Astonishingly, Gaga’s ‘Just Dance’ still isn’t in the song list!
Format: Wii Dev: Ubisoft Pub: Ubisoft Out: 15/10/10 Players: 1-8
Mario Galaxy. Zelda. Just Dance. The biggest selling games of the Wii seem to be a misfit set of adventure, family-friendly, and preset waggle commands. Much to the pleasant surprise of fans of the latter, there is a new iteration that’s going to try it’s best to get us out off the sofa (even though you can pretty much play the game sat down).
I feel I must be blunt. If you’re looking for a different experience from the last game, do not get Just Dance 2. It is exactly the same, from the visuals right through to the gameplay. Nothing new except for a different soundtrack – which, incidentally, still doesn’t feature the charting-topping Lady Gaga hit.
The gameplay remains unchanged. The premise is to match the movements of the on-screen characters using your Wii Remote. How much you get into it depends on whoever’s around you (watching you pretend there’s no one there), or how much alcohol has been flowing into your party.
Like any party game, I must insist that you do not play this single-player. It’s a soul destroying experience. It makes much more sense in a social setting, but then again you’ll be reading an extended paragraph of this commonsensical point in a vast majority of other reviews, as they try to find something to talk about.
So allow me to make another observation to break the trend. There is one reason why this game will fail. There’s a torpedo of controller-free motion control in the water that will make a much more active experience – and disallows sofa dancing. Dance Cental for Kinect: the dancing game where you actually have to get up off the sofa.
Seeing the opportunities opened up for much more red wine-induced fun via Kinect compared to the pretty limited options of the Wii Remote-controlled dancing (and the ability to cheat the system), it’s fair to say that Just Dance 2 has been blown out the water [ed. We’re yet to test Dance Central, but rest assured we’ll be taking our reviewers claims into account]. But, we make the best with what we’ve got.
Mix a diverse soundtrack of the most popular hits with this constrained gameplay, and you have a game that is fun in a small minority of circumstance. For that, and the social gaming angle only, Just Dance 2 is a good game. But me thinks that the Wii is facing its death in the face of clearly superior motion control.
Jason England
Tags: casual, family, just dance, party, ubisoft
* laughs cruelly and maniacally at the thought of saddo, collapsing in living room, soul destroyed by solitary dancing * Ahem. Am I weird for commenting on this review? Nobody seems to comment on anything ever. Except for Harry Potter, for obvious reasons…
Anyway, that was exceptional
Chi, why would it ever be sad to comment on an article we’ve posted?
I’m extremely pleased you’ve taken the time to share a thought. Honestly, most people don’t (apart for the nameless people who just like to criticise us). Not even my own contributors bother to comment.
So it’s nice to see some thoughts at last. I do my very best to provide intelligent and exciting content in the Gaming section for readers on a weekly basis, so a positive comment every now and again sure does lift my spirits.
- AL (Gaming Ed)
It was rather embarrassing having to do some of this playtest myself.
Talk about dancing like nobody is watching!