Dancing with the Stars

With EA's Boogie being booed off the dance floor back in August, Activision now tries to tango with Dancing with the Stars. Rather than cartoon-like blob characters looking silly as they gyrate across the stage, we have animated characters intended to look like their real-life TV show counterparts. I do emphasize the word 'intended'.

Dancing with the Stars employs a variation of the rhythm technique used in the Rayman Raving Rabbids dancing mini-game. Icons of the Wii Remote and Nunchuck move in from either side of the screen. When the icon reaches the center, the player must jerk the controller in the direction indicated by an accompanying arrow while simultaneously pressing either the B or Z button. The game will respond with a "Perfect", "Good", or "Missed" message depending on the accuracy.

Lex Luther can dance?  Who knew?

At times, the rhythm game will be interrupted by a "flair" icon which shows a silhouetted dancing figure that the player must mimic. These are easily recognizable moves such as the Mashed Potato, Hand Jive, or the Twist, but they often seem out of place. Doing the Twist in the middle of the Tango just doesn't work. After each routine, the judges will give their canned responses based on the player's statistical accuracy in keeping with the rhythm.

While the rhythm game does a nice job of keeping the controllers moving to the beat of the music, players won't find any need to truly get up and dance. I was able to achieve a good score even while "dancing" seated on my couch. Like Boogie, Dancing with the Stars only takes into account movement from the waist up. Whether or not players go all out and boogie from head to toe is entirely optional. Dancing with the Stars improves on the frantic dancing in Boogie, if only because the game does try to incorporate real dance moves. However, the experience still feels like an opportunistic rip-off of Rayman's Rabbid dance.

Dancing with the Stars offers four modes - Single player, Multiplayer, Quickplay, and Practice - but they all provide virtually the same rhythm game. Single player is a rhythm game by yourself. Multiplayer is the same rhythm game, but with a friend. Quickplay is the same rhythm game except it is - you guessed it - quick. Practice has players - surprise! - practicing the same rhythm game. While Quickplay allows the player to jump in and dance without affecting earned scores, practice is simply a tutorial on how to play the game. Regardless, the game never really changes from one section to the next. The phrase "$50 mini-game" comes to mind.

You may be a horrible dancer, but the stars always look good.

The only real variety in the game relates to the music. The stars themselves are irrelevant as they just act as symbolic placeholders for your scores. There is nothing special about playing as Emmitt Smith as opposed to Joey McIntyre. Thankfully, the variety of the music itself is not bad. The game features 36 popular songs to choose from, of which about a third are available from the beginning. As players progress, new stars are unlocked and, more importantly, a new list of music becomes available.

Visually, Dancing with the Stars is mediocre at best. The dancing figures who are suppose to be celebrities look nothing like their flesh-and-blood counterparts. While player's perform the routine, the animated versions of the show's performers dance in the background, but this is nothing more than a backdrop as all attention is focused on the icons; the dancers on the screen perform flawlessly regardless of the player's success. Looking at the box, a person might think the game features nice graphics, but the screenshots must be pre-rendered as they bear no resemblance to the Wii version.

There's not much left here, but come back for Stage 2 as we try to squeeze some blood from this turnip.