Just…Yeah.
The concept of Just Dance is to allow up to four players to dance to popular songs by mimicking the motions of a professional dancer on screen. Each player uses a Wiimote and nothing else. It’s all about the motion control, no buttons to be pressed — just follow the on screen motions.
Here’s the complete track list:
Acceptable in the 80’s – Calvin Harris
A Little Less Conversation – Elvis Presley
Bebe – Divine Brown
Can’t Get You Out of My Head – Kylie Minogue
Cotton Eye Joe – Rednex
Hot n’ Cold – Katy Perry
Dare – Gorillaz
Eye of the Tiger – Survivor (Rocky)
Fame – In the style of Irene Cara (cover)
Funplex CSS – The B 52’s
Girls and Boys – Blur
Girls Just Want to Have Fun – Cindi Lauper
Groove is in the Heart – Dee-Lite
Heart of Glass – Blondie
I Get Around – The Beach Boys
I Like to Move it – Reel To Real
Jerk it Out – Caesars
Jin Go Lo Ba – Fat Boy Slim
Kids in America – Kim Wilde
Le Freak – Chic
Louie Louie – Iggy Pop
Lump – The Presidents Of The USA
Mashed Potato Time – Dee Dee Sharp
Pump up the Jam – Technotronic
Ring My Bell – Anita Ward
Step by Step – New Kids On The Block
Surfin’ Bird – The Trashmen
That’s the Way (I Like it) – Kc & The Sunshine Band
U Can’t Touch This – MC Hammer
Wannabe – The Spice Girls
Who Let the Dogs Out? – Baha Men
Womanizer – In the style of Britney Spears (cover)
Each track can be played in full or you can select the ‘short’ version which fades out after about a minute. Regardless, it isn’t fun and it only highlights, again, how bad Wii games can be when they aren’t properly developed. You know that gut feeling you get when you see a game’s main menu? It’s no way to judge a game, but sometimes you just know that a game is going to be bad just by looking at its menu. That’s the feeling I got with Just Dance. The menu design is boring and wasn’t encouraging at all. Options include Quick Game, Tournament, Warm Up, Extras, and Options.
Tournament sounds like it might have some depth or some kind of complexity to it, but it really doesn’t. Players simply select how many songs they want to play and then you can either choose the songs yourself or let the game choose. Warm Up mode is really unnecessary; if you can’t perform these basic motions without a warm up, you may not even want to continue playing. The Extras menu includes the ‘tutorial,’ which is eight still images that are also in the manual that describe everything about the game. You can also see your progress on each song and other stats. Finally, you can toggle the on screen lyrics and pictograms (the icons that scroll by indicating the next dance move).
Game Modes include these three: Classic, Last One Standing, and Strike A Pose. In Classic, you simply dance around and build up your meter with points. The game tracks the Wiimote for accuracy and speed, and scores you based a simple scale of “X, Ok, and Great.” Not surprisingly, the motion sensing is hit and miss and almost a total joke. Getting multiple Greats in a row yields bonus combo points. Last One Standing gives each player seven lives. A life is lost each time you do a wrong move, but you can earn a life back by executing five Greats in a row. Finally, Strike A Pose requires that you watch for a red light or green light on your points bar; when red, you must freeze your position and when green, you can move again. If you move during red, you lose a lot of points.
And that’s all that’s going on here. To the summary…