SoraRabbit Short Hop 013: Even More Dancing
Welcome to the third installment of my exhaustive reviews of the Just Dance series! I’m back with the next three games in the long-running series. If you missed the first two posts, you can find them below:
008: That Time SoraRabbit Figured Out He Knew How to Dance
SoraRabbit Short Hop 009: More Dancing
This post will go just like the others. I’ll go through each game, comparing and contrasting them with the previous games in the series, talk about what I liked and didn’t like, and outline some of the included tracks. Simple enough, right? Let’s get into it!
They’re really going for the simplistic style these days. (Credit: Ubisoft)
Just Dance 2019 was released in 2018 by Ubisoft for the Nintendo Switch, Wii, Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. I played the Switch version for this review. (As always, if there are any gameplay differences for the different consoles, I am unaware of those.) There were 40 new tracks released and 12 tracks on the Kid Mode.
So weird. (Credit: Ubisoft)
This game was a little jarring in just how different it was from the previous games. Over the last several installments, Ubisoft has been reducing the number of features and simplifying the layout. This reached its peak in JD 2019. The game is sparse and full of white space, the menus are simple and easy to navigate. There are few features included to clutter up or add to the gameplay. None of the fun features from previous games are in evidence, like Rival mode, Dance Quest, or Dance Lab. All you have in this game is Just Dance, Kids mode, and World Dance Floor. (WDF isn’t even accessible from the main screen, you have to go to the Home Menu for it.)
Home shows suggested songs, dance machine, and things like that. The other menu items allows you to go to the Songs, the Playlists, a handy Search feature, and your Profile. Of course, the kCal counter is still there as the only method for Just Sweat.
Bouncy. (Credit: Ubisoft)
The difficulty rankings come back after being absent for many games. The songs are split into Easy, Medium, Hard, and Extreme. These rankings seem arbitrary. What annoyed me was that I looked up I Gotta Feeling on Just Dance Unlimited and it claimed it was easy. WTF. (See the previous post for more on that song.)
This one cut out the skins, but along with your avatar you can also select a title, which is just a silly designation. You get more titles by achieving certain goals— dancing to a set number of songs, getting 3+ stars on enough songs, and more. The Gift Machine returns from the previous game, still costing 100 Mojo. It has 215 gifts to start with, and has a counter to show how many are left. From here you can get avatars, alternate choreo, and artwork. You can see your artwork collection in your profile. The game no longer interrupts you when you earn a new avatar, asking you if you’d like to equip it. (I appreciate little touches like that which make the game less annoying.)
This is a fun dance. (Credit: Ubisoft)
This one was just as forgiving as the previous installment, allowing for rather high scores. (I got Superstar rank on my first play of the first song.) The most annoying aspect of this game is Just Dance Unlimited. Several installments ago they replaced their DLC with this paid subscription program. This grants you access to the songs from previous installments along with some exclusive songs. They claim over 400 songs total on that service, so it could be a good option for those wanting more variety. I was just annoyed by it because it advertises it every single time you play in an unskippable sequence. Also one of the daily challenges is to subscribe to it, which seems pretty underhanded to me. (One cool things, though, is that the free sample from JD Unlimited is a Barbie version of Chiwawa, a song I very much liked from a previous installment.)
And this is as good a time as any to bring up the censorship. I don’t recall mentioning that in my previous posts, but the entire Just Dance series uses radio edits when necessary to keep harmful lyrics away from players. This usually involves blanking out lyrics that mention sex or alcohol. Actually in some cases, the cuts are worse than radio edits. For instance, in this one, the song New Rules cuts out the word “drunk” and the part of the chorus that says “if you’re under him”. It renders the song somewhat nonsensical if you’ve never heard the uncut version. (I have to wonder if they’re going to include WAP in JD 2022. That would be hilarious… I‘ve heard the radio edit of that and it’s utter nonsense.)
Could they not get the rights to Pacman Fever? (Credit: Ubisoft)
Songs in this game include Finesse (Remix) by Bruno Mars ft Cardi B, Havana by Camila Cabello, I Feel It Coming by The Weeknd ft Daft Punk, One Kiss by Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa, Water Me by Lizzo, and Un Poco Loco from Disney’s Coco, along with many more.
Best Song: New Rules, Dua Lipa. Score: 11,813 points.
Worst Song: Bang Bang Bang VIP-made version, BIGBANG. Score: 8733 points.
Most Fun Songs: Rhythm of the Night, Ultraclub 90 and New Rules, Dua Lipa. The dances were a lot of fun on those.
Oddest Choice: Pac Man, hands down. It’s not even Pac Man Fever, it’s the Pac Man theme. Don’t get me wrong, it was a fun dance, but so random.
Dancing in the void. (Credit: Ubisoft)
Just Dance 2020 was released in 2019 by Ubisoft for the Nintendo Switch, Wii, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Stadia. (Odd that they released a Wii version and not Wii U. Also some trivia: this was the final game released for the Wii, which is the system that debuted this series. It’s the end of an era.) Again I played the Switch version. There are 44 new tracks included, and 10 on the Kids mode.
Oh lord… (Credit: Ubisoft)
This is the tenth anniversary of the Just Dance series and the eleventh main title game released. The layout and content is almost identical to the stripped-down version featured in the previous installment, but with the inclusion of All Star mode. This is a playlist of ten songs from previous games to celebrate the anniversary. All Stars mode also featured a cute animation of the panda dancer on an alien planet and then soaring off on a spaceship.
I had high hopes for this one because of how everyone was hyping it up. I have to say, it didn’t live up to the hype… I expected more classic game modes, new features… something. But on the other hand, it’s a very solid release and one of my all-time favorite Just Dance titles, simply due to the songs and dances included.
The panda and the pimp-deer are friends. (Credit: Ubisoft)
The collectible artwork included in the previous game is gone, and instead it features a sticker album with 121 stickers. The Gift Machine has 333 prizes, which is way more than the previous two incarnations. Skins also return in this game. The Gift Machine grants you stickers, avatars, skins, and aliases (which are the titles from the previous game). The experience gauge is a bar rather than the circle it’s been for several games. All game modes and features are available from the start, rather than being unlocked after a few songs.
A neat new addition to the game is the unlockable choreo. Previously the alternate choreo would be unlocked by getting Superstar on certain songs, or by getting it in the Gift machine. This one continues the Superstar task, but also adds the task of playing certain songs multiple times. I really like that they made this a method of earning the choreo, rather than it being random. (I still don’t have the ones from the Gift Machine in 2019.) The Superstar unlocks took me a lot longer on this one because the songs requiring Superstar for their alternate choreo were a bit more tricky.
Classical. (Credit: Ubisoft)
The difficulty level of this game continues the recent trend of being low, with the motion controls being very forgiving. I again got Superstar on the very first song I played. Even the extreme songs didn’t seem as rough as they used to be. I had fun with All Star mode, but overall, this was not the huge anniversary celebration I was expecting. It will probably be my go-to installment, though, since there are so many fun dances. (Plus it’s the only one I have downloaded on my Switch, so I don’t have to put in a cartridge or a disc.) The new feature of unlocking alternate choreo through repetition was nice. But did one of them have to be Old Town Road? And did it have to be five times?! (If you can’t tell, I’m not a fan.)
This one did have a ton of unlockables, and it will likely take me a very long time to get them all. You can earn aliases for playing songs multiple times. If you earn Mega Superstar, you get a golden avatar relating to the song. Despite the lack of features, they did cram a lot of replay value into the game. So, the slight disappointment aside, I very much enjoyed this one and hope Ubisoft continues this upward trend in content.
I really do love this dance. (Credit: Ubisoft)
Songs in this game include Run Over Me by Pitbull ft Marc Anthony, God Is a Woman by Ariana Grande, Bad Guy by Billie Eilish, Bangarang by Skrillex ft Sirah, Just an Illusion by Equinox Stars, and more.
Best Song: Taki Taki, DJ Snake ft Selena Gomez, Ozuna, & Cardi B. Score: 12,305 points.
Worst Song: Bad Guy (Billie Version), Billie Eilish. Score: 8135 points.
Most Fun Songs: There’s actually several. Soy Yo by Bomba Estereo is for sure my top pick. It was a really fun dance and an overall earworm (meme history aside.) This was my first time hearing the whole song and, in my opinion, it’s pretty catchy and enjoyable. (And now I have new visuals to associate it with instead of those silly Grubhub commercials.) Sushi, Merk & Kremont. I Am the Best, 2NE1 (I have always loved that song!). Bad Boy, Riton & Kah-Lo. Like I said earlier, this title had a lot of great dances.
Oddest Choices: Infernal Galop (Can-Can) is the Can-Can song with animal sounds. (My son liked that one. It made him laugh.) Always Look On the Bright Side of Life, performed by the Frankie Bostello Orchestra. This song is best known from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. (I actually got Mega Superstar on that one.) Also Baby Shark by Pinkfong. (This was my first time actually hearing this song, surprisingly, although I have heard parents complaining about it for years.)
Just Dance 2021 was released in 2020 by Ubisoft for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Stadia. I played the Switch version. There are 41 new tracks and 10 on Kids mode.
I was the booty shorts parrot. (Credit: Ubisoft)
Yet again, the series maintains the stripped down, minimalistic look. There is only one new feature, and All Star mode did not return. The new feature is Quick Play mode, which randomly shuffles the track so that you can start dancing faster. The only real gameplay changes were in the World Dance Floor, but I don’t play that so I can’t really comment.
The most annoying thing about this installment is the sorting on the songs tab. The sort options are pertinence, score, difficulty, alphabetical, and number of coaches. (Oh, right. On all these posts I’ve been calling the people on the screen dancers, but technically the game refers to them as coaches. Whatever.) The default sort is “pertinence”, which I guess is dependent on what songs you dance to the most? Not sure. It’s a mess. Like in the previous game, there is a row of recommended songs at the top of the list.
What I didn’t like about this is that I prefer the songs sorted alphabetically for ease of finding them, and having the locked songs next to the songs you unlock them with helps me easily see which ones I need to work on. So why didn’t I just sort by alphabetical? Well that’s because Ubisoft, in their latest money grab trying to push JD Unlimited on us, included JD Unlimited songs in the alphabetical sorting, which renders it completely useless for those of us who refuse to subscribe to it. (Honestly, I was kind of considering giving Unlimited a try until they pulled this. Not even mentioning the ad that plays every single freaking time you play the game, clogging up one of the challenges with subscribing, and the challenge telling you to launch a song from Home and you can’t do that if it’s an Unlimited song. Bleh.)
This panda is a dancing fiend. (Credit: Ubisoft)
Okay, enough complaining. This game is almost identical to the last two. The Gift Machine returns and has 306 gifts this time. The sticker album also returns, with 101 stickers to collect. Your profile shows some handy stats, such as challenges completed, dance time, songs played, stars collected, and your longest Perfect streak. After each song you dance to they show a cool graph that displays how many of each type of move you got. (X, OK, Good, Super, and Perfect.) It’s the little touches that make a game memorable.
Aside from the little tweaks, this game was nothing new. Like every game it had some good songs, some lousy songs, and some weird songs. Extreme songs were actually a bit easier on this one— I was able to 4 or 5 star them and even got Superstar on one… which is something I couldn’t have imagined in the previous games, where I was lucky to get 3 stars. This one included a lot more unlockable songs with the same methods as the previous game. I only got Mega Superstar on one song so far, and did not get a golden avatar for it. I really didn’t take as much time on this one as the last game, but I’ll revisit it at some point. It wasn’t a disappointment… just another entry in the series, nothing special to make it stand out.
Is this a thirst trap? (Credit: Ubisoft)
Songs in this game include Juice by Lizzo, Rare by Selena Gomez, Temperature by Sean Paul, Adore You by Harry Styles, Say So by Doja Cat, Don’t Start Now by P!nk, and many more.
Best Song: Blinding Lights, The Weeknd. Score: 11,027 points.
Worst Song: Yameen Yasar, DJ Absi. Score: 9179 points.
Most Fun Songs: Kulikitaka, Tono Rosario. (See below screenshot.) Super cute song with a dancing cat. Say So, Doja Cat and Till the World Ends, The Girly Team were both fun dances.
Oddest Choices: You’ve Got a Friend In Me from Toy Story. Woody dances to this one and it’s also on the Kid side of the game. Also the Village People’s In The Navy covered by the Sunlight Shakers. Not that that song’s odd necessarily, but it feels more like something that would be on an earlier Just Dance game.
Aww kitties. (Credit: Ubisoft)
And that’s the latest installment in my extensive Just Dance review series. With that I’m finally caught up. This will not be my last Just Dance post, but by necessity, it will be the last one for a very long time. (Probably about three years unless the series unexpectedly ends.)
So what’s next for me now that I finally have no new Just Dance games to play? Well, the thirteenth game in the series (Just Dance 2022, obviously) is out in November of this year, so I have that to look forward to. Until then, I plan to go back through the entire series again, slowly, revisiting each song, trying to top my high scores, and unlock more goodies. Dancing is still an important part of my daily workout, and that’s not going to change. Depending on my time and energy I do 2-4 songs a day. I enjoy these games so much that I don’t see any reason to change this part of my workout. The molding of music, video games, and exercise is perfect, and it’s easy to see why this series has lasted 12 years and counting. It will be fun going back through the series at a leisurely pace, like seeing old friends after a long absence. Everything will be fresh and new again. I’ve already started with the very first Just Dance, and let me tell you, it was jarring going back to the very simple, no-frills game that started the franchise.
Thank you all so much for taking this journey with me. It was fun breaking down these games for you, talking about what I liked and what I didn’t like. It taught me a bit about reviewing games and how to be more critical. (I tend to be very forgiving of things I enjoy and critical thinking can be a pretty good exercise in itself.) Doing the research for these posts was easy, as it was a part of my workout routine. The whole thing was a positive experience, and one I’m excited to continue. (In three years!) I appreciate you all and I’ll be back soon with something else!
I am the master of Just Dance now! (Credit: Ubisoft)
