Category Archives: Game reviews
Just Dance Kids 2: Exercise-in-disguise for the purple dinosaur set
I received a free copy of Just Dance Kids 2 for Kinect through the Amazon Vine program, so the following is a copy of the review I wrote for the game.
Vine reviewers with kids between the ages of 3 and 8 were asked to review this game, and I think that’s a good age range for Just Dance Kids 2. My 7-year-old enjoys this game, while my 10-year-old prefers the “big” Just Dance 3 Kinect game.
This game is structured slightly differently from JD3. When players jump in front of the camera to play, it takes a picture of your face, and with gestures you can select a cartoon avatar that’s either boyish or girlish. (That’s an important distinction for young kids!) The videos show actual kids dancing against colorful backdrops, and the steps themselves are much simpler and more repetitive than the regular Just Dance dances. The songlist is more kid-oriented than JD (“Lollipop” here is the “lollipop, lollipop, oh lolly lolly lolly” song, NOT the “sucking too hard on your lollipop” song in JD3) although not as large, and so far there’s no downloadable songs. It’s very easy for players to jump in and out mid-song, but make sure there’s plenty of room for them to jump around – it can get pretty chaotic! The “create your own dance” feature is also included and a lot of fun.
This would probably have the most appeal to the Barney and Yo Gabba Gabba set. The controls are easy to use even for the youngest gamers, provided the camera can see them. If they’re older and already listen to a lot of pop songs, Just Dance 3 may be a better buy.
Here is the song list, from the description on Amazon:
Hot Pop Songs for Older Kids!
- Alright
- Burnin’ up
- Dumb Love
- Feeling Good
- On Our Way
- I’m Gonna Catch You
- Intuition
- Just The Way You Are
- Love Me
- Positivity
- Rocketeer
- Whip My Hair
- Song 2
- Start All Over
Songs from kids’ favorite movies and TV shows
- Accidentally in Love
- Despicable Me
- Hold Still – Yo Gabba Gabba
- I Am A Gummy Bear (The Gummy Bear Song)
- Jump Up!
- The Robot Song – Yo Gabba Gabba
- Follow The Leader – The Wiggles
- The Shimmie Shake! – The Wiggles
- The Lion Sleeps Tonight
- Something That I Want
Fun Songs for Younger Kids
- Party Goes Down
- Itsy Bitsy Spider
- Five Little Monkeys
- Mah Nà Mah Nà
- Girls Can Too
- Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
- Summer School
- Hand in Hand
Classic Kid favorites!
- Barbara Ann
- Crocodile Rock
- Istanbul
- Jingle Bells
- Lollipop
- Shake Your Groove Thing
- Hand in Hand
Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012: Results you can see
Jump rope minigame in Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012
Most of my favorite exergames emphasize the “-game” over the “exer-”, which is why I never really got into Wii Fit or other games that were built around workout programs. But as luck would have it, I received a free copy of the Xbox Kinect game Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 through Amazon’s Vine program, so I’m going to make it part of my exercise regimen, for as long as it takes to write a decent review.
YSFE reminds me a lot of Exerbeat for Wii, in that it has a mind-boggling collection of activities, many of which have to be unlocked as you go along. One group of activities is called “Activities”: these meta-activities are minigames that you can play by yourself or with up to 3 other people.
I tried an activity called Stomp It, which is like a cross between DDR and Simon. As rhythmic music plays, lights scroll towards you on the floor in one of four directions, and you have to stomp the lights to the beat of the music. Each time you stomp correctly, a brick is added to a huge circular wall around you, so when time is up, you can see gaps in the wall where you missed a stomp.
I found myself playing this game again and again, just to make a complete wall. Then it occurred to me what a brilliant idea this was. You could SEE the result of your work, and the visual, instant “reward” made me want to keep trying to improve it.
It’s like building a wall in real life, or completing a race, or moving an object from one place to another. You feel more of a sense of accomplishment than if you just did two sets of jumping jacks. And the results that most people want, like six-pack abs or bikini-ready buns, are so slow in coming (if they come at all, given the way most of us eat) that people often get discouraged and give up.
People like getting a pat on the back, and it looks like YSFE is full of visual pats. I’m on my second day of playing this game, and I’ll be blogging about it little by little. Hopefully I’ll get results I can see in the mirror, but that’s a long way off, and I’m having fun building virtual walls in the meantime.
Party in the USA: In The Groove for PS2
In The Groove was a dance-pad arcade game that was inspired by DDR, so much so that it sparked a lawsuit by Konami that pretty much shut it down. But before it disappeared, a PS2 version was made, and you can pick it up very cheap, new or used, at Amazon or Gamestop.
ITG was developed in the US to be sort of the American answer to DDR. Gameplay is essentially the same: step on a four-arrow mat in time with a row of scrolling arrows. (Maybe if they’d rearranged the arrows like Dance Factory, they could’ve escaped Konami’s wrath.) But instead of chirpy j-pop singers and anime-looking dancers, ITG has more instrumentals, more club-ish music and more streamlined graphics and sound effects for an overall more “Westernized” feel. New features are also added: you can alter the arrows to make them wavy, dancy or twisty, add “mines” (round symbols that deduct points if you step on them) and “hands” (extra arrows forcing you to bend and hit the mat with your hand).
ITG with one of the many arrow variations
ITG also has a workout mode, and they were a couple years ahead of DDR in adding a doubles option to workout mode. Like on DDR’s PS2 workout modes, you enter your weight and a goal (either time played or calories burned) and select individual songs, preprogrammed courses or Random Endless – play songs continuously for the time you selected. I like to do Random Endless, because it shuffles all the songs on one difficulty you select. 20-30 minutes of songs on a difficulty level of 5 or 6, on a scale of 1-12, makes for a great steady-state cardio workout.
In The Groove fitness mode screen, courtesy of Gamefaqs
(It should also be noted that unlike DDR, ITG’s calorie counter is really screwed up, almost as badly as We Cheer’s. I just ignore the calorie counter and select a time goal only.)
If you enjoy playing DDR on Endless mode for cardio, In The Groove is worth searching the bargain bins for.
We Cheer 3? No, but close enough.
It’s starting to look as if Namco has abandoned one of my favorite Wii dance-gaming series, We Cheer; after We Cheer 2 came out in the fall of 2009, there hasn’t been a peep (despite rave reviews at Amazon) and both games now are labeled “discontinued”. But late last year, Kidz Bop Dance Party, a game that also has you tracing imaginary lines to the beat of dancy music, was released, and I just picked up a copy last week since Amazon had it for around $12.
Confession time: I can’t stop playing it!
Kidz Bop Dance Party is of course part of the heavily-advertised Kidz Bop franchise of popular hits rerecorded in kid-friendly versions, but the game is just a rebranding of a Japanese dance game, Happy Dance Collection. They took out the Japanese pop idols and put in tweenish-looking kids, plus 24 songs, which is less than many dance games. (I think I’m going to start a personal “Dance Game Rule” of not spending more than a dollar per song.) Songs include shortened versions of Thriller, 1985, Party in the USA, Don’t Stop The Music, and – ugh – Girlfriend, plus fun originals like Kidz Bop Shuffle.
Gameplay is the same as We Cheer: pick a tune and dance along with the avatar while moving your remote along the tracks of arrows. This game only uses one remote, and the dancing isn’t as complex as We Cheer’s, but I still work up a sweat. This is also a better party game than We Cheer because it offers a guest mode, so guests can jump right in without having to create a file.
In Free Play mode, all the songs are unlocked from the beginning, and you can play them on easy or normal mode. In Challenge mode, you progress along a trail of stars and win badges on your way to Superstar status by passing groups of songs and then a “test” song. It looks as if you eventually unlock harder modes and Mii support, although I haven’t gotten there yet.
There’s a versus mode for 2 players, and they made it more kid-friendly by not showing who is winning until the song is over, to prevent discouraging the very young. With all the modes, you win points that you can spend in the shop on clothing, shoes, hairdos and accessories. There are boy and girl avatars with adjustable hair and skin colors.
No workout mode or online/downloadable content, but for $20 or less, Kidz Bop Dance Party is a great deal, as fun and active as Zumba, We Cheer, Michael Jackson or Just Dance.
Dance Masters for Kinect demo is available, for Xbox Live Gold
If you have Xbox Live Gold (a free one-month membership came with my console) and Kinect, now you can download a demo of Dance Masters. This is the “other” dance game for Kinect. Dance Central has gotten most of the attention and sales, and the demo I played from the Kinect Adventures disc was lots of fun, but when I heard about Dance Masters, that was the one I wanted. And I don’t regret it.
Dance Masters is to Dance Central what DDR is to Just Dance. Just Dance (for Wii) and Dance Central (for Xbox 360 Kinect) are fun, casual games your whole family will enjoy, loaded with familiar hit songs. But Dance Masters, which is on Kinect only, is more of a “gamer’s” dance game. Rather than club-style dancing, the dances are more like a stage performance, and the Kinect is your electronic Carrie/Len/Bruno, judging whether you hit those moves just right.
In lieu of scrolling arrows like DDR, DM has an interesting set of “marks” to hit. A green silhouette will sometimes scroll in from the side, and you have to hit that pose right as it reaches the center of the screen (like in the TV show Hole In The Wall). There are also round bullseye targets that you have to hit with either your hands or feet, We Cheer-like arm lines, and a green circle on the “floor” to be stepped on to the beat. The choreography is the same for each song on all difficulties, but the number of marks increases on each difficulty. Thus you can get away with just a series of poses on “easy”, but once you get to “extreme” or “master”, you pretty much have to have the dance down pat as marks come flying from all directions.
For extra fun (or embarrassment), DM puts you right up on stage with the dancers! You can even “clone” yourself by projecting a video of yourself on a previous dance along with your live image. Multiplayer puts both players up on the stage, and DM (unlike DC) offers online play as well.
The Dance Masters demo includes both solo and duet versions of three songs: A Geisha’s Dream, Unity and We Can Win the Fight. These aren’t “hits” like Dance Central or Just Dance offer; they’re original, Jpop-style songs that only DDR fans will be familiar with. I love the choreography of DM, but A Geisha’s Dream is a particular favorite, and not that hard to do. Here’s a gameplay video:
No, I’m not posting a video of myself doing it, sorry!
