Dance Central 2 is the sequel to arguably the best kinect game to date. The first Dance Central was very “first rhythm game in a series”. There was really only one mode and all you did was dance. Dance Central 2 comes with all of those things and adds on top of those in ways you wouldn't think. Harmonix is well known for innovating and owning the genre they jump into. They did this with Guitar Hero/Rock Band and they are doing it now with Dance Central.
The easy way to make a sequel to Dance Central is to add more songs and routines and possibly add some challenges. There are 44 new songs and even if you loved the set list for Dance Central you can import all songs into Dance Central 2 and all DLC comes over automatically. The biggest way they flesh out Dance Central 2 is by adding more personality to the crews that are dancing. There are a handful of new characters which all fit into one of six dance crews, all with their own style and personality. You got Riptide, consisting of Bodie and Emilia. Riptide is the athletic/surfer bum crew. Flash4wrd is the new crews, consisting of Taye and Lil 'T. Flash4wrd is the more hip-hop oriented group, the members are sisters. Lu$h Crew is the next crew, consisting of Miss Aubrey and Angel. You know Miss Aubrey from Dance Central 1 as the mean spirited one that most people hated. The next, and my favorite, crew is Hi-Def, consisting of Mo and Glitch. This crew focus on electronica. The enemies of the game are the Glitterati, consisting of Kerith and Jaren. Imagine a PG rated bondage attire and you have the Glitterati. And the last crew was a complete surprise to me and will be the same to you.
The fact that they flesh out this characters in a rhythm game just shows that Harmonix really loves what they do. Going through the crew challenges, another new feature in Dance Central 2, you will get a sense for each of the dancers and how they react to you doing well. All of this happens before and after the song. Out side of those moments all the context you have is how they look, which in this case represents their attitudes well. All the character models look identical to those in Dance Central 1, except for those not in Dance Central 1 of course, but the way they make everything look better is colors, neon colors to be precise. After getting a streak of a few “Nice” ratings on moves the background will fade out and neon lights will come up, also neon streaks will come off your dancer. All of this look amazing; nothing looks better then the dance doing circles with their arms and the neon streaks staying awhile.
The main new feature of Dance Central 2 is, as mentioned earlier, crew challenges. The crew challenges are nine songs are relatively based around the kind of music that the crew would dance to. For example Hi-Def has Yeah! By Usher and Technologic by Daft Punk. In order to progress you must get 16 total stars to gain the “cred” of said crew. This is a different perspective then was in Dance Central 1. In these crew challenges you are not the member of the crew, you are dancing with them. Once you get the minimum amount of stars you are faced with one more song which you must get four or more stars on to actually get the “cred” of the crew. Once you gain the cred of all the “good” crews you go to face off with The Glitterati , after that you face the secret crew(which is pretty awesome). In addition to the crew challenges is the improved multiplayer. Before you were only able to have one person being recognized at one now two people can play at the same time, and its completely jump in an jump out. When coming in you raise your hand to let the game know you want to play and you are good to go. Unfortunately I was not able to test this myself as space and a dance partner are lacking for me.
Overall Dance Central 2 is a great improvement over the first game. With 44 new songs that are all really fun to play (even though I was forced to listen to a Justin Bieber song), and the fact that for $5 you can import every song from Dance Central 1 is great. If you were to not import Dance Central 1 you still have plenty of things to do and will not get bored of the song easily. If you are like me and have a kinect and own exactly one game, and you want something else to play Dance Central 2 is where it is at. Multiple times while I was playing through Dance Central 2 it completely lost track of me. When this happens it pauses the game. I feel that this was not Dance Central's fault as it was the kinect's problem. I am still not sure if it was due to the kinect messing up or something with my setup. From what I have seen of Just Dance 3, Dance Central 2 is the dancing game you want to get if you actually want to dance. The achievements are pretty similar to Dance Central 1, and I ended up getting 210 gamerscore. I highly suggest Dance Central 2 to anyone who likes fun.
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