Hip Hop Dance Experience For Xbox Kinect Review

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Lots of dance games try to include a little bit of everything, lots of pop songs, a few rock songs, some hip hop and some oldies thrown in to balance out the playlist. The Hip Hop Dance Experience takes the opposite tack, and it is all hip hop, all the time. The game designers called on celebrity choreographers like Laurieann Gibson (Nicki Minaj Creative Director, BET’s Born to Dance) and Dave Scott (So You Think You Can Dance, Battle of the Year) to create dance moves to the the ultimate hip-hop track list, with over thirty chart-topping tracks, including many hot songs from artists like B.o.B, Drake, Lil’ Wayne, Outkast, Run-DMC, Nicki Minaj, and Snoop Dogg. This makes it lots of fun for anyone who loves hip hop and wants to dance.

The Dance Party mode is the basic setting, and this allows you to pick a song to try out.  The game has flames lit up under each song, so you can figure out which tracks are going to be more difficult.  When my kids and I did the game we stuck with the easier songs, and they were quite fun.  At the end of each song it lets you know what your best and worse dancing move were, and you can use the Power Skooling mode to practice the ones you need to work on.  Of course in my case my worst moves were pretty much everything, but someone more coordinated, like my daughter, this is useful!

Overall I think this is a very fun game, and I think it will be great for parties, especially for my teens.  It is very bright and colorful, and the graphics are excellent. I also like that all the songs are unlocked from the very beginning, so there are no hoops to jump through to get to your favorite track.  There is a two player battle mode, although we have not tried that yet.  My daughter has taken hip hop lessons in the past, so no one was willing to battle her.  We like to use dance games just to take a break and have some fun dancing together, and laugh at how bad we are and how silly we look!

This game is rated T for Teens, and with the songs included that seems about right.  There is no profanity in the songs that I heard, but certainly some of the lyrics are suggestive, and some of the dancers are scantily clad.  You can buy this in stores or online at Amazon, and it makes a great gift for a hip hop fan, or anyone who loves to dance.