Ubisoft has decided to bring back the dance-love by making a third game in the Just Dance series, adding a few new ideas to the mix including its first appearance on the Xbox Kinect.
With over 40 songs available to you including songs by The Sugarhill Gang and Katie Perry, Just Dance 3 provides what fans of the series expect; funky dance moves prompted by psychedelically-coloured avatars on-screen. The controls are the same as before if you're playing on the Wii or PSMove, but now that the Kinect has become part of the JD3 family, the challenge of matching the placement of every part of your body has been added for your excitement, while making sure you're actually doing it right instead of fudging your way through.
While playing, fans may recognize some moves from its predecessors as they learn some new tricks. The Just Dance team made sure to mix up the old & well-known moves with the new, so those who've played before will delight in being ahead of the game, and those who're just starting for the first time will quickly see why fans became fans in the first place.
Just Dance 3 will bring back the solo and duet options featured in previous games, while adding the ability to play with 4 players simultaneously as a quartet. While this wasn't demonstrated when I was able to try out the game, I'm definitely curious to see how it will work, especially with the Kinect version.
Both the Wii and PSMove versions will have a challenge called "Smart Shuffle," where players will undergo challenges to unlock rewards. In addition, the mode "Dance Mash-up" will merge different styles of dance into one, giving old and new players alike a bit of a challenge.
The Wii will have an exclusive feature called "Flash Mob" mode, where you can share up to 8 Wii Remotes to have players dance together to the tune of your choice.
The Kinect will have its own unique feature, called "Just Create," where players choose a song and 'record' their own routine. The routine can then be saved and shared with friends online, having anyone play your routine like any other Just Dance compilation. This will allow players to continue the fun long after they've conquered the routines available in the game itself. Xbox Live users will have access to these workouts, if you give the ok, and they'll also have the ability to compete with other player's scores online.
A "Just Sweat" workout mode will allow players to track their exercise progress via "sweat points" instead of calories, ensuring you're not breaking a sweat over how many calories you've burned; instead, these points will rate how hard you danced your butt off.
Just Dance 3 seems to be trying to take advantage of each system in its own way by having unique features available for each console. Their decision to release a third addition to the series, which will now be available on three different consoles instead of two, incidentally, may very well have been a subtle but clever marketing move by the Ubisoft team. We'll see soon enough what players will think when Just Dance 3 comes out on the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation Move, and Xbox Kinect October 11th worldwide, and October 7th in North America.