The Dance Central series has already established itself as the best
dance franchise available. It's known for its gorgeous animations,
wonderful dance routines that cater to a wide range of skill levels, and
Kinect tracking that gets your whole body into the groove. And in these
regards, Dance Central 3 maintains the excellence of its predecessors,
leaving the basic gameplay untouched. You still perform a wide variety
of fun dance moves in routines that are expertly choreographed to match
the music that accompanies them. But it's the elements that surround the
dancing that make this sequel a standout. An appropriately absurd Story
mode and a diverse soundtrack that reaches back through time to work in
hit records and dance crazes of the past few decades elevate the game.
But it's the outrageous and frequently hilarious Party Time mode that
takes this sequel over the top and makes it the best Dance Central ye
Of course, dancing is still front and center. A new difficulty level,
beginner, keeps routines simple and lets even those who may have been
intimidated by the easy mode in earlier games enjoy strutting their
stuff. On the other end of the spectrum, dances on hard difficulty are
complex, challenging more experienced dancers to keep up with intricate,
physically demanding routines. The dances are performed by an
assortment of impossibly attractive, stylish characters--most of whom
return from earlier games--and their smooth, graceful animations make
even the simplest of moves look pretty cool.
As in earlier Dance Central games, cue cards scroll up along the side of
the screen, indicating which moves are coming up in the current
routine, and should your actions not quite match the dance move being
performed, the corresponding limbs on the onscreen dancer become
outlined in red. It's a gentle, effective way to inform you that your
performance is a little off, but this may not be enough to help you
understand what you're doing wrong.
