SingStar Dance - Preview

There’s no doubting SingStar has been a massive success over the past six years, but the market is becoming saturated and while the simplicity of the games is what has kept them competitive; it’s unlikely it will remain that way without adding a little innovation. SCE London Studio, the developers behind the games, have now tried to address this by bringing out two new games side-by-side this holiday season.

SingStar Guitar takes a leaf from its rivals’ books and has attempted to integrate guitar elements into the game, while SingStar Dance, which is the one we’ll focus on here, jumps on the Move bandwagon to allow play involving two singers and two dancers simultaneously. While each of these two elements has been done many times before, they’ve never really been put together before to any great success.

                                      

The way the game works is similar to Just Dance, which was released last year for the Wii. Players must mimic the actions of a silhouette on screen with their controller, and the more accurately you portray a certain pose or action then the more points are scored. These are recorded through an entire routine and your final score is tallied, then depending whether two are playing, these can be compared to add a competitive element.

The singing portions of the game are exactly as before, requiring you to match the pitch of your voice to the song. If you’re up for dancing and singing at the same time though that’s when thing’s become a little more difficult, akin to patting your head and rubbing your belly. It’s a shame they aren’t releasing a package with a SingStar headset that would give players the freedom to do both.

                                     

It does seem as though the whole thing is put together pretty nicely, and there’s a nice array of songs on offer, from older to present day, which is a great way to get families of multiple generations in on the act, but with only 30 on-disc songs to choose from and the awkwardness of using both peripherals simultaneously, something doesn’t feel quite right, and lacks a certain je ne sais qua.

The full track list for the game can be found here.

SingStar Dance is set for release on November 9 in Europe and November 9 in North America. The game will face direct competition from Just Dance 2 for the Wii, which will make use of Wii MotionPlus technology, whilst Dance Central, which is also released around the same time, will utilise Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system.

Craig Bryan, NoobFeed