Dance Central Spotlight
Developer: Harmonix
Price: $10 for 10 songs + optional DLC (~$2 per song)
Platform: XB1
A copy of the game was supplied to us
Dance Central makes it’s first appearance on new consoles with Dance Central Spotlight. The new Kinect has more accurate dance detection and makes for much better experience than other titles despite the small starting song library.
At a first glance Dance Central Spotlight might seem like a stripped down version of previous titles in the series, and that is partially true. Spotlight strips away all of the story trappings. This is a welcomed change. No unlocking of songs and no awkward time travel narrative. There is still a progression through the unlocking of different move sets used with varying difficulty levels which encourages multiple song playthroughs. The different moves are grouped into different routines which add different difficulty and workout versions of the songs.
Other than the primary dancing mode, Spotlight also has a dedicated fitness mode. Players chose their duration and select from a variety of routines. The fitness mode has you enter your height and weight for basic calorie tracking stats. I found fitness mode to be very effective in encouraging my body to sweat and my arms and legs to become very fatigued. If you are looking for motivation to start working out, dancing in your living room to some fun songs, Spotlight is a great place to start.
What truly separates Spotlight from other games in the franchise is it’s improved body and movement tracking thanks to the Xbox One’s Kinect. Spotlight scores players on their ability to do certain dance moves in step to the music. The feedback that Spotlight provides is very helpful for determining whether you are dancing like a pro, or if you keep stepping forward with the wrong foot at the wrong time. When a move is performed the portion of the body glows indicating how accurate the player is dancing. Purple is perfect, green is good and red means you messed up in that area specifically. This is very helpful for maximizing scores and perfecting the moves, which is required for unlocking more moves in the game.
If players continue to struggle with a move they can jump right into the practice mode without having to leave the song and traverse more menus. This is a welcomed feature because it doesn’t interrupt the pacing of the game and players can get back to where they left off very quickly.
One part of the Kinect that isn’t used very well is the menu selection. While the entire game can be controlled with voice or a controller, the focus is put on players selecting options with their hands. A player needs to hover their hand over the desired choice and then slowly move their palm closer to the Kinect. Unfortunately when moving the hand forward it often times also slides to a different choice, resulting an incorrect selection choice, or even no selection input at all. Even after becoming experienced with the menus, gesture based selections remained difficult and frustrating.
Like the later Dance Central games, all of the songs in Spotlight can be performed in tandem with one other person. You are going to need quite a bit of space for this to work. The Kinect worked surprisingly well at tracking both players accurately and independently of each other, as long as the camera view is never obstructed. During my two-player sessions I had a third person walk between the players and the camera. This causes the game to pause, as expected, but when resuming the dancing Spotlight would frequently confuse which player was who. My profile was reassigned to the other player and I found it difficult to reassociate my account with myself.
Unique to Spotlight is it’s low starting price. Unlike previous games in the Dance Central series which came with 40+ songs at a $40 price, Spotlight is sold for $10 and only include the following 10 songs:
- “Counting Stars” – OneRepublic
- “Diamonds” – Rihanna
- “Happy” – Pharrell Williams
- “I Wish” – Cher Lloyd
- “Royals” – Lorde
- “Show Me” – Kid Ink ft. Chris Brown
- “Talk Dirty” – Jason Derulo ft. 2 Chainz
- “#thatpower” – will.i.am ft. Justin Bieber
- “Titanium” – David Guetta ft. Sia
- “Wake Me Up” – Avicii
The starting selection is a great diverse selection to get your friends and family dancing in front of the TV, but unfortunately low number of songs will push players to the marketplace to get a fleshed out experience. The individual prices of songs have gone down from previous titles to only $2 a pop, and players can even save a little more when purchasing an artist’s “Dance Pack” which features bundles. Additionally Harmonix is working to bring all of the DLC from previous Dance Central games over to Spotlight at no additional cost for players who have already purchased songs.
There is currently no way to transfer songs that came on the discs for previous games into Spotlight. This comes as a huge disappointment as the content transfers has been a staple of the Dance Central series, making sure players could dance to their favorite songs across installments for a small license transfer fee.
Here is the list of available DLC for Spotlight available at launch:
- A-Ha – “Take On Me”
- Amerie – “Heard ‘Em All”
- Ariana Grande ft. Iggy Azalea – “Problem”
- B.o.B. ft. Hayley Williams of Paramore – “Airplanes”
- Bastille – “Pompeii”
- Blur – “Girls & Boys”
- Busta Rhymes – “Don’t Touch Me (Throw Da Water On ‘Em)
- Calvin Harris – “Summer”
- Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding – “I Need Your Love”
- Capital Cities – “Safe and Sound”
- Demi Lovato – “Heart Attack”
- Demi Lovato – “La La Land”
- Diddy-Dirty Money ft. T.I. – “Hello Good Morning”
- DJ Snake & Lil’ Jon – “Turn Down For What”
- Emeli Sandé – “Next To Me”
- Enrique Iglesias ft. Sean Paul, Descemer Bueno, Gente de Zona– “Bailando”
- Erasure – “A Little Respect”
- Fatboy Slim – “Weapon of Choice”
- Icona Pop ft. Charli XCX – I Love It
- Ini Kamoze – “Here Comes The Hotstepper”
- James Brown – “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine, Pt. 1”
- John Legend – “All Of Me (Tiësto’s Birthday Treatment Remix [Radio Edit])”
- Justice – “D.A.N.C.E.”
- Kelly Rowland ft. David Guetta – “Commander”
- Keri Hilson – “Turnin Me On”
- Lady Gaga – “Alejandro”
- Lady Gaga – “Applause”
- Lady Gaga – “Marry the Night”
- Lady Gaga – “Paparazzi”
- Lady Gaga – “The Edge of Glory”
- Lady Sovereign – “I Got You Dancing”
- Lana Del Rey – Summertime Sadness (Cedric Gervais Remix)
- Lloyd – “Get It Shawty”
- Maroon 5 – “Maps”
- Maroon 5 – “One More Night”
- Michael Franti & Spearhead – “Say Hey (I Love You)”
- N.E.R.D. ft. Lee Harvey and Vita – “Lapdance”
- Ne-Yo – “Because of You”
- Ne-Yo – “Closer”
- Ne-Yo – “Let Me Love You (Until You Learn To Love Yourself)”
- Nicki Minaj – “Whip It”
- Nico & Vinz – “Am I Wrong”
- Of Monsters And Men – “Little Talks”
- Paramore – “Ain’t It Fun”
- Sean Paul – “Get Busy”
- Sean Paul – “Temperature”
- Selena Gomez – “Come & Get It”
- Selena Gomez & The Scene – “Round & Round”
- The B-52’s – “Love Shack”
- TLC – “Creep”
- will.i.am ft. Britney Spears – “Scream & Shout”
Harmonix plans on releasing frequent DLC songs and “Dance Packs” that reflect popular songs in the moment to help players build a trendy library. I prefer the pricing model of the previous Dance Central games. Give me a large collection of diverse songs upfront at a low cost. Harmonix doesn’t expect many players will buy all of the DLC, which makes sense seeing as how customers would have to pay close to $100 for all of the songs available on launch day.
Instead of a huge library, Harmonix wants players to build a lean list just filled with the songs they want to dance to. Unfortunately this only works if one person plans on playing the game, or a group has very similar tastes. Hopefully Harmonix will release larger track packs with increased savings, or add the option to import the on disc songs from previously purchased games.
The Final Word
Dance Central Spotlight is a great Kinect game on Xbox One with excellent body tracking and feedback. The lack of included tracks and modes makes it a lesser experience than previous titles but it’s not a deal breaker. The small amount of starting songs is a bummer, but Harmonix has continuously proven its DLC support, as long as you don’t mind throwing down some extra cash.
– MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
