The career mode offers the most amount of game play. Players can dance as either member of each couple on either Amateur or Professional level. Proceeding at the professional level requires you to unlock the couples as in the amateur level; however the scoring requirements for proceeding are much higher. The game does ramp up in difficulty as you progress through the couples, and can be quite a challenge as you dance with the final dancers on the harder difficulty level, which makes it such a letdown that there’s nothing different about winning the trophy with the last couple than with the first. There’s just a generic “you won the trophy” message and then a return to the couple selection screen. Unlike in the TV show, there’s no indication that you’re dancing against other people. If you score highly enough, you progress forward, and that’s it.
Given that every couple has the same celebration and dejection animations, you’d think that every couple could dance to every song, however you’d be incorrect. Quickplay mode allows you to pick any couple however you’re still limited to the four song and dance combinations you see in the career mode. In other words, if you really like Joey Lawrence, (…and hey, who doesn’t) and want to dance with him to every song in the game, you’re stuck with four songs and only four songs. Cooperative mode is no different from single player mode, only now you’ve gotten a friend or a loved one suckered into the experience thereby confirming the idea of misery loving company.
Despite the different couples, different songs and ramped up difficulty level, Dancing with the Stars can’t do what is essential in the rhythm game genre, namely keeping the player from feeling like they’re doing the same thing over and over again. The inclusion of special dance steps is an obvious nod to the Wii’s motion control abilities, however they’re not enough to make up for the disconnect between what you’re doing with the controllers and what you’re seeing on screen. Once you’ve danced with one couple, you’ve pretty much danced with them all, and there’s no real fun in progressing to the end. As with most games looking to cash in on whatever is popular at the moment, this game is just the same old song and dance.
