We cut the carpet in front of the camera, and find out why sometimes you just have to let myself go.
Dancing games that ask you to mimic the moves of the on-screen guide or follow the arrows are anything but new, practically spilling out of arcades both in Japan and the rest of the world. Up to this point though, if you wanted to get a workout by busting a move in your own lounge room, you were forced to pony up for hardware to track your performance. Dance mats have long been the most accepted devices to measure skills, but they represent expensive investment and offer little in the way of interoperability with other games.
Enter the Evolution of Dance, a game designed from the ground to work with Microsofts Kinect Sensory system cells, and free you from the hassle of cables and, when all you want to do is get down. This is a rhythm game, and while the interface motion has changed little, its still all about earning points, after bouncing with the rhythm.
Our time with the demo gave us the choice of a handful of songs, mostly J-Pop, and included a handy beats per minute (BPM) indicator for each track to help determine how sweaty we wanted to get. Menu navigation was done by sweeping our hand either to the left or the right in front of us, though we noticed that regardless of how gently we waved, the game would either lurch violently forward through the track listing or crawl to the next option. Since we were at TGS we opted for the appropriate sounding "A Geisha's Dream" (which you can listen to in the trailer below) and picked the easiest difficulty setting after watching more adventurous players ramp it straight to normal on their first try with mixed success.
Since your next move doesn't appear on screen in advance and there's a brief delay between viewing, processing, and then commanding your limbs to respond, the game seemed quite accommodating as we bumbled our way through the opening of the song. Initially aiming to simply perform the body shapes as they scrolled onto the screen to earn points rather than dance, we quickly abandoned the idea and simply followed our virtual choreographer and found it to be a much more natural experience. Since moves are often repeated, it became more like a free-form memory game, aping the manoeuvres rather than waiting on the scoring objective. Changes in pace like slow arm raises after fast hand motions can throw you quickly, but we'd hazard that like any rhythm game, while the initial learning curve can be a little steep, subsequent plays will only become smoother as you learn the mechanics and timing required.
Unfortunately for us we were only allowed a single song, but we left the booth eager to give it another shot and dance the night away. With Rock Band developer Harmonix also supporting Microsoft's Kinect camera at launch, you may want to consider investing in a glowstick, a whistle, and some light-up flooring in advance. Dance Evolution will be boogieing on the Xbox 360 this November.
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