Game Name: The Smurfs: Dance Party

Platform: Nintendo Wii

Publisher: Ubisoft

Rating: 3 (PEGI)

Genre: Dance

Happy, happy, happy. A collection of 25 Smurfed up songs that will make the clueless say, “Arrrrrrrr, isn’t that cute?” Everyone else however will turn Smurf blue with its nauseating tunes before bringing up their breakfast in the nearest bin. It’s quite frankly sickening.

As the Smurfs prepare to go 3D on the big screen, it’s only natural for a game to come along at roughly the same time. The Smurfs: Dance Party is a dance game which combines popular tunes edited in a Smurf way, with a few unedited tracks. These range from Who Let the Smurfs Out? to I Wanna Dance with Somebody.

Although The Smurfs: Dance Party is from Ubisoft, the publishers that bought us the exceptionally addictive and fun Just Dance games, don’t make the mistake of thinking it has the same mechanics. Things are hideously less responsive than most other dance games.

I’m no John Travolta, maybe more John Sergeant, but the fact Just Dance was a challenge made me go back for more. It made me want to learn the moves and improve scores - even if I did look like a wooden air-traffic controller with some kind of hyperactivity disorder. But The Smurf: Dance Party is void of a challenge; it’s actually very hard, maybe even impossible to fail a song.

If the tracking was tweaked slightly, the tunes where a little less bile inducing, and there was punishment for being rubbish, this may have been a good game. Unfortunately the respectable graphics don’t do enough to save it.

There’s a chance kids may enjoy The Smurfs: Dance Party because it doesn’t fail people, they may even be fans of The Smurfs. Most kids however are more than likely going to be discouraged by the fact there is no cool factor. No self-repecting kid would ever admit to playing Smurf Dance Party at the weekend.

SCORE: 2 / 10