![]() ![]() ![]() The second is that it tries way too hard to be a live service game. The first is that the game feels like it was built with no QA testing. While this latest installment of Just Dance has a lot of specific issues, the game’s problems can be summed up in two statements. I’ve literally played Just Dance on Ubisoft’s stage at Taipei Game Show by invitation. I’m a serious player that at one point was good enough to play at competitive level. So understand that my review of Just Dance 2023 Edition is not that of some amateur who casually plays games in the franchise from time to time. I continued playing the games, and have bought them every year since. Eventually, I got so good that my wife could almost never beat me, and eventually she got bored with always losing and stopped playing. Now I could compete with my wife when we played. Often, this literally means dancing off rhythm, ironically. It might sound counter intuitive, but it wasn’t until I stopped trying to dance to the music and started actively trying to understand and play the game like I would any other video game that I started to get good. The way you excel at games in this franchise is to forget everything you think you know about rhythm and learn how the game measures actions and timing to apply points. I went into it with an innate sense of rhythm and dance experience, but none of that helps when playing Just Dance. Once I understood this, everything about the way I played the game changed. Like any other game, it’s a series of interconnected mechanics that need to be practiced and mastered in order to obtain the highest scores and unlock rewards. It’s not just something you casually fool around with and get propelled to high scores as part of a baked in system to make casuals feel good about themselves. Not just in the literal sense, but in the conceptualization of how the gameplay works. Make no mistake, Just Dance is a video game. ![]() Just Dance is sold as a casual fitness experience with a focus on music, but that’s not really what it is. It wasn’t until I changed my mentality about how to approach the game that I finally started to play it well. I was struggling just to get two or three stars in a song. Again, the only reason I was even playing the game was because my now wife wanted to play it. But I actually do like music and rhythm games, so at least I had something to connect to when trying to play it. I don’t particularly like pop culture music, and I’ve never been great about exercising. It’s a fitness game with a focus on pop culture music. In fact, one could argue that it wasn’t made for gamers at all. ![]() It was absolutely not a game made for gamers like me. Since I’m always doing whatever I can to get my wife to play video games, I happily ordered the game on Amazon that same day.Īt first, I did not like playing Just Dance. She had so much fun that she immediately asked if we could buy the game. One day, my wife saw them playing and decided to try it. My sister and aunt were both big Just Dance players. The reason I originally got into Just Dance was because of my wife, who I was still dating at the time. It was not until four years later with the fifth mainline title and the twelfth overall release of the franchise, Just Dance 2014, that I finally bought my first Just Dance game. Even as a person with a long history of playing music games, I had no interest in this particular game. I had seen it around in ads and stores, but it literally didn’t register for me as a title worth looking into. When the original Just Dance first released back in 2009, I didn’t care about the game at all. I’m going to write a full review of Just Dance 2023 Edition, but let me tell you flat out before you take the time to read the whole thing that this is the first and only game in the series I’ve played that I will directly tell you not to buy. Why? The latest game in the series is such a mess that it makes me weep for the long-term health of the IP. Sadly, I think my time with the franchise is coming to an end. Or at least I was for the last 10 or so years. I’ve not written much about it on this blog, but if you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I’m a big Just Dance player. ![]()
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