Dance Central, the big daddy of the Kinect dancing titles, has always been like a bigger, mature brother to the other games in the genre. Where other games, such as Just Dance, focus on a party atmosphere with a wide range of eclectic tunes and wild dance moves, Dance Central is a more focused and streamlined experience. The latest in the series, Dance Central 3, seeks to expand a little more upon that, while still offering the same tight dancing gameplay that it has shown off in the past.

Like previous Dance Central games, the majority of the gameplay is based around matching dance moves shown on screen. Mess up, and the dancing avatar on the screen will have red lines surround the limbs that you're screwing up with. Of course, the problem here is that though you know which limb is messing up, you don't know why. Different difficulties give you different moves to perform, and new to Dance Central 3 is Beginner mode, which lets pretty much anyone dance through the songs.

This iteration also introduces a Party Mode, in which a bunch of friends can simply jump into a random playlist of songs, dancing or going through a variety of minigames. Depending on the skill level of the people dancing, the difficulty changes, keeping a consistent feeling of challenge throughout the night.

The Story Mode is strange, here. You, as a member of an elite anti-dance-crime organization, must go through time to master the power of dance crazes in order to stop a supervillain from using their power for evil against the dancing world.

Yeah. And then it really gets weird.

It's a decent, structured diversion to the dancing of the game, and it introduces variety to a songlist that has typically been dominated with current hits: you'll go through songs from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, in addition to more modern hits, which is a nice change of pace. The difficulty tends to vary wildly though: for example, the very first song you dance to is one of the tougher songs in the game, and then it returns to the 70s with some pretty low-key, simple moves.

There are also other minigames to dance through, such as one where you must simply dance to the rythm, or one where you need to match the pose of the character on screen to score combos and get a high score. They're not a really big addition, but if you need a break from simpe dancing, then they're alright.

Dance Central 3 doesn't introduce any real revolutions to the series, but it continues to polish and add variety to the game. It won't bring any newcomers to the series if they don't already enjoy the game, but a new variety to the songs, new playmodes, and even a new difficulty are sure to make any fans happy.