Michael Jackson: The Experience review (Wii) ★

The main part of the game – you know, the dancing – is where the utter pointlessness of it seeps through like some unpleasant ooze from the very depths of gaming hell. Since the Wii can only detect the movement of your Wii-mote-clasping hand, Michael Jackson: The Experience should very much be named Michael Jackson's Hand: The Experience. Copying the master's moves – well, at least those of the in-game version of MJ, who is a mo-capped dancer with a bizarre facial overlay that makes him look like a peachy figure, with no distinguishing features other than two black dots for eyes – is tiresome when you're being instructed to wave the Wii-mote at the right time into whatever positions slightly resemble what the Fake King of Pop is doing on-screen. Time isn't even of the essence as you can pretty much just do whatever you want with the Wii-mote and you'll still get a decent amount of points just for flailing your arm around. The instructional images are also hard to follow and unclear, so you'll be spending your time squinting at the TV to see what exactly you're meant to do with your hand as you fall completely out of rhythm with the song.

Why 'play' this horrendous game when you can just turn on some of Michael's best music videos and get sweaty dancing the night away in front of your TV? There simply is no reason why you should buy this game and start flying around your living room to some strange-looking bloke dancing on weird, flourescent backgrounds. It's like paying to reduce the fun of an activity that you can already do much better without the use of a games console.

There is only a severely underwhelming and disappointing experience to be had with this game. I can only hope that the full body recognition of Xbox 360 Kinect and PlayStation Move put this release to shame when their respective versions of the game hit shelves in 2011. And if not, it looks like MJ's legacy in video games will sadly be defined by the likes of this and Sega's Moonwalker.