When Xbox Kinect came onto the playing field last year, there was really only one reason to buy the hardware, and that was a copy of Harmonix’ Dance Central. Even a year after the game has released, its serious competitors are few and far between. The one game to rival Dance Central’s #1 status in the Kinect based lineup is its own successor – Dance Central 2.
Anyone who picked up Dance Central last year knows that the game displays not only excellent technical standards in reading player movements and providing directions, but also possesses an extremely danceable track list. In typical Harmonix fashion, as in Rock Band before, Dance Central 2 lets players import the entire library of its predecessor for a 5 Dollar fee, not a bad deal considering how many great songs were originally included. The track list for Dance Central 2 is equally impressive; there is a plethora of artists and variety to choose from, we can enkoy old school jams like Hot Stuff by Donna Summer or The Humpty Dance from Digital Underground as well as new dance club hits like Sexy Chick by David Guetta and Akon or Bulletproof by La Roux.
Dance Central 2 finally adds the highly anticipated 2 player mode in its arsenal, making the multiplayer experience in your living room even more meaningful. There are many subtle additions to DC2 like Kinect voice commands which allow players to queue up songs verbally, and the introduction of dance crews via the crew challenge story mode. Dance Central 2 also allows you to build custom playlists and improved the ‘Break It Down’ mode, helping players even more when trying to learn specific sections of songs.
Everything that worked well in the original Dance Central has been carried over successfully and still remains fun and quality. Dance Central 2 builds on its predecessor’s strong base and manages to add meaningful features and modes to make this game worth the purchase as opposed to buying DLC tracks. Harmonix is without a doubt one of the pioneers for Kinect software and produced another excellent experience. While it is hard to write a whole lot about a dancing game, since it lacks any kind of deep story line or ‘weapons unlocks’ ala Call of Duty, it is easy to say that Dance Central 2 is nailing the genre better than anyone else. For those of you that didn’t like the ‘Freestyle’ sections as much, they have become optional as well.
The way the game provides directions using a rolling wheel of flash cards and a stylish digital avatar make it impossible not to ‘get it’. Dance Central 2 offers the most intuitive dancing and interactive Kinect experience to date, which can now be shared with a friend in local multiplayer. Getting ‘flawless’ remarks when nailing a difficult routine is as fun and rewarding as ever, constantly letting players know when they are doing well and when they may need to move the arm out just a little bit further.
When it comes to dancing and Kinect games, no one comes really that close to Harmonix’ games, at least up until now. Dance Central 2 is still a really fun, entertaining experience and has added enough to its feature set to not overstay its welcome. The game is a showcase piece of software for Xbox Kinect, that makes looking completely silly in front of friends and family awesome, rather than embarrassing. If you are picking up a Kinect for Christmas this year, or are looking for another game to get, make sure you put Dance Central 2 in your shopping cart.
Score: 9 / 10
Dance Central 2 was developed by Harmonix and published by Microsoft for Xbox 360 on October 25th. A retail copy was provided to us by Harmonix for reviewing purposes.
