Review by: Brandon "Sparkles" Cackowski-Schnell

Long before Kinect and Dance Central stormed into living rooms across the globe, bringing full body recognition to the rhythm game scene, Just Dance provided a way for Deney Terrio wannabes to show their skill on the dance floor. With their day-glo colors, infectious ebullience and silly anything goes charm, the Just Dance games may not teach you anything about dancing, but they more than make up for it by teaching you to get up and just have fun.

In a nutshell, whether or not your moves will be recognized as correct is anyone’s guess as the criteria for ‘ok’, ‘good’ and ‘perfect’ is completely arbitrary. You may score multiple stars on one run while your partner flails around miserably only to have the positions completely reversed on the next attempt of the same song. The fact that the game doesn’t tell you what it is you’re doing wrong certainly doesn’t help. Luckily it seems to know that the point isn’t so much nailing every move perfectly, but getting up and getting active and awards badges for your performance independent of your numerical score. It adds a nice bit of compensation for less lucky players even if it seems odd that the person scoring three stars and five thousand points is lazy while the dancer with less than half that score is energetic. Truly effort counts for something in this game.

Just Dance 3 adds a number of four player routines to the set list, a welcome addition as the routines are a great mix of choreographed movement and individual effort. As each player holds their own Wiimote, the game has no problem recognizing the individual movements of each dancer, even if the movements don’t seem to mean anything. Best of all though is the flexibility with themes and routines that the developers embraced when dealing with the four player routines. One song has you dancing as a group of Power Ranger type superheroes while Danny Elfman’s “This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas allows you to dance as a pumpkin headed imp or a swanky vampire. The dance routines and costumes have always been an excellent part of the series, making each song feel unique and offering plenty for the non-dancers to watch and the four player routines brings this creativity to new heights.

Working through all of the songs earns stars which in turn unlocks game modes such as Simon Says, where players are tasked with following specific instructions while dancing as well as mash-up modes that vary up the dance styles within a song. For those looking to sweat ‘til they bleed, Just Sweat mode returns with more workout playlists catered to working out and a variety of workout plan options, including a seven day sweatstravaganza. If you’re looking to create your own playlist, each song has independent ratings for difficulty and sweat effort allowing you to craft your own dance fitness plan.

As with any rhythm game, the song selection makes or breaks it and luckily the 40+ tracks here are mostly a winning bunch. There are some strange additions, such as A-Ha’s “Take on Me”, not exactly what I’d consider a dance hall burner, but for every obscure Bollywood song or ‘80s standout you’ll hear something currently playing on Top 40 radio. The game gets extra points for including a fake ‘80s song sung by a fake ‘80s singer, Robin Sparkles from the show “How I Met Your Mother”, if only because it shows that the developers have a great sense of humor and aren’t afraid to fold in pop culture moments to keep the mood light. As with previous versions, if there aren’t enough songs on the disc for you, the music store is always there to help you expand your rhythmic repertoire.

Those looking for big changes to the series won’t find them here, but the music is great, the choreography is well designed and appropriately silly, and there are enough extra modes to keep things interesting. From an innovation standpoint, the Just Dance series isn’t doing a whole heck of a lot to move the dance rhythm genre forward, but from a “get you off of your butt to have a good time” standpoint, Just Dance 3 continues to do all of the right things.