Dance Central 3 – New Gameplay Modes

Why Dance Central 3? The original Dance Central had a great range of songs that put Lady Gaga’s Poker Face next to Wreckx-n-Effect’s Rump Shaker. It is still hailed as the best implementation of Kinect to date. The sequel built upon its stellar dance tracking by adding side-by-side multiplayer and another amazing soundtrack – Haddaway’s What Is Love? and Rihanna’s Rude Boy. Okay yes, and also Justin Bieber.

With new song packs being released all the time, what could possibly justify yet another iteration of the series? “The problem we really wanted to solve was the multiplayer experience,” said Harmonix Project Director Matt Boch.

“We put a lot of work in Dance Central 2 to build out the existing multiplayer experience. In playing it a fair amount we found we could really improve on accessibility in terms of partying. We wanted to be able to let people jump in and have a good time without having to go through navigating the shell and all that swipe back. It works great… when you’re sober.”

In Dance Central 3’s party mode, you now use your right hand to swipe horizontally through a list of songs, instead of the lift-to-select menu of the previous games. You left hand controls the list of game types. It works and is undoubtedly easier for drunk people but I miss the space-agey feel of moving my hand to navigate. I also discovered very quickly that you can’t scroll back through the list, so if your dance partner shouts too late for a song, you have to scroll all the way through the list. Presumably they’ll retain the Kinect voice control selection for these situations.

[Edit: The traditional control method is retained in the single-player. It’s just the party mode that features this slightly awkward method]

You’ve might have already seen the crazy time-travelling movie trailer for the game. If not, here it is:

DCI or Dance Central Intelligence are the new crew and you might even recognise one of the voices. Rasa’s been teaching you to dance from your boombox for years now. Plenty of familiar faces are back with Lu$h funking the flares in the 70s, Mo and Glitch hip-hopping the streets of the 80s, Taye and Li’l looking very TLC through the 90s and RipTide, still on the beaches of the 2000s. And oh my god, what have they done to Oblio?

“We saw a great opportunity in going back to the 70s and 80s and taking a look at where the types of dance really came from. If you WERE a disco dancer, you wanna relive your glory days? You can totally do that,” said Boch.

Harmonix have also added a slew of new multiplayer modes. “We had dance battles, we had free-for-all minigames. We had freestyle. And they represent polar opposites – do whatever you want or do exactly this thing. We wanted a place in between.”

This takes the form of “Crew Throwdown”, where two teams of up to four players each battle across a series of minigames. So there’s no sneaky starting when the other person isn’t paying attention, you have to high-five, fistbump, or if your crew rivalry is more serious, headbutt your opponent to start the match. On top of the standard Perform It and Battle, I’ve seen three new modes:

• Make Your Move: Each player takes it in turn to do a dance move. You have to repeat it four times for Dance Central 3 to get a consistent capture, so no playing silly buggers with a hard motion you can’t replicate. The game will generate dance cards reminders and a glittery avatar capture will prance away in the middle to show you your move. Four moves will be strung into a mini routine which you battle out against your opponent. Not like this.



• Keep The Beat: Do whatever movements you want as long as you’re in time with the music. You’ll get fewer points if you keep doing the same thing. Even worse, if your opponent copies what you’re repeating, s/he can steal your move for extra points.
• Strike A Pose: This one for the non-dancers. There no rhythm involved, just copy the avatar’s finishing as quickly as you can. As with all Dance Central moves, if one of your arms or legs is out of place, it’ll be highlighted in red so you know what to fix. I got properly beaten on this mode – the moves aren’t coordinated like normal dance routines so switching positions is much harder than you’d think.

Rest assured, Dance Central 3 is no cynical exploitation. There are significant changes here. It still looks great, it still plays great and the new multiplayer will get even your rhythmically-challenged friends off the sofa and onto the floor.

Dance Central 3 will be released for Kinect on 19th October.