Tag: Dance Central Spotlight

Harmonix Reveals Release Date And Pricing For ‘Dance Central: Spotlight

by Josh Jackson

Today, Harmonix has announced that Dance Central: Spotlight, the fourth game in the only series of Kinect games that actually work, will make its Xbox One debut on September 7th, along with a $9.99 price tag. In addition, the last five of the ten song playlist has also been unvieled, bringing a mix of club bangers and top 40 hits to the dance floor.

The playlist is as follows:

Avicii – “Wake Me Up”
Cher Lloyd – “I Wish”
David Guetta ft. Sia “Titanium”
Jason Derulo ft. 2 Chainz – “Talk Dirty”
Kid Ink ft. Chris Brown – “Show Me”
Lorde – “Royals”
OneRepublic – “Counting Stars”
Pharrell Williams – “Happy”
Rihanna – “Diamonds”
will.i.am ft. Justin Bieber – “#thatPOWER”

In addition, the following songs will be available for download when the game releases, with more on the way, (including DLC from past games, which will be available at no extra charge if you’ve purchased them in previous versions).

Capital Cities – “Safe and Sound”
Emeli Sandé – “Next To Me”
Icona Pop ft. Charli XCX – “I Love It”
Lana Del Rey – “Summertime Sadness (Cedric Gervais Remix)”
The B-52’s – “Love Shack”d”

When Harmonix officially unvieled Dance Central: Spotlight back at E3, details were scarce. Aside from learning that it would be released digitally for Xbox One with half of the ten song playlist being revealed, there was little to go on as far as whether or not it would be worthy of our precious hard drive space. But now, at only $10 for ten songs, that sounds like an incredible deal to me!

As far as I’m concerned, the Dance Central series is the best motion controlled title on any platform, and will finally give us a reason to want to use our shiny new Kinects when Spotlight arrives this fall. I’m just confused as to how I’m supposed to dance to Royals…

What songs are you hoping get added to the game? Any favorites you’re hoping make a return? Check out our hands on preview from E3 this year, and let us know how excited you are to show off your moves once again!

Geekscape Games: ‘Dance Central Spotlight’ Takes A Familiar Stage

by Josh Jackson

While everyone was talking about Halo this and Master Chief Collection that after Microsoft’s E3 presentation, all of that was drowned out for me by the announcement of a sequel to the best game for the Kinect in Dance Central Spotlight. After moving on to Fantasia: Music Evolved, (which was great in its own right if our E3 preview from last year has anything to say about it), and publicly stating that Rock Band and Dance Central were on hold for the time being, I was expecting to have to wait A LOT longer before we’d see the dance game take advantage of the Xbox One’s upgraded tech. Though on a smaller scale, I was excited to see the game make a comeback, and was one of the first I took for a spin at on the show floor.

Featuring five songs on the demo version, including Wake Me Up by Avicii, Talk Dirty by Jason Derulo and 2 Chainz, Show Me by Kid Ink and Chris Brown, Counting Stars by One Republic and Happy by Pharrell Williams, (as if you couldn’t escape that song as is), each one has all of the full body choreography you’d expect from the series, with old and new moves alike to put your dance skills to the test. While playing, I didn’t notice any real performance improvements based on the reportedly superior Xbox One Kinect, there were never any points where I felt like the game wasn’t picking up my movements, especially with so much going on in the background.

Dance Central Spotlight Screen 1

What I did notice however, was a dip in frame rate compared to its prequels. I get that this is a download title instead of a full release, and is a much smaller game, (promising 10 core songs on top of weekly DLC instead of the 30+ from before), but it was distracting to notice the game looking so choppy in comparison to the fluid animations I was used to. It doesn’t affect game play at all, but its a noticable downgrade compared to the games released last generation. While this game isn’t the only guilty party, this seems to be continuing the trend of supposed “next-gen” games that perform worse than titles released years ago.

Having said that, this may either be the case of a smaller title having a smaller budget or pre-production kinks that need to be ironed out. In the end, all I really care about is solid dancing with catchy songs that get my feet moving, and even with half the songs available on the demo, Spotlight has that in spades. Even with a smaller playlist, a larger emphasis on fitness routines and eight routines per song promises that we’ll get a lot more milage per song than in the prequels.

Get ready to plug your Kinects back in! Dance Central Spotlight is coming exclusively to Xbox One digitally in September.