SingStar Dance

Back in 2009, Ubisoft released Just Dance for the Wii. This is the game which changed the face of dance games. Prior to this game, video game dancing pretty much consistent of pattern matching. But now, you could dance actual dance moves and have the system tell you how well you're doing.

A year later, Sony released Move for the Playstation and Microsoft released Kinect for the Xbox 360. Suddenly, motion control was much more accurate and available with high resolution graphics. And not surprisingly, Sony came out with Singstar Dance and Microsoft came out with Dance Central.

I won't comment on the relative merits of Move vs. Kinect--that's something that time and the marketplace will ultimately decide. What I can say is that for those who own a Sony Move, Singstar Dance is a solid title that still carries on the excellent singing and voice evaluation capabilities of the original, while adding new features that use the Sony Move that make it feel like the next-gen version of Just Dance.

Like the original Singstar series, Singstar Dance uses proprietary microphones. They're solid, high quality mikes that plug into a USB hub. The blue and red mikes from the original Singstar series will still work, but ordinary USB microphones will not. The "Party Pack" is pretty reasonably priced at $40, considering that it comes with both microphones.

When you get to the main menu, you have the option of viewing a tutorial on how to dance (basically the same as Just Dance, you hold the Move controller in your right hand and dance the mirror image to the onscreen silhouette). You can also start playing solo or with friends. You can also view your personal "media gallery". More on this later.

Singstar Dance allows up to four players to play together. A maximum of two can sing at a time, and a maximum of two can dance at a time. When you have four players together all going at it the same time, it's a lot of fun. As for those who want to sing and dance at the same time, you're out of luck.

As with the original Singstar, for singers a meter will appear below showing how in-tune you are. The more accurate the singing, the higher the score.

When dancing, the original artists' video will play in the background, while a silhouette figure appears to the right of the screen which you need to match the movements of. You can view a tiny video of yourself in the lower right hand corner. Or, you can switch views so that you're taking up the entire screen.

The very cool part is that after you finish dancing, you can view a video playback of either part or all of your performance, which you can save (or in my case destroy and remove all evidence of). You can also see snapshots of your performance as well as "golden moments" (which I assume are the classic poses pre-identified in each of the songs). Each of these can be saved in the aforementioned "gallery", or even uploaded to an online portal (where you can see others' performances as well).

For both singing and dancing, you can choose a difficulty level. For the most part, once you get to the more advanced levels the dance moves are authentic (meaning they're the same or very similar to the artists' own moves). This means that to really experience the game to the fullest, you'll need to practice and practice to get the steps right just like in real life. I would have liked to see a "practice" mode where they break down each of the steps for you or at least let you try it in slow motion, as trying to figure it out from the fast-moving silhouette can be difficult. But as soon as you get all the steps right, it's definitely rewarding. Motion tracking using the Sony Move was flawless, even in a dark room.

Here's a list of the tracks that come with the program. Additional ones will be available as downloadable content:

Backstreet Boys - Everybody (Backstreet's Back)
Black Eyed Peas - Shut Up
Blondie - Heart of Glass
Chris Brown - With You
Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Diana Ross and the Supremes - Baby Love
Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive
Gossip - Standing In the Way of Control
Gwen Stefani - What You Waiting For?
The Jackson 5 - I Want You Back
Jamiroquai - Cosmic Girl
KC & The Sunshine Band - That's The Way (I Like It)
Kid Cudi - Day 'N' Nite
Kool and the Gang - Celebration
Lady Gaga - Poker Face
La Roux - Bulletproof
MC Hammer - U Can't Touch This
New Kids on the Block - Hangin Tough
'NSYNC - Bye Bye Bye
OutKast - Hey Ya!
Paula Abdul - Straight Up
Pitbull - I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)
The Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha
Reel 2 Real - I Like to Move It
Ricky Martin - Livin' La Vida Loca
Run-DMC vs. Jason Nevins - It's Like That
Salt 'N' Pepa - Push It
Shaggy - Bombastic
Sir Mix a Lot - Baby Got Back
Soulja Boy - Crank That

As you can see, most of the songs are family-friendly, although a few may be a little too suggestive to play with children (the game is rated "T" for Teen).

One cool bell-and-whistle is voice-controlled menus, where the PS3 will use voice-recognition to bring you to the right place when you say an artist's name, a genre, or a song. This was a little hit and miss when I tried it, so I kept it off. Playstation XMB navigation good enough for me.

All in all, this is a solid title that makes great use of the Playstation Move's controller and the Playstation Eye camera. With the dearth of really good launch titles for the Playstation Move, I'd say this one is a bright spot, especially if you'll be playing with friends.

this game has great potential and would of received a 5 star from me if not for the limited dancing and music list.
pros:
1. good song, family friendly but not the lastest hits

2. new features - voice commands, works great with the supplied microphone.. tried it and never had a problem.. you can't just say anything but built in commands like "browse right, browse left, stop, go right or left, select, menu songs, genre, artist, etc., they all works fine, not one hiccups.

3. move control dancing feature - this on gives me mix feelings.. this is good tracking of your movements using the move but it's like a next gen of the wii's just dance. the avator is great but they only track 1 move controller per player, which means even if you miss the other movements with you hand but hit your move controller's movements, you will be getting points for it. this would have been good if they had made 2 move controller tracking for 1 dancer.

to the other person who said you can't dance and sing at the same time, that's not true, I tried it and was able to do it just fine. move controller in my right hand and mic on my left, it's hard but yeah, it's doable. and no, you can not compare this with kinect's dance central because it's not the same. if you just want dancing, i would get kinect's dance central but again, it's 1 dancer at a time. this is more of getting everone together, involve, to enjoy the game. you can play together as co-op or battle each other.

overall, great addition to the ps3 but i wish they had done better with the dancing part. maybe there's a limit to how many move controller and mic can be use at one time???

Overall the game package is awesome for its price. $40 bucks for a game and two microphones is just a bargain since the first Singstar bundle cost was $60.

The sing modes are the same as the las games in the franchise, nothing new was changed here; what is new is the incorporation of the dance mode (I don't know if the guitar mode is also included, at least some trophies are).

I find dancing to be very hard even if you're playing on easy, I saw videos of Dance Central for the Xbox and it looked a lot more friendlier because you just have to match poses displayed on the screen, in singstar is different though, while you watch the artist clip you will see an avatar performing the dance move in one side of the screen, the whole dancing is shown without breaks, which is hard because you can't predict which pose or move will come next unless you already know the whole dance or you have perform the song at least once (if your memory is good).

If you are planning to have a party with some drink and just to have fun, this game suits well, since you are playing just to have fun and to laught when you see the replay recorded by the camera, everyone could pick up a move controller and try them best even though the game is not as friendlier as it should.

If you are not with drinks, but you are with some friends trying to play serious and competitive with the scores, if your friends never played the game then they probably would want to pass the game or just sing because you need practice to learn the dancing of each song, the game is no friendly.

The song list is OK. Even though some of the dances from some songs are focused to be performed by just one gender (example Lady Gaga - Poker Face, the dance is to girly, with too much hip and girly moves, male performers may feel unconfortable).

Let see how Sony plans DLC songs for this dance mode. Se game is good though.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 41 reviews  3.7 out of 5 stars