We received a copy of Nickelodeon Dance 2 for the Wii to try out and review. I deferred to Eva for this one. She enjoys dancing and she is a fan of characters like Dora the Explorer and the Bubble Guppies. I watched her dance while I was working on the cleaning up the living room. I pushed the coffee table up against the sofa so that she had room to really move around. And she really moved around. She was swinging her arms, moving her feet and laughing away as she played the game.

She played the quick start series of games and what I noticed was that she continued to get three stars each time she did a different dance. I wasn’t sure how she was doing it though because her movements weren’t matching the screen most of the time but she was moving around a lot. I’m probably thinking that is more the limitation of the Wii controller than anything else since the wiimote tends to be fairly forgiving as anyone who has thrown a fastball in Wii Sports by barely moving their wiimote while sitting on the couch can attest to. The game is a little more difficult on the XBox 360 with Kinect.

The game however, is pretty motivating and interactive. The characters can be set to talk to the player and explain the dance moves a little.

The game would have been a bit better had there been just a little more instruction for the player on how to dance. For preschoolers who are following along it is hard to do moves while mirroring the on screen characters however it didn’t really matter because no matter how she moved she had a fun time playing the game.

There are 29 songs in the game that are kid-friendly and they come from five different Nickelodeon shows like Dora the Explorer, Bubble Guppies, Team Umizoomi, the Backyardigans (Eva likes Pedro) and The Fresh Beat Band. From those shows there are 20 different characters that get your kids up and moving.

While you are playing there are three different characters dancing. the character in the middle is the one you need to follow and also the one that gives encouragement to the player. As the player plays little images scroll along sideways to show them how they should be moving. In higher difficulty settings the scrolling is faster and the dance moves more complex. There are three levels of difficulty and there are three types of games the child can play. They have the option of doing Dance or Workout or Freeze. Dance is straight up dancing. Workout is more of a dance/workout with more complex movements. Freeze randomly freezes kids in place for a few seconds

Here is the official description of the game

Nickelodeon Dance 2 – The dance party’s back and bigger than ever in Nickelodeon Dance 2! Gamers of all ages can dance, sing and workout with twice as many Nickelodeon characters and all new tracks from the network’s hit TV shows including The Fresh Beat Band, Bubble Guppies, Dora the Explorer, and Team Umizoomi. Exciting new game features like “Freeze Dance” and an enhanced “Workout” mode will keep kids on their toes and get their hearts pumping while learning original dance routines developed by an Emmy-recognized® children’s dance choreographer.

*Publisher: 2K Play, http://www.2kgames.com/2kplay/
*Platform: Wii, Kinect for Xbox 360
*Rating: E for Everyone
*Release Date: November 6, 2012
*Price: $39.99

Disclosure: I received a copy of the game to try out and review. Opinions about it are 100% my own.