Ubisoft's Just Dance returns once again to give us our annual dose of disco boogie action, and there's absolutely zero surprises in Just Dance 2022 if you've ever played an entry in this series before. There's a fairly solid bit of dance fun to be had with this one, but it's also overwhelmingly familiar stuff that takes every opportunity it can to shove further purchases into your face. What's here is good, there's no doubt about it, but it's all rendered somewhat frustrating as it constantly bombards you with tracks that you'll need a Just Dance Unlimited subscription in order to access.
Let's not get off to a hugely negative start here, though. Just Dance 2022 is a colourful and slick experience that arrives with 40 excellent tracks, some solid online action, a pretty neat kid-friendly mode, calorie-burning sweat mode and lots of unlockable bits and bobs to work towards acquiring as you thrash around your sitting room and attempt to match the movements displayed onscreen. All you need is a single Joy-Con (or a smartphone with the official app) and a reasonable sense of timing and you're all set for some good times.
There's a decent selection of musical styles across the 40 tracks included with the base game, too. You've got Dua Lipa's Levitating, Imagine Dragons' Believer and, our personal favourite, El Chombo's completely nonsensical Chacarron, to get you gyrating around your lounge as your kids and partner vacate the building in complete and utter disgust.
The motion tracking at work here does its job well and our movements and attempts to keep up with the action appearing onscreen registered perfectly at all times — even with four out of shape adults tumbling around a small area in a sweaty mess. Ubisoft have nailed the formula here, there's no doubt about it, but unless you're willing to stump up the cash for an Unlimited subscription, the whole thing very quickly degenerates into a rather annoying experience with menus stuffed full of songs you can't actually access. It really does feel as though you've just bought an advertisement for a game, rather than the actual game itself.
To be fair, the Unlimited subscription isn't particularly expensive, with £19.99 (or $29.99) per year giving you access to a catalogue of 700 tracks to dance along to — and you do get a free month trial when you buy the game — it's just that it's so relentlessly shoved in your face, and if you don't subscribe you're left with a title that spends more time showing you what you don't have than allowing you to enjoy what's actually included. Just attempting to cycle through the forty tracks on offer here can prove a massive headache as the menus repeatedly attempt to push you to the eShop to pick up Unlimited. It's not a great look and it very quickly becomes frustrating when your kids are faced with a ton of songs they want to dance to but can't unless you fork out some more cash.
We get it, music licencing is an expensive and tricky business, but Just Dance 2022 ends up feeling pretty tacky as a result of its constant pushing of extras. If you can ignore this aspect of proceedings, you'll definitely get a good few hours of fun with what's included here. The kids mode was a hit in this writer's household, and the online competitive mode will certainly shake you up if you decide to fully engage with it.
It all looks, plays and sounds well, too. This is a super slick package, but it really doesn't improve or evolve the formula in any meaningful way and left us pretty cold with its relentless insistence on ushering us to the Switch eShop to spend more cash.
Conclusion
Just Dance 2022 is okay. It's more of the same with some cool new tracks, a slick and smooth experience overall that plays it safe and works just fine as a result. However, it also constantly pushes its subscription service and ends up feeling a little convoluted and tacky as it spends more time flogging tracks you don't own over letting you enjoy the ones included with the base game. Fans of the series — or anyone who's just danced to even a single track from the series — will know exactly what they're getting here, but newcomers should be aware that they'll need to fork out more cash after buying the game in order to enjoy the full experience.
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Comments 26
For me ,Ubisoft are as bad ,if not worse than EA.
Honestly, this game really improved over the last few. It added a bunch of songs fans were requesting and added an incredible mix of official choreographies for some songs and awesome originals. Also the animation of a bunch of these have greatly improved.
Overall easily the best Just Dance game in a long time.
Just dance is just dance thanks for the review
Just Dance is always an advertisement now.
Dance Dance Revolution is still way much better than Just Dance.
@Anti-Matter they’re honestly very different games. DDR is much more of a rhythm game whereas JD is much more of a basic fitness game. (DDR is better overall tho)
@Blooper987
DDR is also fitness games.
You burn calories by stepping on the arrows, not to mention if the song have a lot of jumps or long stream.
Also, Para Para Paradise (Rhythm game by Konami also) is way much better than Just Dance too. That's why i have this game at home with actual Para Para controller.
@Blooper987 @Anti-Matter if you look at hard ddr song it's a workout on its own maybe even more than most just dance songs
@Blooper987 I was hoping the review addressed this. This game really is the best JD in a long time.
Wanted to try Just Dance for a while, so I'll consider picking this up.
A false economy. I’ve bought two of these (gifts) but thanks to your review I won’t be getting this one. The ads backfired for this “consumer “.
@Anti-Matter Do you have Fitness boxing 2? It seems up your alley and it’s my go to workout game right now. Very fun and a great workout.
@OorWullie Disagree, EA push lootboxes hard and like giving you scraps for the $60 you gave them. Valhalla and FC6 might way overlong but their content rich and Ubi don't force the MTX down your throats in them.
I feel like the review buried the lead in that the production value for these songs overall have been amped compared to previous years. The costumes are louder, the backgrounds give a stronger narrative and they’re doing interesting stuff with the camera angles and choreography this year.
It is bothersome that the UI issues are the same as last year. Searching for songs is still a struggle. The UI should have a dark mode.
Easy no. If they give you an option to opt out of Unlimited at the start and never mention it again, then it’s an easy yes
Having played Just Dance 2021 and then buying this one was a major disappointment. Since most if not all fun songs are on "unlimited" section, the song choices for this new one were way too boring for me. I'd recommend getting the 2021 version and sticking with the unlimited membership. Waste of money
@Royalblues no, 2020 was the final release for Wii
Blocked just-dance.com and ubi.com on our home network and the unlimited nagging disappeared in Just Dance 2021.
I was actually interested in subscribing, but the nagging made it such a bad experience that I decided against it and blocked everything instead.
guys the answer is to turn on airplane mode before starting up any Just Dance session. It shouldn’t be necessary! But it is the solution.
@bluesdance My switch oled doesn’t allow airplane mode when connected in dock.
@SuperSwitchtendo pull it out of the dock, turn on airplane mode, put it back in the dock, voilà
Okay so just dance 2022 gives you 40 different songs to play of which 3 (good 4 you, buttons [including it's alternate] and don't go yet) require an high speed internet connection to play but all 40 songs are playable without restrictions once you have the game. Now the game also has just dance unlimited which is a streaming service that gives you access to more than 700 songs including all of the songs from just dance 2021, you can see this as dlc because you cannot purchase single songs as dlc. Now i'd say if you play just dance a lot then just dance unlimited is definitely worth it but it is not at all required. Now the review says that just dance unlimited songs are shown a lot to this i say: 1. there is an option that is on by default that after playing a song shows you 3 songs you might like based on the song you just played, this screen can be turned of when seeing it and from the settings so you won't see this anymore. 2. If you set the sorting to relevance then you will see the catalogue like this "just dance 2022 - just dance unlimited - just dance kids" meaning that at the top the catalogue of just dance 2022 is shown with the songs that come with the game that don't require unlimited to play. Yes in other places like playlists and searching you will see just dance unlimited songs but you don't have to get that subscription if you don't want to, just keep searching for songs that do not have the unlimited tag along with them and otherwise you stay in the songs menu sorted by relevance. For example today i played just dance 2022 and i only saw unlimited songs when i scrolled down to the bottom of the just dance 2022 catalogue
I never knew there was a new Just Dance game for 2021. I read the review and yikes,the fact they want me to pay for a subscription is shocking because the other games never did that. I might pick it up,but only for those 40 songs.
It's a strange way of selling a game, if you ask me. We've just stuck with the 2018 version and the Unlimited subscription until now, but now my oldest daughter is asking to get the 2022 version. So, yeh, why not, get a new version every 4 years. It's the Unlimited subscription that really makes the game though. You need that great big library of dances if you are going to play it for years. This family loves it, BTW
@OscarWildeFan04 They’ve been doing subscriptions since JD2016, this isn’t a new thing at all
Yes, they really push Unlimited subscriptions, but to be honest, the game is way, way more fun if you subscribe. You can pick up Just Dance games greatly reduced on eShop sales. Adding on Unlimited still makes the game affordable. I play Just Dance every day for my cardio workout and never get bored with it due to the hundreds of songs in Unlimited. As far as the quality of JD 2022 versus other JD games, this one is a huge step forward in choreography, production values on the maps, etc. A lot of the opinions I see online sound like the person only played one of the old games on Wii. Those games had extremely simple, repetitive choreo, basic graphics at best, etc. I'd like to see some of these people saying you just have to shake your controller around and that DDR is much better, load up some of the extreme k-pop maps on 2022 and give them a try.
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