[Review] ABBA: You Can Dance

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ABBA: You Can Dance is a dance video game for the Wii, developed by the French gaming company Ubisoft. It was released on November 15, 2011 in North America,November 24, 2011 in Australia and November 25, 2011 in Europe. The game is a spin-off of the Just Dance series, and features 25 songs by the Swedish pop group ABBA and includes a "Karaoke Mode" which allows 2 players to sing via USB microphones.

 

Abba are a fantastic candidate for a dancing game, and not only because their generation-vaulting po[CENSORED]rity makes them an easy win for parties. As a proper pop band, the dancing is built in from the start.

There's nothing clumsy or contrived about attaching a group routine to Knowing Me, Knowing You or Hole In Your Soul – these songs are made for movement.

The choreography across the 27 tracks (well, 25 plus "Dancefloor" and "Prom" versions of Dancing Queen) is well-suited to the music. Stupid booty grinding is avoided in favour of pleasingly Abba-ish arm movements and turns (and yes, it is difficult to follow the on-screen prompts while you spin away from the telly, but dear God it is pretty much impossible to get Brits to crunk without making them too sauced to hold the Wiimote first).

You will need friends, though. Playing alone is possible, but given that the routines are all for four dancers and involve various amounts of hand-holding and side-stepping around each other, you'll feel pretty lonely pretty fast if you can't round up a trio of friends.

Once you've drawn them in with the promise of kirsch, meatballs and perky songs about divorce, you can keep them there by exploring some of the extras on the disc.

There's a score-free karaoke mode featuring original videos, which is no challenger to the mighty SingStar Abba and does require you to handle a hateful, plasticky, third-party mic, but is nice to have.

There's also a World of Abba slideshow factsheet, which is strictly for people who can't access books or Wikipedia to fulfil their need for banalities about Anni-Frid, Björn, Benny and Agnetha.

Better is the mini-musical mode. This is a nod to the Mamma Mia! juggernaut without the hassle of licensing, which builds four songs into a Grease-alike story for three girls and one guy (a smart move, given that the dancing games market isn't as gender-balanced as Abba themselves).

It won't keep you going for long, though, and it's a reminder of just how limited dancing games on Wii are. But for a relatively tiny price, you get to pretend that you're a part of the greatest pop group ever, and it's a pretty convincing show.