My video game addiction: Dance Central 2

Two Christmases ago, Santa brought the family an XBOX Kinect. That's the cool game system with the commericals that tout "Your body is the controller". A small camera sits above your television, mapping your every move. You don't use a conventional video game controller. Instead you use your body to play the video game. 

My secret? It isn't my 7 year old boy who logs the big time on this sucker. It's me. 

I am entirely hooked on Kinect dance games for workouts. I started with DANCE CENTRAL, last year. And then, a few months ago, DANCE CENTRAL 2 came out. We've also got JUST DANCE 3 for the Kinect, which definitely has more family-friendly songs, but I don't find it as satisfying for workouts. 

For all of these games, you follow the on-screen dancer, as well as cue cards that give you warnings about what moves are coming up next. If you aren't matching the moves, it will outline the "wrong" part on the screen dancer's body. Sometimes I care and I try to match up. Othertimes I don't pay any attention to whether I'm getting close to the dancer's moves. The point is just to dance, after all.

I love the current songs, and I love that you can buy more (I just bought Cee Lo Green's, er, FORGET YOU). There are songs from artists like MIA, Lady Gaga, and Rhianna... along with a mix of "older" songs (VENUS, anyone?) for us oldsters.

DANCE CENTRAL 2 tracks all sorts of things: your high score, of course, and I've hooked up to my sister and brother-in-law's accounts to see who's got the highest score on each song (yes, the addiction has spidered throughout our family). But it also tracks how long you've been dancing, and it estimates how many calories you've burned. It uses some kind of hoodoo for that last part, supposedly based on your body size and how much you move, but it comes pretty close to what SparkPeople says I'd burn doing cardio dancing.

And you definitely get a workout. Once I've done one or two dances in our chilly unheated basement, I'm sweating. 

I also do Zumba and Body Jam dance workouts at my gym, and I'd say that all this video game dancing is actually making those workouts easier. The moves aren't all the same, of course, but a lot are similar. 

One more fun thing about DANCE CENTRAL 2? Pictures. Which I'm sharing with you in this post. Doncha wish you could move like me? :)

Comments

[Jon]

I also love this game. And yes, the point is just to dance!