Put on your dancing shoes, some shades, clear your furniture from the immediate area and get ready to

groove. This, is Dance Central.

Written By Senior Ed Dan 'Get Ya Groove On' Curtis

Dance Central isn't quite like anything else that's ever been released on a gaming system. Instead it is somewhat of an amalgamation of every dancing game you've ever played, mashing together the steps of Dancing Stage with the daft arm movements of Just Dance. It is, in short, the first dancing game to track your full body using the magical powers of Microsoft's Kinect, crafting a dance game that while quite difficult to master, is an absolute blast to break out with friends (even if you do look more than a bit stupid trying to replicate some of the movements on screen).

First things first: you're going to need to clear a pretty decent size area to play Dance Central effectively. I've just about managed to play it a couple of times in my reasonably small bedroom but more often than not I would find myself executing a dance move to the left and end up falling face first onto my bed because I hadn't judged the distance right. So yeah, if you're trying to play this in a room that closely resembles a broom closest, chances are you are going to get pretty hurt trying to dance like a lunatic.

I think you've pretty much already gathered this fact, but in Dance Central the core of the gameplay revolves around you getting your groove on in a variety of different tracks and dancing styles. Your aim, as the gamer, is to follow a group of dancers on screen, accurately replicating their movements as they prance around the screen (which is easier said than done). As you dance, Kinect will track you entire body, scanning your arm, leg and other bodily placements and score you depending on how accurately you are copying the actions on screen. If a body part is out of position, Kinect will then highlight it in red, telling you that it needs adjusting.  At least, that's what it's meant to do. After a while though you'll start to realise that the accuracy on the game isn't quite correct - you can sometimes do a move completely accurately and it will refuse to accept that you've done so; in comparison, you can do a move entirely wrong and the game will be convinced its correct, meaning it's almost impossible to execute a dance flawlessly.

Silly Outfits Are Entirely Optional.

Have absolutely no rhythm? Never fear - even the terminally dance-crippled can at least make a stab at playing Dance Central. If you look on the image above this lovely bit of writing I'm doing right here, you'll notice that on the far right of the screen it lists a number of different moves. As the song progresses, this little chart will scroll upwards, telling you which move to get ready to execute next. How exactly do you know how to do these moves though? Well, you can either trust your dancing ability and attempt to replicate the song's dance moves straight away, or you can decide to enter practice mode, where the game will walk you through, step by step, how to execute the movements in a song. As you ramp up the difficulty from easy to hard, practicing the songs becomes more and more important, otherwise you'll literally just end standing there saying 'No way.'  I would say that my dancing ability personally is reasonably low, but even I have built myself up to being able to execute songs on hard level through use of the practice mode. I may look ridiculous dancing to 'Funky Town', but to be quite honest I don't care - the game is too much fun when you're firmly in the dancing zone.

Once you're familiar with a song, you'll probably be wanting to enter the game's career mode. In here, you put your fresh new shiny dance moves to the test, ramping up those points all in the aim of getting the ever-desirable 'five star' rating that we all know and love from titles such as Rockband (actually made by Harmonix, who also make Dance Central, don't you know!). As you do this, you'll unlock new songs, new venues, new characters and ramp up your dance level from zero to dance master (hopefully anyway). To be honest the rewards for doing the dances themselves aren't that great, but there's a lot of fun to be had in the actual gameplay. If you're new to Kinect, I can guarantee you'll be amazed for a while simply by the ability to scroll through menus using naught but the hands on the ends of your arms - it feels like you have some kind of Star-Wars-esque force powers. Of course, you don't, but we can pretend, right?

Dance Central is also great as a means of keeping fit as I can declare without hesitation that this game is absolutely, ridiculously, totally knackering. After a few songs you'll probably be sweating. You'll be out of breath. Yet somehow, you want to continue. The temptation to dance is just too high. Finally, you can feel like John Travolta did whenever he got his groove on. Something about the gameplay just calls to you to come back again and again and perfect a dance; after a few goes, you'll long since have forgot any feelings of self-consciousness and are simply jumping around your room like the ghost of Michael Jackson himself. You'll probably want to close your curtains though - you'll probably attract some funny looks from passers by if they happen to spot you strutting your funky stuff. It doesn't look quite so funky from a distance without being able to hear the music, you see.

'Can't Touch This'

The tracklist of Dance Central, if I'm honest, is a bit of a disappointment. This is mainly however because I mainly love older music, and this game is packed to the seams with more modern tracks that are geared towards the audience of 10-25 year olds who would probably appreciate them. Being only 21 myself I should probably be in that group but I'm, for the most part, not. There's a few really fun tracks I like such as 'Satisfaction' (which includes a superb robotic style of dancing to master) and  I'm also particularly fond of 'Jungle Boogie', which involves some complex movements. There's also a few tracks from Lady Gaga, Cascada, Snoop Dog to name just a few, so you've got a good few tracks to dance away to to your heart's content. Of course, the three tier levels of difficulty on each track mean you can play them even longer, as more moves are included in the track as you ramp up the difficulty, some of which may cause you bend your body in reasonably painful ways. You've been warned.

While you'll probably have a good time playing this game by yourself (at least for a while, anyway) the real enjoyment of Dance Central comes from playing the title with others. It can be absolutely hilarious, surprising and altogether enjoyable all at the same time when you play Dance Central with others; the hilarity coming from seeing a rhythm-lacking friend try to tackle a song on hard when you've set it up that way when they weren't looking, the surprises coming when a person you thought had no dancing ability completely aces a song and the overall enjoyment coming from the experience as you all make fools of yourselves on your imaginary dance floor.

The multiplayer mode consists of a dance-battle between two different people. You can each choose seperate difficulties but you both must dance to all of the song. Sadly only one person can take to the floor at one time - the other person must sit and wait for the first person to finish their song section before leaping up, ready to strut their no-doubt funky stuff. Acting as a bridge between these changeovers is a freestyle section where you're meant to dance, without prompts, for a few seconds. During this time Kinect is busy photoing you and then will show you how ridiculous you look afterwards (don't worry, this feature can be turned off) and there's great hilarity to be had from seeing your moves you thought looked cool looking really quite pathetic and silly. This freestyle mode is also present in single-player activities, although doing it by yourself means you don't quite care as much about the fact that you look like a demented seal trying to dance.

You Can Look This Cool. Just Play Dance Central.

Overall Dance Central is a good dancing game. I'm not particularly fond of the setlist itself and the technology works only reasonably well, but it can't be denied this is a great one for parties and drunken set-tos. You never know, you may even learn a few dance moves from playing it as well. Use them in nightclubs at your own peril.

- Dan Curtis

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