Just Dance For Wii

For starters, it’s a dancing game. Dancing. As every self-respecting man will know, dancing isn’t really something we ‘do’. We might occasionally be dragged onto a dance floor in order to shimmy from side to side for a few minutes before making a hasty retreat to the comfort of a chair and a bottle of beer, but we do not, by and large, dance.

Just Dance is a dancing game. That’s pretty much everything there is to know about it- a dancer appears on screen and you, holding a Wii remote, must copy their moves in time. Doing it right nets you some points, whilst doing it wrong doesn’t. If you play the game with other players- something that we highly recommend- you can have a look to see who got the most points and won. Then you choose a different song, forget all about it, and dance to that instead.

There are 32 tracks in all, comprising a curious mixture of genres that should ensure that there’s something for everyone. The Swingin’ sixties are represented by the likes of the Beach Boys with I Get Around, the 80’s celebrate the joy of Eye of the Tiger, and present day tracks get a look-in with Calvin Harris’ Acceptable in the 80’s. Dance aficionados will appreciate the likes of Cotton Eye Joe and U Can’t touch This, those of a rockier disposition will appreciate Presidents of the USA’s Lump and Iggy Pop’s Louie Louie, and cheese lovers everywhere will unite in the gaiety of the Spice Girls’ Wannabe and Baha Men’s Who Let the Dogs Out. Oddly, Lady Gaga’s Just Dance is nowhere to be found, and a couple of the tracks are ‘in the style of’ rather than original versions, though the sound-alikes do the job adequately enough. With all of the tracks unlocked right from the start though, Just Dance is clearly set up for instant party play, and that’s where its real strength lies; with a bunch of players mimicking the digitised dancer’s moves and generally making a tit of themselves.

Its alarmingly compelling; partly because the track selection is such a good mix, and also because the dancers themselves are excellent- dance routines are presented by a stylised, digitized dancer, usually dressed in a manner befitting the song (check out the collar on the guy dancing to Elvis Presely’s A little Less Conversation, or the torn up wedding dress on the girl doing Katy Perry’s Hot and Cold dance routine). The rest of the presentation is a little spartan, with next to no character or style to speak of, but that does at least draw your focus to the dancer and the brilliantly choreographed dance moves. Rednex Cotton Eye Joe is a definite highlight, though even it can’t compare to the 90’s-style hilarity of Reel 2 Real’s I Like to Move it.

As well as the standard dance-to-a-track-and-score-points mode, there’s a Strike a Pose game, which is basically musical statues- at random intervals during the dance routine certain players are told to stop (though not to collaborate and listen), and must remain perfectly still- any movement in this time loses them points. The other mode is Last One Standing, which is your basic elimination fare.

Taken as a solo game, things don’t work so well. Partly because all the tracks and modes are open from the beginning- you just pick a track and dance to it. With nothing to unlock, no songs available to download, and generally no progression whatsoever, there’s actually very little to do apart from dance to the same tracks over and over again.

What single player also highlights is the rather spotty motion detection employed by Just Dance. It’s not too noticeable in multiplayer, because everything’s a semi-chaotic mess anyway, but your movements simply aren’t recognised consistently or accurately by the game. Since the points you earn are tied to how accurate you are- getting a series of ‘Great’ moves vastly inflates your score with a multiplier that is lost if you miss a move or are merely judged to be ‘ok’- this becomes pretty annoying and a pretty large problem. When repeating the same move often results in completely different scores, you know something’s not quite right, though at least without a requirement to unlock anything it doesn’t matter as much as it would if you needed those high scores.

The presentation is about as sloppy as the control detection; the dancers might look great and animate well, but everything else- from the weak attempt at pyrotechnics on the score bar to the uninspired, drab-looking menus is mostly bland. At least it all loads quickly, and you can look at other, more interesting things when you’re not dancing yourself- like how much of a tool your mates look doing the lasso spin part of Cotton Eye Joe, for instance.

Source:http://www.gameshard.net