Do the mashed potato
Setting up Kinect is a breeze, though you do need to make sure you've got adequate lighting in your room and 6ft of space in front of the camera. Gameplay involves copying the moves of a professional dancer on screen, who takes the form of a cartoon-like animation. The camera recognises your body and places a silhouette of you in a small box on the right hand side of the screen -- you can glance up at anytime and see yourself dancing. Below that silhouette, as the song progresses, flash cards pop-up that represent various movements, such as punching both your arms forward alternately. These movements are also given names, in this case “knockout.” As you progress you do get used to quickly glancing to the right to look at the names of the moves, and you soon become familiar with most of simpler moves. The more you play, the more familiar you become with the moves, so you then find yourself with more time to be able to shift your focus quickly to the professional dancer to ensure you get your timing right. Nevertheless, there's quite a steep learning curve, especially if you've got two left feet.Each track is rated by difficulty, and part of the challenge is - just like Rock Band's set-up - trying to beat a variety of tracks on the easiest difficulty in order to unlock some of the more difficult ones. There’s a lot of choreography to learn and complicated dance moves to master as you progress through the game, but the ‘Break It Down’ game mode caters well for those struggling to learn steps, by breaking down the more complicated move sets. It’s an excellent game mode that allows you take things at a slower pace while giving you more chance to learn each of the dance routines off by heart. We've waited patiently over the Christmas period for Rhianna's "Pon de Replay" to be played over the pub speakers, but have been left disappointed.
There’s a lot of variation in terms of choreography and a real feeling of satisfaction when you manage to pull off flawless moves again and again and rack up some high scores. You couldn’t ask for any more from the Kinect camera. It captures your movements perfectly and scores fairly, so there’s no way you can blag your way through unlike some of Wii and Move titles. Having the option to freestyle during each of the tracks is also a nice addition, which breaks up the routines and gives you a chance to let yourself go. During this short section, you can strut your stuff anyway you see fit against a psychedelic backdrop and then you get to see it replayed and sped up on screen, which is a great source of amusement for anyone watching -- if you're as bad as we are.
Continued overleaf...
