Michael Jackson: The Experience
Score: 75% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: Party/ Simulation/ Family
Graphics & Sound: Michael Jackson: The Experience holds so much possibility. Michael's moves are iconic and have influenced countless stars that have followed him. Why wouldn't the Kinect be the perfect opportunity for a game based on his work? I admit, I had one image in my mind that I really wanted to see in this game - one really goofy image, but dangit, I wanted to see it. Unfortunately, it didn't happen, and you won't be green-screen dancing in front of the disco balls and light-crazy background from this famous video for "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough." Oh well, I may have missed the call from Ubisoft on this one, perhaps they'll consult me for the next one. Either way, the backgrounds don't react to your gameplay as they do in Dance Central, but they are pretty nice eye candy for onlookers. The stage for "Heal the World" in particular is actually pretty awesome, with a huge planet Earth slowly revealing itself behind you. The crowd even has its lighters out and ready for your performance, which is a nice touch. Even the lyric text is creatively done, sometimes spinning, or twirling around. Speaking of little touches, the menu selection icon is a white glove. You put your hand under it to select an item and you look like you've just put on one white glove. Cute. Seeing your image in a dancing game can be, well, not such a good thing. It's good for tweaking your performance, but if you're in this for dreams of living room stardom, it can bring you back down to reality. At least there's a sparkly overlay that goes over your image. When dance games put your real image in the action, it's a guarantee of self-conscious anxiety if you aren't confident in your moves. The loading screen actually has some of the more interesting effects in the game. There's a light trace that follows your hand and your footsteps activate lit floor squares a la "Billie Jean." It ends pretty quickly, however, and left me wanting back the only real "goofing off" mode in the game. I don't need to say much about the sound. There's a massive selection of Michael's songs to choose from, including some more obscure tracks. To name a few, there's "Billie Jean," "Thriller," "Leave Me Alone," "Bad," "Remember the Time." You will probably find your favorite song here somewhere, or at least your second favorite.
Gameplay: Michael Jackson: The Experience doesn't pull any surprises out at the last minute. What you see is what you get. This is a dance game, and the dances are from famous Michael Jackson videos. You'll also get to try a bit of singing, but luckily, you won't have to channel that much Michael and grab a headset - the singing is done separately from the dancing (though no one is stopping you from dancing if you want to). There's a lack of Dance Central-like "break it down" or a slowdown mode. What this game does do to help you is break every song into small, manageable chunks. But that can be annoying as well. When you're practicing a song, you have to use the menu after each little section of song in order to advance to the next section. If you want to practice an entire song, you'll be practicing use of the menu quite frequently. Seeing as my dancing ability is about on par with Commander Shepard from Mass Effect, I was actually a little excited to see "Heal the World" in the song list. I mean come on, how hard can that dance be? Alas, this is a vocal only performance song, as some of the songs in the list are. You can pretty much guess which songs will have a dance performance, and which ones will be vocal only. If it's a slow song, or didn't have a dance routine in a video, then it won't have one in Michael Jackson: The Experience. Kinect games are audience-engaging games, so the multiplayer aspect is an important one. Here, you've got a Battle Mode, or a Co-op Mode. Essentially the two modes are just variations of the same game. One player dances at a time, while the next player waits to jump in. You can have up to four players, if you can get that many people to remember their number and wait for this kind of thing, that is.
Difficulty: Look, there are reasons why Michael's dancing is famous. You know why you always know someone that will imitate only one or two moves for fun, but not much more? The dances are difficult, that's one reason. They're also kind of hard to remember - this is a lot of intricate movements strung together. In Michael Jackson: The Experience, you've got to practice. You've got to practice a lot. If you're a dancer, you're probably already familiar with some of the moves. You can probably pick up new ones quite easily. But if you're not, and a whole lot of people who buy this game are not, then this is going to be a rough ride. Tutorials are provided, but you have to back out of the Practice Mode and go to a separate video collection. Tutorials are actually live videos provided by professional dancers, but they move fast. Compared to Dance Central's Break It Down system, this is kind of a letdown. There's not much to just "jump in" and do here. You've got to commit yourself to really learning these dances.
Game Mechanics: Ok, first of all, this game really needs a way to turn off the photos. I mean if there were ever, ever a game where I wanted to turn off photos, this is the one. You can't even delete them. Oh yeah, and they are used on the leaderboard system for this game. I hate puns, but this is bad, real bad. As far as tracking, Michael Jackson: The Experience is a dance game that simply gives you cues like "good" or "almost" to let you know how you're doing. I hate to keep going back to Dance Central, but it's such a better feedback system. There's just one more little thing tugging at my critical heartstrings about this game. These dances are classic, but they are getting a bit old. Don't get me wrong, I think "The Elvis Presley Experience" or "The Fred Astaire Experience" game would get tons of cool points in my book just for existing. But you have to admit that these dances aren't exactly hip, new experiences. Still, games like Dance Central do put off audiences that want classic dance moves incorporated, so you can't call this a big fault. I'm feeling a little mixed on Michael Jackson: The Experience. I'm not enough of a fan to collect Michael stuff, heck I don't even own an album. But I did want to like this game, because his music and his moves were downright fun. And I do feel like there's a treasure trove of material here in terms of the choreographer videos and the sheer amount of tracks. Perhaps for a better dancer, this game would be more fun. For an uncoordinated person like me, the fun just seems to be down a long road that I'll never quite be good enough to reach.
-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications AKA Christin Deville
Related Links: Michael Jackson: The Experience Official Site Buy Michael Jackson: The Experience on Amazon
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