[Review] Just Dance 3

[[MC]Ronin[MC]]

 

Premiere Date: October 7, 2011
Series: Just Dance
Publisher: Ubisoft
Awards: Teens Choice Award for favorite video game, MORE
Platforms: Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Developers: Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Reflections, Ubisoft Montreal

 

Dance games, at their best, can be perfect examples of videogames at their purest and most universal. Like Pac-Man, like Space Invaders, like Guitar Hero, you don't need to know anything at all about games to enjoy Just Dance. All you really need to understand is the title. You don't even need to be a good dancer – what matters isn't whether you've got killer moves, but whether you actually like to dance. If you don't (what is wrong with you?), then Just Dance 3 can do very little to change your mind. But if you do, this is fantastically entertaining.

Just Dance is Dance Central's friendlier sibling: less self-consciously cool, less judgemental, more willing to dress up in silly wigs. The scoring isn't anything like as harsh – or as accurate – as Dance Central's, but it doesn't really matter. The vast majority of people don't play these games for high scores and Gamerpoints. They're there to provide good music and good, acceptably silly choreography, and on those fronts Just Dance 3

Just Dance 3's clean and colourful presentation will be familiar to anyone who's ever played a game in the series before. It hasn't changed a bit since Just Dance 2. As ever, the stylised on-screen dancers are infectiously enthusiastic, intimidatingly talented and dressed up in outfits and make-up that befits each song, from bizarre tribal body paint to bowler hats and ties to raver legwarmers. Menus are quick and easy to navigate, much more so than the Kinect-enabled ones on 360, and the stylised dancers and routines still look great on the Wii.

 

 

New to Just Dance 3 is four-person choreographed dancing, with dance routines designed around four people at once. There are some absolute classics in here, particularly This Is Halloween, which sees you pretending to be a vampire, a werewolf, a pumpkin-headed marionette and a witch. The two-player routines make a return as well, though it's a shame that only around a quarter of the 40 tunes on the disc have specific multiplayer routines. Doing a proper four-person routine (like the one below) is so much more fun than just doing the same moves side by side.

 

 

The scoring on Just Dance 3 on Wii is actually a bit harsher than on Kinect. You really do have to be on time and in rhythm to rack up acceptable scores. You're given a star rating for your performance, and also gives you a style rating like Energetic, In Rhythm or Creative (which I suspect is code for "at least you're trying"). But you never feel self-conscious, largely because you never appear on-screen. You probably don't look cool playing Just Dance, but you FEEL like you look cool, which is much more important.

I said this about Just Dance 2, and I'll say it again: the measure of any party game is in the memories that it creates. Memories of my time with Just Dance 3 include making exaggerated cauldron-stirring motions whilst two friends did Thriller motions behind me to This Is Halloween, laughing with utter delight at the four-player Dynamite routine, falling over in the middle of Hey Boy Hey Girl as I became accidentally entangled with my dance partner, and being told by my downstairs neighbour that I was jumping up and down too vigorously. It's definitely a success.

 

Verdict
Though there's no doubt that Just Dance 3 on Wii is the budget version of the Kinect- and Move-enabled, high-definition PS3 and 360 versions, the price reflects that distinction, and it's still got everything that counts. It has a great soundtrack, great dance routines and an infectiously joyful approach to the dance game. It doesn't offer much that Just Dance 2 did not, but forty new routines, four-player choreography and an improved Just Sweat exercise mode are enough to justify the price for any dance game fan. Even the closeted ones.