Review: Just Dance 3

I recently received a copy of Just Dance 3 for the Xbox Kinect. I was excited to receive it, having first played with the Just Dance family on Wii at Type-A last June. It was a blast, and yes, my team amazingly managed to win the dance off (and the copy of Just Dance 3 was our prize for dancing our rear ends off). When the newest member of the Just Dance family came, I was excited to see how it worked on my Kinect.

The best way to find out is not only to try it myself, but to have friends and family play, too. Fortunately, I tried it out before they arrived, as the game required that I do an update to my Xbox before being able to play it. The update didn't take long, and I was quickly ready to try it out.

The game was easy to maneuver. Once we got into the game, we got to the segment where we could choose our songs intuitively. I do wish that there was a list of all songs available for the game in the package so that we could more easily decide what we want to dance to next. We did have a little bit of an issue sometimes choosing the song we'd intended. The list would scroll one too far when we tried to swipe a song to select it, but fortunately you can still go back a step at that point.

And the songs are a hoot. Many of the wee ones' favorite songs are options from Taio Cruz's "Dynomite" to Katy Perry's "California Gurls." They love playing it just as much as the adults do, which is great as we can only do a couple songs before we need to take a break because we're too tired. This really is a great workout.

The game is designed to be played by up to four people, which keeps arguments over whose turn it is to a minimum. That, I like. We've had to be careful about where we place people to avoid the sensor getting confused, but four people playing at once definitely works. We enjoy it with most songs, but there are a few songs where there are multiple dancers onscreen who do different things, and each player needs to first figure out which figure to follow then do that dance. This has proven to be our biggest challenge, as we can't always tell who is supposed to do what. We mostly avoid those songs now.

The good news is that Just Dance 3 is something easy enough for everyone to do. While we did have one friend who tried to do the exact thing the dancers did instead of the mirror image (e.g., when the dancer moved to her left, my friend moved to his left), but all the other adults got it and enjoyed it. We even got my mom involved, and she's not exactly a dancer yet joy still enjoyed it.

This is definitely a keeper of a game. I love the exercise I get, and it's a great bonding experience. We have a blast seeing who can earn more stars - as you accomplish moves (and the game tells you how you're doing with each movement), you gain points and at certain point levels, you earn stars. I am proud to say that I was the first one to earn five stars during a dance - and I even did it before the end of the song.

Just Dance 3 is available on both Wii and Kinect for Xbox. You can purchase it anywhere games are sold. You can buy Just Dance 3 for $39.99. There are lots more features available - from the ability to shout out lyrics to gain extra points to the Just Sweat mode that gives access to playlists and challenging workouts. You can also purchase more songs from the Just Dance store, but I have to be honest that I don't feel the need to do this.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a copy of Just Dance 3 from Clever Girls Collective via their Ubichamps program. I received no compensation. Thank you to Ubisoft for sponsoring this blog post. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.