Dance on Broadway

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1. Nutwiisystem.Com says:

   July 18, 2011 at 1:18 pm

   46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Great for anyone who’s dreamed of being on Broadway, June 17, 2010

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   Nutwiisystem.Com (New York, NY USA) –
   
     

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   This review is from: Dance on Broadway (Video Game)

   Just Dance was a revolution in dancing games. Before it, most dance games just consisted of moving your hands or stomping your feet to an on-screen cue. Just Dance was the first game to incorporate real dance moves to choreographed steps.

   Dance on Broadway plays pretty much the same as Just Dance. It retains most of its features, both positive and negative.

   - You follow one of four silhouetted on-screen characters, mirroring their moves as they dance.
   - There are also icons that scroll across the bottom of the screen that tell you what moves are coming up (basically, what “pose” you should be hitting when the icon hits the arrow). Honestly, I didn’t find this as useful as simply mimicking the on-screen characters themseves, but I’m guessing over time once you memorize what the icons mean it’ll help you perfect your performance.
   - Up to four players can play at the same time. Like Just Dance, this makes for a ton of fun with friends or family.
   - Each player holds one Wii remote. No nunchuk, no second remote, no MotionPlus is used. This is good in that it simplifies things and there are no cables to get tangled up in. It’s not-so-good, as Dance on Broadway still suffers from a lack of precision in motion tracking.

   In addition, Dance on Broadway adds a few neat enhancements that its predecessor did not have.

   - The casting of the four characters matches the song. For example, for “One Night Only”, there are four African American women which allows you to live out your dream of being one of the “Dreamgirls”. For “Aquarius”, there’s a nice mix of hippy guys and girls.
   - The choreography is more detailed. For some of the songs, each of the characters has their own individual dance steps resulting in a pretty cool and fully choreographed Broadway routine when four people are playing together.
   - The precision of the motion tracking is a little better than before, but still leaves a lot to be desired. Still, as before it’s so fun learning the dance steps that you don’t really care (I was thrilled with my “70%” accuracy, even though I knew it was really closer to 90%). They do give the advice to hold the remote firmly in your right hand, which I found helped.
   - The songs are decidedly less “intense” than the ones in Just Dance. The songs are rated by “difficulty” and “effort”, but in all honesty, even the most difficult songs were pretty simple. So it’s not as good a workout game as its predecessor, but more suited for those of us who have always dreamed of being on Broadway.
   - There’s the option to turn vocals off, meaning you can not only dance, but you can also sing along with the words.

   Here’s a complete list of songs, the shows they’re from, and their rating of Difficult / Effort in parentheses:

   All That Jazz from All That Jazz (1/2)
   Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In from Hair (1/1)
   Bend and Snap from Legally Blond (2/3)
   Cabaret from Cabaret (3/2)
   Dreamgirls from Dreamgirls (1/2)
   Fame from Fame-The Musical (1/3)
   Good Morning Baltimore from Hairspray (1/1)
   I Just Can’t Wait to Be King from The Lion King (2/2)
   Luck Be a Lady from Guys and Dolls (3/2)
   Little Shop of Horrors from Little Shop of Horrors (2/3)
   Lullaby of Broadway from 42nd Street (2/2)
   Money, Money from Cabaret (3/3)
   My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music (1/2)
   One Night Only from Dreamgirls (3/3)
   Roxie from Chicago (1/2)
   Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins (2/3)
   Thoroughly Modern Millie from Thoroughly Modern Millie (3/3)
   Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Show (3/3)
   We’re in the Money from 42nd Street (2/3)
   You Can’t Stop the Beat from Hairspray (2/2)

   In short, while I gave Just Dance 5 stars, I’ll give this one 4 mainly because I would have liked to see Ubisoft improve the motion tracking more than they did, as well as include more cardio-intensive choreography. Still, it’s a solid title which I definitely recommend. There are a lot of titles coming in the next few months like Ubisoft’s Gold’s Gym Dance Workout, Majesco’s Zumba for Wii, and Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution which will also focus on real dance moves. I definitely commend Ubisoft for starting this trend, and hope between these companies they can really perfect the motion controls and get the world dancing

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2. PT Cruiser "PT Cruiser" says:

   July 18, 2011 at 1:50 pm

   65 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Get up off the couch and make your Broadway debut!, June 17, 2010

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   PT Cruiser “PT Cruiser” (CA USA) –
   
     

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   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Dance on Broadway (Video Game)

   Are you the kind of person that can’t listen to a Broadway soundtrack without tapping your foot and bopping out in your chair? Do you want to get some exercise without even realizing you’re working? If you’re anything like me, I think you’ll like this game. Remember the dancers in the Broadway hit, “Fame”, dancing their hearts out to that great song? Or the dancers in “All That Jazz” doing that cool tap dancey thing? Well, this isn’t quite as complicated as all that but its lots of movement and fairly easy choreography that you follow along with while the Wiimote records your moves. You can play with up to four people. You choose one of four characters that you would like to be at the beginning, when you choose the song. There are 20 songs, some of which are:

   * “All That Jazz”
   * “Aquarius”
   * Caberet
   * Luck Be a Lady
   * Lullaby of Broadway
   * “Bend and Snap”
   * “One Night Only”
   * “Dreamgirls”
   * “Time Warp”
   * “Fame”
   * “We’re in the Money”
   * “Let The Sunshine In”
   * “You Can’t Stop the Beat”
   * “Little Shop of Horrors Theme”
   * My Favorite Things
   * And there’s more….

   The idea of the game is to follow your chosen dancer, like in a mirror image, with dance, rhythm and arm movements. One of the options is to set it so you see the words to the songs at the top of the screen and they’re highlighted, kind of like a bouncing ball but without the ball, so you can sing along. There really isn’t any recording of your voice so it’s just kind of for your own amusement. When choosing a song, you see a difficulty level and an effort level shown by the number of stars. Several of the songs are at a somewhat slow pace so it’s pretty easy to follow along. There are some little icon figures that move along the bottom that show upcoming moves. I found it easier just to watch the dancers. The game does a reasonably good job of recording your movements and you can see with a gauge above your dancer whether you’ve missed the move “X”, got an “OK” or a “Great”. It’s possible to get combo points by scoring several “Greats” in a row. Your points are totaled up at the end in each category.

   Ok, so why did I give this game only 4 stars if I like it so much? Well, I just got the game today and after playing it for a couple hours I’m already scoring pretty well. It’s not that I’m really good at this sort of thing, in fact I’d have to say I’m pretty uncoordinated most of the time. It’s just that I like games that are more challenging and I want to get a lot of hours of enjoyment out of it. Now I do have to say that I really, REALLY had fun playing with it tonight. I love the music, the graphics are pretty good and I just like the whole idea of the game. But I’m not sure a couple of weeks from now that I’ll be challenged enough to be looking forward to playing it as much. I always compare this type of game to We Cheer and We Cheer 2, by Namco. Those are rhythm games as well, kind of on the same principle, but I couldn’t even get past the first song for over a week. I played those games for hours and hours trying to open new levels of songs and stages. (I still have fun playing them). With Dance on Broadway, there are 20 songs and as far as I can tell, everything is accessible right away, no additional challenges or hidden things to open. Some of the songs like All That Jazz and Aquarius are very easy to score on because of the way these games record the Wii movements. Now, if you want to follow along with the steps and really look like the dancers on the screen it will be more difficult. But this game, like others of it’s type records only your arm movements to score.

   So would I buy the game again? Yeah, I love the music and I’m a sucker for rhythm and musical type games. But I wish it had more levels and was more challenging. The challenge for me will be not so much the scoring, which I think I’ll probably be able to ace in a fairly short time, but trying to really copy all the footwork and look like the dancers onscreen. And while it’s not as energetic as some games like We Cheer, my arms are sore after playing it for a while. I’m not exactly huffing and puffing but it’s still good exercise. I just wish Ubisoft would have added a little more interest and more levels to this game. It’s good as far as it goes but seems as though it was rushed to market too soon.

   Update 6/27/10 – After playing with this game for 10 days I’m finding that the motion sensing is sometimes a little quirky. It doesn’t always pick up the motions of the Wiimote as quickly as it should. But…

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