[TheZeeMan]

Dance Masters

• Official site http://www.konami.com/officialsites/dancemasters/
• Developer: Konami
• Genre: Music/Dance
• Alternative game name: Dance Evolution
• Modes: Co-op 2, Free Play
• Players: 2
• Online Features: Achievements, Content Download, Leaderboards, Online Multiplayer, Voice, Xbox LIVE Family Settings
• Kinect Features: 2 Player Simultaneous
• Kinect Activity Level: Active
• Xbox Live supported?: Yes
• Uses avatars?: No
• Age group: Teen+
  

Dance Masters - The good

• The graphics are very well put together with their special effects
• The music is not bad although I have never heard of any of it except for 1 song and I have a wide variety of music knowledge
• 2 player simultaneous dancing
• It does live tracking of you and puts you in the game as a backup dancer, I believe the MJ game will be using this technology
  

Dance Masters - The not so good

• The navigation/menu is quirky
• It does not do full body tracking
• There are no cue cards or any hint on to know what kind of move to do
• This game is all about scoring just like DDR, not that if you can actually dance or not
  

Dance Masters - Story
No story mode, it's straight up dancing solo or with someone else.

Dance Masters - Kinect experience
They did use kinect differently than everyone else. Kinect is doing real-time tracking of your whole body and portrays your real-time video feed of yourself as a backup dancer. How kinect utilizes this technology is it actually only checks to see if you are matching the pose or if your key areas are in the general area of where they are supposed to be, then the game grades you on this. I am really hoping the MJ game does not follow this same methodology, otherwise it's not going to be a real dancing game either.

Dance Masters - Graphics
Konami has always been pretty good with graphics, and they did a good job on DM. Everything is very colorful and life like, not one show of anything cartoony.

Dance Masters - Gameplay
Well, it's a different type of dance game. You do a lot of hand motions, as things that I did back in high school choir and musicals. There are 3 different difficulty levels, the first is basically just hand motions and hand/feet placement points. I literally stood there the whole time and just matched the poses and made sure my hands and feet were in the correct spots, running through it first time only, I probably got a A or B on the majority of the songs. It uses a letter grade system.

The second difficulty adds only a little bit of footwork, although you still don't need to really dance. As long as you tap your feet to the beat when it indicates, it accepts it. It's a very sloppy game and doesn't require a ton of effort unless you want to get AAA (that's their perfect score) similar to Gold Stars in RB/DC.

The last difficulty is called Extreme. It's not really that extreme, there are more hand motions, and more feet matching...But I still didn't really have to move. I'm sure if you want to get AAA on all the songs, then yeah you probably need to do the dance, but realistically, you can pass all of the songs pretty much just half assing it.

Now there may be some people that want to get an easier dance experience, and this is the game for you. If you don't have any dance experience, or never took any musical classes in grade school, this covers it very very well. I am pretty decent at dancing and unfortunately this game did not appeal to me because it was like a flashback from high school, although I would of loved to stayed in that era The game also makes you memorize the moves more, instead of giving you hints on the next moves, there are none. You either remember or you mess it up and possibly make yourself look silly - this is why I recommend that you don't bring this out at parties if you plan on getting it or own it already.

The other interest in the game is the music. If you don't like the mainstream stuff Dance Central offers, then this would be an excellent choice. It's a lot of happy hardcore poppy music which appeals to some, but not all unfortunately.

Game Name - Multiplayer options
It does offer 2 player simulataneous support. It is also capable of projecting both players in the game as backup dancers as well, could be good for a few laughs

Conclusion
Overall, this game will only appeal to certain individuals. If you like the features I pointed out, then by all means go for it. If not, stick with Dance Central until something else comes along.

More Dance Masters on 123Kinect:
[news] [trailer] [gameplay] [achievements] [order game]

[Corellianrogue]

(11-27-2010 03:09 AM)TheZeeMan Wrote:  [*] It does live tracking of you and puts you in the game as a backup dancer, I believe the MJ game will be using this technology

I've only seen a couple of videos of Dance Masters and couldn't quite tell if it does this or not but the MJ game creates a 3D model of you then projects video of you onto it to create a sort of 3D video. Also I think the MJ game does 3D full body tracking because as far as I know it uses the same tracking system as Your Shape, probably because they're both Ubisoft games so should use their proprietary skeletal tracking system.