Just Dance 2 (Hands-On) (Wii) Preview

How do you follow-up a low budget game that unexpectedly became an overnight blockbuster? Enter Ubisoft with its follow-up to the immensely successful Just Dance. I’m used to stepping on coloured panels and arrows to get by, yet this setup instead relies heavily on arm and body movements as opposed to using your feet. Fortunately, for me, I had the comfort of dancing alongside fellow C3 gents and ladies, but unfortunately they had a little bit more rhythm and class than I. Initially the controls seemed confusing. I’ll admit that I hadn’t played, in fact totally disregarded, the original as "yet another dance clone." However, once the music got going and my joints miraculously loosened, mimicking the on-screen actions became far easier.

Waggling your arms up and down, rolling as if you were a rainbow and swiftly strutting in different directions became key movements, and whilst there is a warning of what's coming-up, for some of the more complex actions you do need a little more time to learn what to do and it leads to several frustrating misses and ultimate confusion. With that in mind, though, having a little bit of extra patience and spending more time with the various dance manoeuvres included, should lead to them becoming easier and considerably more natural to pull-off. The only downside have to be when looking at it from a simplicity and accessibility angle, since Just Dance 2 is a little trickier to get to grips with than its predecessor. All-in-all, it proved to be decent fun with a varied selection of pop hits and classic family-friendly anthems to boogie on down to.
- Jorge Baoh, Cubed3 Founder.

Extra Thoughts

Having played practically every game at Nintendo’s post E3 event, I decided to go over and give Just Dance 2 a go. The first song I tried was Hot Stuff, and I danced with a gorgeous blonde lady who completely thrashed me. However, it was fun so I didn’t really care. It pretty much plays like the first game where you are supposed to mirror the actions of the dancer on-screen, like in Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution series, where players can get a ‘Good,’ ‘Great,’ ‘Perfect’ rating, or completely miss the timing of the actions, with all the points attributed to these levels being added up to offer a final score at the end. This, however, doesn’t always work since you are only holding one Wii Remote in your right hand, leading to many misses, and it also means that you can just wave the controller about at random times instead of following the moves and still manage to achieve higher scores (just as Cubed3’s very own Adam Riley did, matching my score without making any effort at all!). Where’s the fun in that? If you can get into the right spirit, Just Dance 2 easily turns into a fantastic group experience, full of laughs for all involved.
- Stuart Lawrence, General Writer.