Dance Central 3 Release Date and New Songs Announced

Always intended to be the more "realistic" cousin to Just Dance's accessible Wii Remote flailing, the Kinect exclusive Dance Central series seems to have gone from strength to strength, despite never really hitting it off with the staff here at Everybody Plays. Definitely aimed at those who take their jigging about seriously, the games have always tended to have much more complex and less cheesy choreographies, apparently created by professionals to be as authentic as possible, which translated into routines that had a lot less repetition (and so were harder to pick up and play), a requirement to move all of your limbs in the correct way, rather than just a single hand, which in turn meant the game ended up asking for the sort of co-ordination that we can only dream of...

No matter your dancing game preference, though, you may be interested to know that Microsoft have recently announced the first few tracks for the setlist of Dance Central 3. As always, there's a slight tendency towards mostly urban rap-y (read: rubbish) stuff popular with the youth of today, although it does seem to have a much more mainstream selection than previous years. Combined with the ten songs announced a few months ago, we spy a fair few songs we recognise amongst them, both old and new:

2NE1 – I Am The Best (Original Version)
Alice Deejay – Better Off Alone
Backstreet Boys – Everybody (Backstreet's Back)
J.J. Fad – Supersonic
Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz ft. Ying Yang Twins – Get Low
LMFAO – Sexy And I Know It
Los Del Rio – Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)
Maroon 5 ft. Christina Aguilera – Moves Like Jagger
Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby
Vicki Sue Robinson – Turn The Beat Around
Village People – YMCA

If you (or your family) are into your pop and top 40 gangsta tunes, then Dance Central's song list will probably cater nicely to your tastes - and with obligatory 90s school disco tune 'Macarena' included, along with the 'YMCA', Dance Central 3 should at least have some of the cheese factor of Just Dance, while the inclusion of the Backstreet Boys finds its way into our soft spot for 90s boybands. We're also interested to see how Harmonix's crazy new time-travelling dance-off story mode pans out, which, bizarrely, will see you joining forces with the Dance Central Intelligence organisation, and sorting out a load of dance-related crimes – or something strange like that.

If it's even remotely as weird as it sounds, Dance Central 3 could be worth keeping an eye on. With around half of the forty-plus song setlist announced, we're imagining more will come out of the woodwork in the coming weeks, before Dance Central 3 shimmies into stores on the 19th October this year, exclusively on the Xbox 360 for Kinect.