It’s that time of the year, everyone’s getting ready to celebrate the holidays. But at Ubisoft the celebration has already begun with 10 years of Just Dance! So how good of a party is it really?
When you start the up the game you’re immediately prompted to pick the controller of your choice. Either the Joy-Con or as shown at E3, your very own smartphone! Now everyone can join in on the fun and this also means that the Nintendo Switch Lite users will also be able to use their smartphones instead of needing to buy extra pairs of Joy-Con. Up to six dancers simultaneously, the game does a good job tracking all the movement data from everyone without fail.
The home menu has 3 game modes to choose from. The first one is ‘The Return’ of the “Kids Mode”! It sounds like a title for a Star Wars movie and it’s not wrong because Disney is very present here! Ubisoft succeeded in adding good licensed content like the only just released Frozen II and the classic Moana along other cool and easy to get into tracks for kids of all ages! There are no pictograms for the upcoming movements but that would just confuse kids anyway. Now they can easily pick a song and press A to get into the mirrored dancing! It’s clean in the menus and easy to get into for everyone!
The second mode is your main game “Just Dance” and the title is still relevant because that’s exactly what you’ll do! You can pick from a selection of songs that are included in the game as a standard. Some of these are very popular songs like “Bad Guy” from Billie Eilish and “Kill This Love” from BLACKPINK. There’s a decent selection of songs that are free but if you want to get everything out of the game you’ll have to buy a Just Dance Unlimited subscription. They come in different forms from 1 day to a full year so you can pick whichever one you like most. For a library of +500 songs from all eras and genres I think the prices are not exaggerated at all. All the popular dance tunes from older Just Dance titles are in there too so you’ll be able to dust off your old moves from the Wii era! You unlock in-game tokens on top of your scores that you can spend on Stickers for the 10 year dioramas and you can unlock backgrounds and new avatars to spice up your dance profile. Some special B versions of songs are locked off but you can unlock them by getting good scores on the original and thus unlocking a special B version with different and more challenging moves to perform.
In here you’ll also find themed playlists based on your country or the songs you liked to get new recommendations and even the World Dance Floor where you can beat rankings online on specific songs! It’s a true multiplayer stage and you can try to hold the 1st ranking to be the actual #1 in the world on a song you like! Everyone will be bale to see your scores. This mode also has some happy hours every few days and “bosses” to beat!
If you’re in for a workout you can activate options in the UI without going into hidden menus. Things like “Sweat Mode” can be activated on every song so you keep track of burnt calories. I tested it against my smartwatch and the calories matched up with a margin of 10-20 kcal after 3-4 songs. So it works well. And you do sweat!
Another neat feature is the use of the HD rumble in the Joy-Con where the rumble will match the beat so you can feel the beat and time your movements to get that perfect score!
Another thing worth noting is that Just Dance 2020 offers you songs based on your country. In Belgium we got K3 with “10.000 Luchtballonnen” which is a song liked by kids and teens as they grew up with it so it adds to the personalized feel the game offers! It’s a neat touch!
The third mode is “All Stars Mode”. It’s a sort of story mode where you’re going from planet to planet to (re)discover the tracks that made Just dance what it is today. The biggest dance game where everyone is welcome and with a tracklist spanning 10 years and +500 songs it is a fun way to find new favorites too! The visual style is neat and colorful as you’d expect from the game and this mode uses the favorite Panda to tell a story with music and moves! It starts out easy but the songs will get more challenging along the way as you unlock even more for your playlist!
As a teacher in high school, I decided to offer Just dance 2020 as an extra workout moment during their break at lunch. Around 50 kids showed up and they were all amazed by the huge tracklist. One student asked if “Starships” from the previous Just dance was in it and it was, under the Unlimited subscription but still, she grabbed the Joy-Con and showed off her moves to all the other kids as they too joined in after a few seconds! Together with the students I made a 45-minute custom playlist and we’re expecting 80 participants next time we do this in school. All we needed was a projector, a Nintendo Switch and a copy of Just Dance 2020. We’re planning to add it as a weekly break on Friday after the winter holidays. The boys too were very present and had fun!
Just Dance 2020 is a solid version but somehow it still feels like it’s more of the same. For a full prized game you’d expect more unlocked songs for free. Although the subscription is not that expensive it still hides good quality content behind a paywall. We’re also still waiting for a big innovation in the series. But we get it that this year was all about celebrating 10 years with the great community that is the Just Dance Family!
