly thought this was very expensive and unless there was one particular track you were desperate to have in your game I would not recommend building up your libraries in this way.
There are a few different game modes in Dance Central 2. There is a fitness mode which supposedly counts your calorie burning. I have no idea how accurate this is but with workouts ranging up to 50 minutes you would certainly have done some work by completing that. There is a tutorial mode for those wishing to nail every move in a certain routine as well as some great simultaneous 2 player modes which were noticeably absent in the original game. You can go head to head in the dance off mode or dance together as part of a crew. If you want to fall out with someone then I can recommend trying the 2 player crew challenge mode. At the precise moment you bang violently into one another it becomes apparent that one of you has jumped in entirely the wrong direction. As you are being judged as a team then whoever has made the mistake has therefore let the team down and your combined score is going to suffer. One thing I would note about the simultaneous 2 player modes is that although they are by far the most fun you can have in the Dance Central series they do require quite a lot of clear open space. I managed to clear our front room of all furniture with the exception of a 3 piece suite and a TV, this gave a useable clear area around 3 metres (10ft) squared and in the games 2 player modes pretty much all of this space was required. I cannot see many homes having this kind of clear area in a bedroom or spare room which is where I would imagine that some people would want to be playing a game like this.
The main thing that which really struck me about Dance Central 2 was just how much fun it was to play, I expected to tire of it pretty quickly but I honestly did not. I did mostly play it with other people but I would imagine that playing it solely in its single player modes may become repetitive pretty quickly. The feeling of fun that Dance Central 2 undoubtedly manages to create is mainly due to the fact that although the game is very competent at what it does it never seems to take itself all that seriously. Some of the routines are clearly designed to make you look like a complete idiot. Some of these moves are without doubt the campest things that I have come across in any video game. It is pretty much impossible to look and feel anything other then totally ridiculous as you attempt to pull off moves such as ‘’tug of war’’ or ‘’concert jump’’. Add to all this the freestyle breaks which record a few seconds of you in action and then play it back in a pop video style clip at the end of your game and Harmonix have made sure that anyone playing Dance Central 2 is going to enjoy themselves whether they like it or not.
Unlike its predecessor Dance Central 2 supports Kinects voice recognition system. Simply calling ‘’Xbox dance’’ followed by the song title should bring up the desired track. Unfortunately this does not always seem to be the case, you will get a song it just might not be the one you actually requested. Other features in the game can also be selected using the voice command feature but it is not something that I personally bothered with. This really is a pointless feature and a total gimmick to be honest as apart from the fact that its function seems to be a bit hit and miss, the games hand operated menu control system works perfectly fine.
Dance Central 2 genuinely looks and sounds great and has no technical issues whatsoever. One particular thing that did grab my attention was the selection of backgrounds in the game. Apart from the usual nightclubs and parks that you would expect to find in a game of this kind, here there are locations such as subways and even a large open decked ship with a helicopter landing behind you. None of this really blows you away but these are really nice touches which I thought finished the look of the game off nicely.
Overall Dance Central 2 is the single best reason for owning a Kinect. It’s a ridiculous amount of fun and it can be played by pretty much any able bodied person, regardless of gaming ability. If you can stand up and are lucky enough to have movement in all of your limbs then you can play this game and it is guaranteed to liven up even the dullest party. However please take note of how much space you really need to play it, I found the playing area required extremely surprising to be honest as it was not something I had given even the slightest thought to before buying the game. Harmonix have again totally succeeded in getting us to have fun whilst looking ridiculous and this time they did not need Fisher Price instruments to do it. There is no online versus mode in Dance Central 2 which may be an issue for some. Personally though I found making a fool of myself in the comfort of my own front room was quite enough, I had no desire whatsoever to broadcast myself across the internet playing this game. In fact the only real issue I had with Dance Central 2 was with wiping the stupid grin off my face whilst playing it.
9/10
The gameplay in Dance Central 2 really could not be any simpler. You stand directly in front of your selected dancer and attempt to copy their onscreen moves. To help you out there is a scrolling list alongside informing you of which moves you will be required to pull off next. At first this does seem to be quite a lot of information to take in but after just a few games it all becomes sort of second nature. I found myself automatically glancing down the moves list without even thinking about it within 10 minutes of first playing the game. The main thing which makes Dance Central 2 stand out from its competition is its control system and in particular the excellent use it makes of the Kinect controller. In the case of most Kinect games that I have played this controller has either felt like a shallow gimmick or its support appears to have been a tagged on afterthought as it was in the case of Sega’s Virtua Tennis 4. However, in Dance Central 2 this is most definitely not the case as the game makes total use of this system and playing it never feels weird, unnatural or gimmicky in any way. The game scans your entire body and this can be seen in a small window located at the top corner of the screen. As you attempt to mimic your dancer the game rates you depending on whether you are nailing the moves, doing OK or failing altogether. As Dance Central 2 is monitoring your whole body there really is no way you can cheat in this game. Have a leg bent when it should be straight or a hand down when it should be up then this game will know and the outline of the offending body part will flash red to let you know that you need to improve. Compare this to other games such as Just Dance on the Nintendo Wii (which I managed to play standing virtually still and waving one hand around) and Dance Central 2 has a far more effective motion detection system than similar titles.
I have never been into dancing or dance music so initially I found playing this game something of a learning curve as I familiarised myself with the genre. I had absolutely no idea what a ‘’soldier whammy’’ even was let alone how I should possibly go about ‘’crankin’’ one. I felt this game lead me in gently as I began playing in easy mode on some of the lower difficulty tracks. I honestly found it all very user friendly and if a lifelong metalhead like myself could get into a dancing game then fans of this genre will have no problem whatsoever. For those wanting more of a challenge selecting Dance Central 2’s higher difficulty settings will more than satisfy them. I attempted some of these myself but as the famous line from the 1973 classic Enter The Dragon goes ‘’there is a point you will not go beyond’’. For me this point was attempting to beat Casacada’s Evacuate The Dance Floor on the games hard difficulty.
The track selection in Dance Central 2 is amongst the best I have come across in a game of its kind. There are around 40 tracks taken from different dance genres dating back over the past few decades. Also if you own the original Dance Central you can import its tracks into this game by use of a code located on the back of the games instruction manual. This will cost you 400 Microsoft points (around £3) which is well worth doing as there were some really good songs on the original game. One word of warning though, these codes can only be used once so I would not recommend buying a second hand copy of the original Dance Central if you wish to do this. Single tracks can be bought and downloaded from Xbox Live but these cost 240 Microsoft points (around £1.75) each. I honestly thought this was very expensive and unless there was one particular track you were desperate to have in your game I would not recommend building up your libraries in this way.
There are a few different game modes in Dance Central 2. There is a fitness mode which supposedly counts your calorie burning. I have no idea how accurate this is but with workouts ranging up to 50 minutes you would certainly have done some work by completing that. There is a tutorial mode for those wishing to nail every move in a certain routine as well as some great simultaneous 2 player modes which were noticeably absent in the original game. You can go head to head in the dance off mode or dance together as part of a crew. If you want to fall out with someone then I can recommend trying the 2 player crew challenge mode. At the precise moment you bang violently into one another it becomes apparent that one of you has jumped in entirely the wrong direction. As you are being judged as a team then whoever has made the mistake has therefore let the team down and your combined score is going to suffer. One thing I would note about the simultaneous 2 player modes is that although they are by far the most fun you can have in the Dance Central series they do require quite a lot of clear open space. I managed to clear our front room of all furniture with the exception of a 3 piece suite and a TV, this gave a useable clear area around 3 metres (10ft) squared and in the games 2 player modes pretty much all of this space was required. I cannot see many homes having this kind of clear area in a bedroom or spare room which is where I would imagine that some people would want to be playing a game like this.
The main thing that which really struck me about Dance Central 2 was just how much fun it was to play, I expected to tire of it pretty quickly but I honestly did not. I did mostly play it with other people but I would imagine that playing it solely in its single player modes may become repetitive pretty quickly. The feeling of fun that Dance Central 2 undoubtedly manages to create is mainly due to the fact that although the game is very competent at what it does it never seems to take itself all that seriously. Some of the routines are clearly designed to make you look like a complete idiot. Some of these moves are without doubt the campest things that I have come across in any video game. It is pretty much impossible to look and feel anything other then totally ridiculous as you attempt to pull off moves such as ‘’tug of war’’ or ‘’concert jump’’. Add to all this the freestyle breaks which record a few seconds of you in action and then play it back in a pop video style clip at the end of your game and Harmonix have made sure that anyone playing Dance Central 2 is going to enjoy themselves whether they like it or not.
Unlike its predecessor Dance Central 2 supports Kinects voice recognition system. Simply calling ‘’Xbox dance’’ followed by the song title should bring up the desired track. Unfortunately this does not always seem to be the case, you will get a song it just might not be the one you actually requested. Other features in the game can also be selected using the voice command feature but it is not something that I personally bothered with. This really is a pointless feature and a total gimmick to be honest as apart from the fact that its function seems to be a bit hit and miss, the games hand operated menu control system works perfectly fine.
Dance Central 2 genuinely looks and sounds great and has no technical issues whatsoever. One particular thing that did grab my attention was the selection of backgrounds in the game. Apart from the usual nightclubs and parks that you would expect to find in a game of this kind, here there are locations such as subways and even a large open decked ship with a helicopter landing behind you. None of this really blows you away but these are really nice touches which I thought finished the look of the game off nicely.
Overall Dance Central 2 is the single best reason for owning a Kinect. It’s a ridiculous amount of fun and it can be played by pretty much any able bodied person, regardless of gaming ability. If you can stand up and are lucky enough to have movement in all of your limbs then you can play this game and it is guaranteed to liven up even the dullest party. However please take note of how much space you really need to play it, I found the playing area required extremely surprising to be honest as it was not something I had given even the slightest thought to before buying the game. Harmonix have again totally succeeded in getting us to have fun whilst looking ridiculous and this time they did not need Fisher Price instruments to do it. There is no online versus mode in Dance Central 2 which may be an issue for some. Personally though I found making a fool of myself in the comfort of my own front room was quite enough, I had no desire whatsoever to broadcast myself across the internet playing this game. In fact the only real issue I had with Dance Central 2 was with wiping the stupid grin off my face whilst playing it.
9/10