Dance Evolution

Not many people know this, but I fancy myself a bit of a dancer. Granted, my style is somewhat alternative, avant garde, if you will, but I quite enjoy busting a flurry of moves should the rhythm take hold of me. In the privacy of my own home, of course. Strangely enough though, my love for tripping the light fantastic across the dance floor just doesn't translate well in Konami's full body motion-controlled evolution of the Dance Dance Revolution concept, Dance Evolution.

First things first, a warning: Don't expect to just waltz onto the Dance Evolution stage and jive through each song without some form of training. To attempt this is to learn a sharp, swift lesson in humiliation, because even on the easiest setting the chances are you won't last a minute. And unlike most games, failing at a full-body motion sensor dance game is a full-body fiasco, well worth a laugh for your mates. Take it from me, there are detailed tutorials on offer for a reason. Once you've two-stepped your way through a few lessons and understand the basic concepts it all becomes a lot easier.

Success in Dance Evolution comes down to memorizing a set of instructions which combine to give a very grass roots approximation of dancing. Green rings throbbing around your feet are your cue to step to the beat; silhouettes indicate a pose which must be mimicked at the right time; a sweeping orange curve points out a flowing hand gesture; and rippling circles are basically targets which you need to hit with your hands. On the Light (easy) setting these cues show up slowly, giving you plenty of time to get your pose ready or to hit those targets. Even on the medium setting things move along at quite a gentle pace, but crank things up higher and you will soon be flapping around like a seagull at a three day trance party.

The main issue with the control system is that it doesn't promote any creativity or flow on the part of the dancer. You either hit the cues or you don't. What you do in the gaps between prompts has no bearing on your score in any way. To illustrate the point, I gave my wife a display of some of my most outlandish dance routines, stopping every few seconds to match an on-screen cue, and then back to my own peculiar style, and racked up a A+ rating for the song. On the more pedestrian tracks you can get away with spending maybe 70% of the time just standing still. Then again, with the frequency of dance cues on the highest difficulty level there is very little time to think, let alone stand there doing nothing. This is the only time you will really be forced to do anything resembling dancing to finish a song, because the sheer pace of the prompts means you will be kept moving to the rhythm from the word go. At first you may think that you need to try to mimic the movements of the impressively animated dancers on stage, but it soon becomes clear that your only aim is to hit those cues.

Gamers who are light on their toes with a penchant for dancing will probably be inclined to dance along with the on-screen dancers, especially during the gaps between prompts. It actually helps to at least try to follow them, just because it means you stay with the beat to some extent, and makes for a more flowing experience. Then again, some of the moves which the dancers pull off on-screen are just embarrassing for all but the most extroverted gamers. Regardless, the dancers move fluidly and realistically and give you at least an idea of what you are supposed to be doing instead of gawping at the screen with your beer belly hanging over your pants. That's well worth mentioning, by the way, because Dance Evolution makes devious and devilish use of the Kinect camera to superimpose your out-of-shape self onto the stage next to the backing dancers. It's painfully embarrassing when playing with an audience, but I suppose that's all part of the fun. It's a pity though that the camera's resolution results in such a low quality rendering of you on stage, something which was especially bad in low light conditions.

Kinect's motion tracking in Dance Evolution is hard to judge. You rarely feel that you were penalized unfairly, in other words not being scored for a move which you are sure you hit perfectly, but this swings both ways - often I found that anything resembling the right move was scored as a hit, even when I know I had my arms in the opposite position or my leg wasn't raised when it was meant to be, and so on. What you are left with is a dance experience which feels too forgiving. Also, while western rhythm game veterans Harmonix brought a strong teaching element with the well-received Dance Central, Dance Evolution doesn't seem interested in you actually learning to dance. You just have to learn the songs and the prompt sequences which they entail. The lack of training options is a let down too, with nothing besides the gameplay mechanic tutorials to help you learn the moves. There is no way to break the songs down into segments, or to slow them down to help with the more frantic sections, something which would have come in handy with some of the more intense Japanese Para-Para tracks.

One of my favorite things about a new rhythm game release, be it DJ Hero, Rock Band, or Dance Central, is the track list, usually crammed full of songs by the biggest artists across the globe, just waiting for me and my plastic instruments to master them. So imagine the shocked silence which filled my living room when I loaded up Dance Evolution to find a playlist of the most obscure music I could ever imagine. Well, i say 'shocked silence', but what I mean is "an ear-shredding wall of Euro-trash pop and neurotic Japanese dance music". Para-para, a sort of Japanese line-dance mixed with dystopian marching band choreography, is not for the faint of heart, while many of the pop and Hip Hop/R'n'B offerings will grate your poor eardrums well before you've mastered the dance routines they embody. Off the genres available, it was only the Old School tracks which I could stomach for repeated listening. I was, in fact, at one point instructed by my usually tolerant wife to "turn that terrible music off". On the other hand, there will be those who enjoy music like this; just because I've yet to meet such a person doesn't mean they don't exist.

Most rhythm games lend themselves to the party game idea. We all know that Rock Band is far more entertaining with a full band of real people, a coolerbox of beers and a couple of pizzas. In the same way, Dance Evolution can be so much more entertaining when played with others, even if you're taking turns to make yourselves look silly. In these situations, the mildly offensive track list becomes much less of a problem, and actually accentuates the silliness of the whole affair. It's at these times that Dance Evolution scores its points, when a few friends are laughing at each others ridiculous attempts to prance around like a Japanese schoolgirl.

While we're on the subject of multiple players, if you are planning on taking this to the next level by having two people dancing at once, you're going to need to have a living room the size of an aircraft carrier. But those with ample living area will find that two dancers can be easily registered and tracked by the Kinect cameras, and the multiplayer component is worth a try for those with the space required.

Like the DDR titles which came before it, Dance Evolution is rhythm gaming stripped down to its core elements. Follow the on-screen cues, step to the beat, clap your hands and shake your booty like a man possessed when prompted. Part of what separates this game from its main competitor, Dance Central, is that Dance Evolution is very clearly a rhythm game, and a flawed one at that. You are pretty much always aware that you are playing a game, not just having a good time dancing to the music. There is very little opportunity to let the music move you, because most of the time you are frantically trying to follow the colorful on-screen prompts to keep your score multiplier zooming along in time to the often dreadful music. Still, Dance Dance Revolution has devoured millions of arcade tokens across the globe, so there is obviously a market for this sort of thing, and Konami isn't going to miss out on its share of the motion-controlled dance dollar. Had it not been for Harmonix's take on the dance genre, which adds more flair, a more stylish interface, and an infinitely better track list, Dance Evolution would have been a fine addition to your rhythm game collection. As it stands, however, Dance Evolution doesn't have enough going for it to make it the first choice for those who like getting down to the business of getting down.

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