5 reviews
Dance Central 3
Dance Central 3 is the third installment in the popular Dance Central game for the Kinect on the Xbox 360.
Details
- Released
- October 15, 2012
- Developer
- Harmonix Music Systems
- Genres
- Music
- Publisher
- Microsoft Studios, Microsoft
- Platforms
- Xbox 360
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Dance Central 3 Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
Before I get to everything that is new to the franchise, let me just go over some basics for those of you who have no idea how Dance Central 3 works. It is essentially a dance rhythm game that plays out in similar fashion to Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution. The main difference is that Dance Central 3 requires you to use your entire body as opposed to merely frantic footsteps. The Kinect reads your full body as you follow dancers on screen to a series of ‘flash cards’ that depict a dance routine. Your goal is to mimic the moves of the dancers on the screen. Some of the moves can involve a ...
Dance Central 3 continues to proves Harmonix is one of too-few developers that understands why Kinect can be special. The track list is varied and playful in a way that works with its terrific, tough story mode, and no matter how much time you spend banging your head against tutorial walls, your effort pays off in spades. The choreography here is complex, as well as diverse in genre, style, and energy – and nailing a routine feels incredible.
Dance Central 3 continues to improve upon the visual style set by Rock Band with a bigger focus on colors as opposed to the slight griminess the Rock Band games had. I definitely prefer the look of the characters on screen and the venues they dance in than Just Dance 4’s simple filters over a person dancing. There’s a nice variety in the songs, possibly more so than JD4, with a lot more masculine tracks for the men out there. The UI is pretty slick as well which controls smoothly unlike JD4; you simply hover your hand over what you want and swipe to the left.
Kinect was billed as motion control with a hardcore twist, meant to appeal to those staunch gamers who were insolently opposed to getting off the couch and flailing their limbs to accomplish tasks that had previously required a touch of a button. While Kinect has never quite delivered on that initial promise (which is what happens when Peter Molyneux is your hype man) at least it hasn’t totally gone down the route of abject shovelware. Unsurprisingly the two genres that are most represented...