As someone who has played DDR throughout the years to the point where I pounded my foot down so many times that I developed a chronic injury, I was skeptical at a Konami dancing game with little to no emphasis on the feet. The only foot movement in Dance Evolution is the occasional foot shuffle, indicated by a flashing green circle on the ground. However, times change so I gave it a shot. 

First off, a controller-free game also means a new way to navigate the UI is necessary. Lifting my right arm would confirm a choice while my left arm would go back. For music selection, an icon that resembles "no thank-you" was shown to indicate I had to stick my right hand forward and move it side to side. It was pretty fascinating to swipe the songs side to side with my hand but I did have to put it to my side slightly instead of directly in front of me to work properly. Overall, it wasn't too much of a hassle and I didn't find myself yearning for a standard controller. 

After waiting in line and seeing EVERYONE select "A Geisha's Dream" to play, I choice another song from DDRs of old, "Brilliant2U." I could only hear about half of the song but that was reasonable on Konami's part in a thunderous game show environment. 

A lot of the game on the normal difficulty setting appeared to be following what the avatar was doing and only have to match points or movements on screen at key moments. Circles would appear if you had to hold your hands in place or long arrows for different hand swipes and arcs. One of the more fun moments was trying to match a green silhouette pose by the time it slid in from the side to over the dancing avatar. Like the first DDR, it's fun if you like dancing but definitely takes some getting used to. Keeping bounce in your step helps. 

During a song, an image of the player at about half the size of the dancing avatar is kept to the lower side of the screen. While playing, I hardly noticed this as my focus was on the center of the screen where new movements were popping up. Having yourself onscreen does serve as a good failsafe to make sure the Kinect can see you though. Some sort of filter is used to make the color of the player match that of the dance area.

Konami also finally got around to updating the graphics to make it look like a current gen game. Unfortunately, the faces of the characters are now that of plastic dolls now and are borderline creepy at times. Also, the hair is kept together in large chunks and isn't quite up to par for 2010. The main character appears to be inspired by a younger Brittany Spears and wears a disco ball textured dress. Successful movements are indicated by a wave distortion effect but "Perfect" and "Good" etc. still show up over the move to let you know how you're doing. 

In the end, I couldn't tell if I did terribly (awkward white guy alert!) or if I wasn't detected correctly. Based on how the booth babe actually did well, I'd lean towards the first choice. Konami rotated out the booth babes every once in a while because no one likes a sweaty booth babe. If you plan on playing with someone else with a vastly shorter height level, be prepared to play a few feet further away from the TV so the Kinect can see both of you.  

You couple of gamers in Japan with a 360 and a Kinect, get ready to look goofy! Dance Evolution comes out on November 20th this year.