Yesterday, Brett and I had a chance to take an up-close look at Rock Band 3 and Dance Central, two impressive new entries in the music game genre.

I must say, Dance Central has impressed me a lot more than I thought it was going to. The player dances (for real, no step-step-jump dance dancing here) along with a character on-screen, and if they do well enough for a given musical phrase they’ll earn points based on how closely they followed the moves.

There’s a “Break It Down” mode that teaches you all the moves, but once you’re comfortable enough with them you can jump into a performance. The harder the difficulty chosen, the more complicated and intense the moves become.

Because I grew up white, I have absolutely no experience or natural talent in the realm of dancing (only dance-dancing). With Dance Central though, I might have to try and change that soon.

There isn’t much to say about Rock Band 3 that hasn’t been covered to death in previous stories all over the internet, but our not-quite-personal demo gave us some more insight to just how much detail this game goes into.

The drop-in, drop-out anytime mechanic of the game seems to work as advertised, and Harmonix claim that it can be done anywhere in the game unobtrusively. The menu system they showed us correlates with this. This takes the “Party Play” idea pioneered by last year’s Guitar Hero 5 and expands it into a fully-realized feature.

In Rock Band 3, the player is able to filter songs using a multitude of options. If you’ve ever made a smart playlist in iTunes then you know what to expect here. I see a lot of potential use for when you’ve got one person on drums, one on guitar and one on keys, and you just want to see songs that use those instruments.

Pro Mode looks very, very impressive, especially when played with the “Holy Crap That’s A Real Guitar” controller. The game somehow knows where all your fingers are on the fretboard, and it knows which strings you strum. The guy giving the demo actually had the guitar hooked up to an amp, and was actually playing guitar while using the same instrument to play the song on the game. Absolutely nuts. I’m looking forward to ripping my hair out trying to learn songs in this mode.

I was able to play “Bohemian Rhapsody” after the guided demo, but I got stuck playing on normal guitar. Apparently the guitar part is very, very sparse in this song, but that gave me plenty of time to rock out and sing along with the harmonies so I wasn’t too upset. I have to say, this song is going to be a hit at parties — if you pony up the thousand dollars or so it’ll take to get the game and all required instruments.

That’s really the one worry I have with Rock Band 3 — the price. Sure, a real guitar that you can use with the game is awesome, as is the new keyboard attachment. You may already have a plastic guitar lying around you can use as a bass, and a mic or two, but all things considered you’re going to have to drop some serious cash if you want to get the full experience here.

If Rock Band 3 can teach me how to play “The Power of Love” before I check out the new games based on the greatest movie of all time though, so be it.