Just Can't Dance

Just Dance. The promise that with a small white remote in your hand and a miniature neon person on the screen in front of you, you can become an elite dancer. Yes, this sounds legit. Add to this already threatening mix a video camera, competitors who have already learnt the moves and the inability to realise which player you are and you have a dangerous recipe for humiliation. Namely mine.

The delicacies that are involved in the game are so much more complicated than those suggested by the name “Just Dance”. You do not “Just Dance”. You make wild movements that are not even remotely close to human moves and invariably end up punching someone in the face. Twice. I would even go as far as to suggest that all these games have been sold under false advertising. In no universe created does anyone step up to the Wii for the first time and perform perfectly these extra-terrestrial moves like the dancers on the TV adverts. Nor are we smiling. Unless we are mocking someone else’s failed attempts. To summarise, I am never smiling, but those who are watching me are. And of course, my friends’ inability to refrain from putting videos of my dancing onto Facebook means everyone can share in my degradation. Oh the joys of camera phones. And yet it doesn’t end there! If you have an Android or iPhone, you can install the "Autodance” app, film your friends doing ordinary actions and remix them to Duck Sauce’s Barbara Streisand, until they look like a high speed chicken on drugs, to be shared once again with Facebook but also YouTube. It is a rather false hope that this game will enable us to learn new dance moves which we can crack out at the next shindig to impress stacks of people with our newly discovered talents. No – do not be enticed by this gross exaggeration! This game does not create talent nor fun but pain, ridicule and a vague resemblance to a duck in the presence of a drunken fox, who – being drunk – tries to pet the duck before eating it and said duck - being unsure whether to run or stay still - as a consequential compromise tries to do both. When you can picture this happening, you know what most people look like partaking in “Just Dance”. Such blatant lies. I have been told that if I stopped singing and concentrated on the moves I would do better – but if anyone can listen to Outcast’s Hey Ya and not sing along, they are clearly not human.

Then again, it is better than some of the games out there. Though many say that computer games will improve communication skills and reaction times, I say that this is a simple disguise behind which hide unnecessarily enhanced violence and mild resemblance to the speech and social capabilities of and unevolved caveman. My English class is not filled with intelligent and deep conversations about the moral messages of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird - it is filled with the crude comparison of how many kills they got last night: “Yeah I got this guy last night and now I’m on level 48, is well cool”. Yes, your grasp of the English language definitely grants you a spot in the top set. What gets me is that they get home from spending a whole day in the company of these people and then think that it’s a great idea to spend eight hours online with these same people. Do you hate your own company? Do you loathe yourself so much that the idea of just an hour alone is terrifying? This isn’t about having a social life, this is about having such a low self-esteem that it becomes a real life version of Don’t Let Me Get Me. And yet such a high price is put on these drainers of life! I guess I understand when the game costs £40 but spans 3 discs, like murder mystery game La Noire; but when you pay the same price for three hours of merciless killing it becomes senseless. “The most realistic war games to date” – yes because when you are killed you can always just restart at your last checkpoint. Seems like every guy – and a lot of girls – have one or even many of these games, encouraging bad language and the inability to compromise and discuss as opposed to shooting. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s ridiculous that grown men should be being beaten online by ten year olds; news flash - you pre-pubescents aren’t allowed near these discs for another eight years. When you stop sounding like your sister you can try again.