Dance Central is no longer alone

Jun 17, 2010 08:17 GMT  ·  By

Konami revealed at its E3 press conference a new rhythm game for the Xbox Kinect, Dance Masters. The concept is pretty similar to that of the recently announced Dance Central by Harmonix, with the title aiming to teach gamers how to dance and have fun using Microsoft's much-hyped motion control device. The developer of Dance Masters is the same studio that created the Dance Dance Revolution series.

Unlike the DDR franchise, Dance Masters will not involve a dancing pad, but it will use the Kinect peripheral at its full capacity, showing the whole of the player's body on the screen. This will help them better perform the moves that the game will try to teach them, as they will have a clear way of assessing the mistakes that they are making, according to Konami.

There are also other features meant to distinguish the title from Dance Central. Players will be able to record themselves dancing and see themselves as back-up dancers in a virtual show. Moreover, they will also be able to take snapshots of their dances and share them through Xbox Live. Furthermore, there will be a multiplayer component that will allow up to four people to have fun together dancing in various ways. Obviously, there will be downloadable content, like new moves, songs and theme packs.

Dance Masters will come with 30 tracks from various music genres like Hip Hop, R&B, Pop and Techno that can be organized in different playlists. Three single-player modes will be available at launch: Dance, Lesson and Status. Dance is the career mode, Lesson is the name of the dance tutorial and Status allows users to see the recordings they have made of themselves and review their achievements. Dance routines will have four difficulty levels, namely Light, Standard, Extreme and Stealth. Dance Masters will be launched this fall exclusively for the Xbox 360.