Just Dance 2020 Review

"Groove the Ages"

Campaign

November 8, 2019 at 10:25pm
By Jason Stettner

Another year is quickly passing, and that means it’s time for a Just Dance iteration. This is however a special year, with this being the tenth anniversary of the franchise. That might seem like an odd thing to mention, but it directly ties into the minimal story element that’s at play with this one.

The dancing panda creature is out to work through the history of the series, with a song from each of the titles. There’s a small little cutscene, and a sort of ok journey through the series. I guess Katy Perry was like a lead contributing artist to this series, or they just had the rights to her music still as she’s included on many of the tracks you play. That aside, it’s a fine extra to unlock a song for the rest of the game.

Moving onto the general game there’s a specific kids area and a regular quick dancing hub as well where basically everything has been condensed. The story mode I previously mentioned is titled All Stars there. The quickplay section has all of the regular library that’s included in this release, and the Just Dance Unlimited song selection below that.

This Unlimited service is a monthly option, with a free month included with the release. There are other modes here aside from just being able to hop in, such as sweat style or playlist creation and it’s all basically stuffed under here. A fairly smooth UI, easy to get going and to just play right away which is nice.

Gameplay

If you’re not familiar with the dancing games you have the choice to either use the Kinect for motion input, or to just use a free to download app on your phone. I use the latter these days as my console no longer supports Kinect which is sorrowing. That aside, the phone app works fine surprisingly. It’s also how you control the menus of the game, and it’s very good in that regard.

While playing you get to see the dance of the particular song you’ve selected on the screen and you’re trying to match the moves being presented. The difficulty of the routines varies based on what you’re playing, and each song has a unique style to it. They do a good job with the imagery, always a highlight of this franchise. You’re able to dance alone, or with others. Some songs are setup for larger groups, some are for smaller quantities.

The song list here is alright, there are some notable inclusions and some that are covers of popular songs which is disappointing. I also found it had more of a global selection this time around, so only a bit of the overall core library was appealing. With the Unlimited you can get a massive library of songs, great stuff in there but this is a look at just this release.

The Conclusion

Just Dance 2020 is generally solid, with an alright selection of songs with its main issue being that it’s just another entry without any innovation. I really don’t see anything that’s different with this release aside from a mini story selection of really oddly chosen songs. The regular library of options is alright, I found some good hits whereas other songs were a bit odd.

The Unlimited subscription easily fixes that, but it’s not directly a part of this package. They didn’t really do anything new mode wise, it just continues the features of the previous entries and just streamlines it. I’m also not sure what more they could add, but that’s up to the developers I suppose as they could innovate further.

It’s still a solid game, I had fun playing it for sure. I just also see that it’s not really anything different, at all. Good luck on that Old Town Road, and don’t forget to enjoy the thrills of Baby Shark which I strangely hadn’t heard of prior to it being played this game. I quite enjoy that song.

Read our Let's Sing 2019 Review
View our Just Dance Hub

Just Dance 2020 Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by Ubisoft

Rating Overall: 7.0