The first Dance Central paved the way for the creation of the sequel, Dance Central 2, which is the second installment in the series of dancing games developed by Harmonix for the Kinect peripheral.
The fundamental gameplay remains the same as in the previous installment: players must do dance steps in rhythm with the music, the dancers are projected on-screen, and the Kinect sensor is used to capture the players’ body motions. The “break it down” training mode, head-to-head dance battles, single-song performances (for one or two players in co-op), and a new story mode dubbed “Crew Challenge” are all included in the game. Both players will now dance simultaneously in two-player settings, which was not the case in the first game. Free-4-All portions have been added to the head-to-head mode. These sections award points to the player who can complete a designated maneuver successfully before the other player. The challenge mode from the previous game is the inspiration for the Crew Challenge mode in this game. You had to complete song sets in that mode before unlocking a challenging song. You could open the next song set once you beat the challenge song. This is now accompanied by a tale in which the player takes on the role of a burgeoning street dancer trying to win over the local dance crews. The practice mode has been improved so that it can now be used to practice individual moves rather than the entire song, and it also lets the player adjust the tempo of specific sections by either slowing them down or speeding them up. A fitness mode that displays the number of calories burnt may be toggled on and off, and some songs are explicitly tailored to fitness.
There are 44 songs included on the disc for this game. It supports all 32 downloadable content tracks made available for the first game and makes it possible to import all 32 songs on the game’s disc that came before it. In the year following the game’s initial launch, 32 additional downloadable songs without compatibility with the base game were made available.
