There’s just no way to talk about Dance Central without mentioning a certain E3 demo, so lets just get that out of the way now.

Dance Central, the new game from Harmonix, creators of the original Guitar Hero and Rock Band is really the only Kinect Game that has enough depth and features to really show Kinect fully implemented in a proper game rather than a collection of mini games. It’s goal? As shown in the video above, to teach ANYONE to dance.

Dance Central works surprisingly well, just as well as a dance game as Rock band works as a music game in fact. To play you simply mirror the dancer on screen, so she moves her left arm, you move your right arm. At the side of the screen icons queue up showing which moves you have to use next. The build shown also featured a night vision style real time image of your own body. This may not feature in the final game but it is reassuring to know what Kinect sees as you’re playing. It comes remarkably fast, just like Rock Band you could play by watching the symbols approach you and find it very difficult but it really comes together when you get used to the basics and start listening to the rhythm. Of course Harmonix have made lots of friends in the music industry with the success of the Rock Band series so you can expect a massive line up of popular songs on release which will only be expanded afterwards.

Of all the launch games on Kinect I reckon this’ll be the one that doesn’t end up gather dust after only a few weeks of novelty play. Dance Central really understands the technology it uses to work, its fluid, responsive and most importantly very fun.
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