Dancing Stage games are awesome for parties. It's all about stomping your way through the on-screen arrows on a dance-mat in time to the cheesy pop tunes that blare from the speakers, with an idiotic grin plastered over your face.

The idea is so simple even your gran will have a go - but crank up the difficulty level and the sheer number and insane speed of the arrows would exhaust a marathon runner. Dancing Stage Unleashed 3 boasts a selection of new licensed tunes from the likes of Girls Aloud, Rachel Stevens and Jamiroquai. Videos play in the background while the lyrics appear on-screen - it's perfect party paraphernalia.

Unleashed 3 comes with a couple of gameplay features that are new to the series, though. The biggest is the Quest mode, which sends you on a mission across the US to become a recognised dancing master. It's just you stamping your way through some tunes until you win over the target fan base, though, before moving on to the next pretty much identical city. It's repetitive and pointless, a poor excuse for an adventure mode that doesn't enhance the experience at all.

On the plus side, the Party mode is great, pitting multiple players against each other in many variations on the gameplay. One game has you earning points to throw bombs at the other player's screen, disrupting the rhythm of their arrows. Another game allows you to lower the height of your opponent's arrow panel - which indicates when they should stamp on a direction. The panel usually sits at the top of the screen, but when lowered it forces them to press the arrows almost as soon as they appear. It's crazy stuff alright.

But if you're just a good old-fashioned Dancing Stage fan you'll find all the stamping action you'll need in the standard Arcade mode. The new selection of nutty J-Pop songs features some of the best in the series, with tracks from RevenG, Naoki j-Style, Be For U and more. There are a total of 60 tracks open at the start, with more original Konami tracks to unlock by getting high grades for your performances.

Getting the high scores means mastering the step patterns. You'll start off stumbling around hitting one arrow in three, but stick at it and you'll soon improve. Harder modes throw arrows at you so fast you'll have to move your feet in certain patterns to hit them all. That's where the real fun is. And if you're a power-dancing lunatic who likes to learn the fast tracks and power-stamp yourself into a coma, you'll find the most challenging arrow patterns in the Unleashed series. Build up your skills and you can take them onto Xbox Live, in insane head-to-head eight-player dance-offs.

Unleashed 3 is a quality party game, so it's a real shame that the biggest new feature - the Quest mode - is so poor. And good though it is, it's only worth getting if you missed the previous one or you're an obsessive completist. .

1. Decent selection of licensed music and Konami's own J-Pop tracks. We respect dance games with Rachel Stevens videos.
2. The brilliant step patterns really get you moving in ways that suit the songs perfectly.
3. Loads of fun in multiplayer, with awesome Arcade modes full of cool games to play with your mates.

1. The poorly thought out Quest mode is repetitive and dull to play. It's an utter waste of time.

Great tracks and cool step patterns, but only super-hardcore owners of the previous games will want this.