Dance Central 2 Review

Servants of the dance floor, rejoice: Dance Central 2 continues the full-body experience of the original with new tracks, new routines, and new modes. If you need a great game to break out at a party, or you just love dancing as much as I do, Dance Central will serve your fist-pumping needs. Even with a few hiccups, Dance Central 2 provides further proof that the Kinect can facilitate amazing gaming experiences when they're well designed around Kinect from the get-go.

If you missed out on the original Dance Central, don't sweat it. You fill the eager shoes of a dancer aiming to challenge all the best dance crews in town. By dancing against each two-man crew, you'll earn their respect and start down the road to sweet, groovy glory. This scenario makes up the new Crew Challenge mode in Dance Central 2. It contextualizes a ranked progression through all the songs, and gives you a straight-forward way to unlock new crews and outfits for the dancers. More importantly, you use the power of dance to take down a mysterious megalomaniac. How great is that? I'll tell you: pretty great.

Like the first game, Dance Central 2 tasks you with following an on-screen dancer and mimicking a dance routine choreographed to some hot beats. Cue cards slide up the side of the screen and depict the basic motion of the move, so you have a rough idea what you need to do next.

The continued success of this formula, besides the accurate body-reading, lies in the choreography itself. These dance moves look great and are fun to perform, but most importantly: they follow patterns. Usually you perform a move, like a shuffle to the side, and then perform it again to the other side. This gives you time to adjust your body, react to the music, and learn the routine.

Dance Central 2 comes equipped with 44 different songs to perform to right from the start, with three default difficulty levels. The tracks range from old-school tunes to the latest and greatest, like Gaga's "Born this Way." These make excellent dancing tunes, but I did notice a strong presence of "hands above your head, hips shaking" choreography that would likely make an average male dancer blush. I say embrace it and shake those hips, gentlemen.

The developers at Harmonix have made a number of notable improvements to Dance Central 2 when compared to the original. The biggest is simultaneous multiplayer support, which wasn't available in Dance Central. This already makes Dance Central 2 a superior party game, and allows for maximum grinding. Two players can dance cooperatively, or face off in the new dance battle system.

I love a good, friendly game of co-op, but I admit the dance battles provide serious laughs. Players alternate between dancing move-for-move, performing solo sections, and competing in "Free 4 Alls." During a Free 4 All, the screen fills with different moves. You and the opposing player try to perform each move in any order. The first one to perform it correctly scores some bonus points. These varying play styles make dance battles much more engaging than they were in the first Dance Central.

Harmonix made other improvements outside of the sweat-inducing dance numbers. Voice control has been added to the menu interface and the Break It Down mode, which teaches you the moves, has been overhauled. Now you can skip around to specific moves in a routine. It's much easier to control, which means you have a better way to learn the steps and get grooving.


Dance Central 2 features a direct line to new song downloads, and you can import the entire tracklist from the original Dance Central into the sequel. That's more songs than you could safely dance to in one session.

If I have any complaints to toss at Dance Central 2, it would be the lack of a proper party/shuffle mode. While I appreciate the inclusion of a customizable dance playlist, Dance Central 2 doesn't support a shuffle option. You can't leave it on at a party and let the AI handle the song selections and menu navigation.

Another notable disappointment stems from the absence of online multiplayer. Imagine dancing with other players around the world and watching their video feed stream in on your screen as you both dance together. Would this lead to an inevitable series of unfortunate, vulgar misuses? Absolutely, but boy would a legitimate, internet dance battle rock.

Read more details on how I wrote the Dance Central 2 review.

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