Dance Central is the latest game from Harmonix (makers of the hugely successful Rock Band series) for Microsoft's Kinect camera, which tracks your entire body as you dance. Tracking your arms, legs, hands, feet and head - everything - without the need for controllers, if you imagine Just Dance without the Wii Remotes, or Dance Dance Revolution without the Dance Mat, you'll be halfway there.
Now, for those of you who read the first in the 'how I embarrassed myself at Gamescom' series, you'll know that I can't dance to save my life. It's not like I don't have a sense of rhythm (I can play all the instruments on Rock Band on Expert, as well as several 'real' instruments - and I'm modest, too), and I know in theory exactly what to do. It's just that no matter how hard I try, when it comes to dancing, I just can't get my limbs to do what I want, ending up either collapsed in a fit of giggles or looking like I'm having some sort of fit. That doesn't mean I hate dancing games - they can be quite fun, particularly when you're watching me fail, and seeing as I don't mind embarrassing myself on them, I was the obvious choice for testing them out, seeing as if I can do them, anyone can.
As if I could ever get a flawless...
The premise of Dance Central is simple. Plonk yourself in front of the Kinect camera, and, in a manner not too far removed from Just Dance, copy the moves as they pass by on the right of the screen (following the prompts of the on screen character), and the better you do, the more points you'll get.
The first thing you noticed when playing Dance Central is just how... different it feels. Whereas with games like Just Dance, you have to be overblown with your movements, to ensure that the Wii remotes actually pick up that you're moving, in Dance Central, you can be as subtle as you want. Another revolution is just how strange it feels knowing that the game's even tracking your feet - and rather than having to push certain buttons with your feet, you just... dance. Maybe that would have been a more appropriate name for this game?
When we got to have a go at Dance Central at Gamescom in Cologne, I was more than a little apprehensive - especially after watching the developers who did very complicated dances, seemingly flawlessly - the sort of thing I could never pull off without tying myself up in a knot. Needless to say, we went for the easiest song on the game, on the easy difficulty - Lady Gaga's p-p-p-Poker Face. Which went surprisingly well, considering. Probably because it mostly involved stepping left and right - which kind of proved that Dance Central's difficulty level caters to all comers.
Then we tried 'Poison' by Bell Biv DeVoe, and, giddy with confident from our previous success, whacked the difficulty up, and hoped for the best. Surprisingly, it actually went fairly well - the only problem was that there was one move we just couldn't do - no matter how hard we tried... Here's a trailer for Poison, so you can see the sort of thing we were up against.
For those of you, like me, who are rhythmically and spatially challenged when it comes to dancing, Dance Central offers a 'Break It Down' mode, which works much like a tutorial, taking you through each move step by step, slowing things down to a few beats per minute, and waiting until you can perfect the move three times in a row before carrying on. If you're doing a move wrong, it'll highlight whichever body part is out of place with a red outline, which is meant to help you improve for the next time. Except, we simply couldn't. Try as we might, we couldn't get that move quite right, even though as far as we could tell, we were doing exactly as it asked.
Hopefully, the problems we experienced will have been ironed out of the final release, as we were playing what was actually a fairly early version of the game. Dance Central is due out on the 10th November, along with the Kinect camera, priced at £40. Every day until then we'll be running a 'Countdown to Kinect' feature, with info on a new launch title every day, as well as an FAQ to answer all the Kinect related questions you might have, so make sure you check back tomorrow.
