What happens if you combine the stagnating PlayStation 3 SingStar franchise with a Move-based dance game?

Well the result is you get to watch BTX reviewer James Hamer-Morton strutting his funky stuff for our amusement.

We'll have a text version of the review online tomorrow too, but for now, enjoy the boogie.

SingStar Dance reviewed on PlayStation 3 by James Hamer-Morton. Game supplied for review by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Not since the 2007 premiere of the PS3 version of SingStar has there been a significant upgrade to the franchise, arguably the most significant karaoke games of the home console world. At least not until now, with SingStar Dance and SingStar Guitar being released mere weeks apart. So has the SingStar stagnation stopped?

The same basic game remains. 30 on disc tracks that can be sung as normal, with your pitch, rhythm and tone judged to score your performance. Recent additions to the basic engine (patched on all SingStar PS3 versions) allow for you to sing with vibrato if that's your style, without penalty, and generally the singing side of things remains solid, accurate and enjoyable.

Now the real reason for doing a video review of SingStar Dance can only be to show footage of people (myself included) dancing around like idiots. The truth is that the dance system, while it seems to work, is flawed and inaccurate.

Despite a seemingly accurate calibration system that promises to track your right arm accurately, much to our disappointment 'Dancing' with SingStar suffers from the same syndrome as the Wii's entertaining but flawed Just Dance controls. It is possible to rack up a good score, indeed a better score, by just concentrating on moving the controller in time with the music, rather than trying to copy exactly the dance movements onscreen. However, that's not the limit of the issues that turns SingStar Dance into a poor cousin of even Just Dance.

While the dances themselves are perfectly well choreographed, and a good quality recording of the dancer is present throughout the song on the side of the screen, there is no way of knowing what moves to do next. It's literally a case of copying the onscreen dancer, and in a game where the precision of your dancing is meant to give you your score, it basically boils down to having to learn a full choreographed routine for each song before being able to play it properly. This removes the inclusive nature of the game, and means that someone joining in for the first time has a serious disadvantage.

Not only that, given that most dance moves start to the right... the hand which is being tracked by the Move... even if you manage to pick up a dance move straight after seeing it, it's already too late for the first time, and many of the songs change routine so quickly that you really have no chance of picking it up in time to get any kind of a decent performance on the first go. An average player having to learn 30 full length dance routines is frankly a ludicrous expectation, and really ends up leaving your only option being to flail around like some kind of mental patient. It is a real shame that such a simple omission kind of breaks the whole system. Let's not even pretend that when you're meant to be copying an onscreen dancer, making the player literally turn around and away from the screen is one of the worst ideas for choreography ever.

If that didn't frustrate us enough, there are dance partner moves which require two people to perform (and two Move controllers), which while being a rather great idea, will require further pre-learning for each song.

While we're picking faults, it's worth checking the track listing very carefully, as with all SingStar games, your mileage will vary depending on how much you enjoy the songs, but be aware that only one of the songs featured on the trailer is actually on disc. Personally, I didn't find it the most inspired choice of songs, especially since there are plenty of repeats from earlier iterations of the franchise, and already available DLC.

Future DLC support is promised, with your entire SingStar downloaded catalogue slotting neatly into the game (though without dance capabilities yet) and certain songs will be upgradable for a fee.

While we've been quite harsh on the game itself, it's worth remembering the value of the package. An ordinary SingStar disc costs the same as this edition, comes with the same number of songs, and has no dance functionality at all. So even just using it as a song pack is an option for those either without a PlayStation Move, or just those that feel the track listing suits them. Part of me feels harsh in putting down a product that offers the dance functionality for all 30 songs for no extra fee; more than the previous disc based releases. After all, isn't a poorly executed addition that will probably not suffer within an alcohol fuelled stupour better than not having any Move functionality at all?

The likelihood is you're not going to buy SingStar as a dancing game. However, considering this is an extension that lets more people get involved at once, and join in with the stupidity, it's a welcome path for SingStar to go down. We just hope that it's not too late to tweak the system to make it a proper contendor in the dancing game genre too. Ultimately, we have to remember that this is a game marketed around its dancing, and because of that, the score has to reflect it.

SingStar Dance for PlayStation 3 is available now from Amazon.