Just Dance VR

With two very different Just Dance games arriving on the same day, I've found myself torn on which one I want to play more. As usual, my children have completely co-opted the living room television in order to obsessively play Just Dance 2025 on the family PlayStation. Just being able to play one song involves several minutes of tense negotiation. In response, I've kept the very existence of Just Dance VR a complete secret from my family. This ensures that I can dip into my office during breaks from work and have a little Just Dance time to myself, and I don't have to share with anyone. 

Just Dance VR, which I've been playing on the Meta Quest 3, is recognizably a Just Dance game, but a ton of work has gone into creating a new infrastructure through which players can interact with the dances - and each other. Players who desire privacy are welcome to dance along with the game in the seclusion of a virtual living room - or invite friends into their space to hang out. But for those with the need for social interaction, Ubisoft has designed a very cool social hub (a Dancity, if you will). It is important to note that live chat is only available in your apartment, so you won't get spammed or harassed by weirdos in the Dancity (though nothing stops them from making lewd gestures, I suppose).

After creating a Just Dance avatar from a fairly robust character creator (and no, you don't need to create one of those demon-looking blue-faced Just Dance creatures), you can travel into the Dancity. There you are greeted by a bevy of glowing billboards, each of which advertises and links out to one of the game's twenty-five tracks. Online leaderboards accompany each song, and you can use them to matchmake with other dancers and compete in real time. It is all very purple neon, and all very on brand for Just Dance. There are also ways to quickly hop into the song of the day, song of the week, etc., and register a quick placement on the leaderboards. In a fun touch, taking the top prize for the day gets a mammoth representation of your game card displayed in the hub.

There are 300 (!) levels that players can progress through, each unlocking some bits and bobs that players can use to personalize their avatar, game card, and emojis. Towards the beginning of the game, just completing a song for the first time causes a minor explosion of trophies and goodies to appear in front of you. There are toys to play with in-game, new wardrobe choices for your avatar, and even some new ways to interact with the city. The prizes come at such a steady cadence that it can be hard to parse them all; it's wise to stop occasionally to inventory what you've gotten lately.

All of your customization and menu options can be handled via an in-game disco ball buddy - though I sometimes think he looks a bit like a golf ball - who appears with the tap of a button. It felt a bit fumbley-bumbley at first, but I eventually figured it out. I did have a bit of trouble getting some of my selections to register, and I never was able to convince the game that I was left-handed, but I'm guessing that these minor bugs will be worked out early in the game's lifespan.

Just Dance VR also offers two-hand dance tracking, due to the power of using VR controllers instead of gripping a phone. This has some serious impacts on the gameplay, not the least of which is that that scoring is very, very forgiving. With the game tracking both hands, I was easily able to score five stars in almost every song on my first try, a feat that would have taken me at least four or five swipes in the base game. I'm still not sure how the scores are calculated, but this version of Just Dance feels even more loose than the console version. 

But wait, you - as a Just Dance veteran - are thinking. If both hands are tracked, why are the in-game dancers only wearing one glove? Isn't that how they look in the regular games, wearing one glove so you know which hand should be holding the phone? And...don't some of these songs seem familiar? Hold up, do I actually have some muscle memory that remembers some of these dances? ARE THESE ALL OLD SONGS?

Yes, Just Dance fan, I'm afraid it's true. In the biggest bummer about Just Dance VR, the game is reusing songs and dances from such memorable (light, mostly-friendly sarcasm on "memorable") favorites as Just Dance 2014, and Just Dance 2017, and Just Dance 2015. It turns out that the game took some of the biggest bangers from past editions, rendered them in 3D, and plopped them into the game. These are the exact same dances from previous games with the exact same visuals. We're talking Queen's Don't Stop Me Now from 2017, Nikki Minaj's Starships from 2014, Selena Gomez' Bad Liar from 2018. There are some newer songs tossed in, like Blackpink's How You Like That from Just Dance 2024, but no original tracks made just for this game.

Also missing in action are some of the fun and unexpected weirdo songs that Just Dance tosses into the mix every year - so no Danger! Danger! High Voltage! for you this time around. A couple of years ago, Just Dance took a left turn and started really focusing on delivering some stunning visual experiences to accompany the creative dances. The costumed background dancers and kaleidoscope effects of the earlier games faded into memory, and in their place were fully rendered 3D backgrounds and amazing thematic special effects. Few of those new and improved experiences made the cut here; these are mostly throwbacks to the Just Dance of yesteryear. A kind soul would call this a "greatest hits" package. An unkind soul would call this "reheated leftovers". I fall somewhere in the middle - let's call it an enhanced remaster.

To be fair, many of these performances are jaw dropping in VR. Bad Liar is a particular standout, as is the hysterical high-school/moose interpretation of Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl. There isn't really a bad song in the bunch, and the reinterpretation into 3D is very cool in some instances. The visuals do swirl around the player quite triumphantly, and it all looks very nice. And the city itself is a visual feast, with filled with pulsing rhythms and fun easter eggs.

Just Dance VR looks great, sounds great, and plays great. It works well, is bug free, and is very approachable and intuitive. It is clear that the development team spent a lot of time and energy building up the infrastructure for this game. The bells and whistles in Just Dance VR are plentiful and very impressive. But the real draw here are the dances and songs. All the bells and whistles in the world can't disguise the fact that the core experience being delivered by Just Dance VR is sometimes recycled material from games ten years ago. 

I'm going to keep playing Just Dance VR, because regardless of the material's age, it's still a cool and fun experience. But I can't help but wonder what this game could have been like with the full weight of Ubisoft's development muscle behind it. Don't get me wrong, Just Dance VR is pretty neat. But is could have been the most amazing thing ever.