Just Dance: Decades of Hits review

Just Dance: Decades of Hits is a pleasant surprise. It's clearly focused—a problem the franchise struggled with since its reboot—thanks to its theme. And Ubisoft has taken another interesting jab at an alternative way to engage the audience beyond booting up the game, going through the catalog and dancing our hearts out. This year it's an adventure mode: a journey through the past to the future to save Dr. Gigavolt from being stuck in an unknown future, all through experiencing songs and dances from the past.

Adventure mode takes typical video game conventions and distills them down to their most simplistic methods, which is great for kids and at least interesting for adults. There's an overworld you glide through with pop-up stages signifying the songs you dance to. There are collectibles dispersed throughout the world—some hidden, some in plain sight—but they encourage looking around the small theme parks to see what songs exist or what goodies you might find. They're small inclusions, but it adds just a little more personality to the series that is slowly trying to create its own metaverse and give the dancers personality. This is a good way to push that forward.

The story is light. You play as Lyra, the daughter of Dr. Gigavolt, the playful mad scientist who uses music and dance for all kinds of world-gathering experiments. As many scientists do, they get caught up in their experiments. Dr. Gigavolt trapped himself in the future, so it's up to Lyra to save him by dancing through the decades. Themes like daddy issues and the love and bond of family come up, but they're not heavy-handed. It's just noticeable enough that an eight-year-old could comprehend the theme. It's a throwaway tale, about as needless as why Mario is jumping through the Mushroom Kingdom, but if Ubisoft is truly trying to endear us to the dancers we've seen on screen since 2009, I got to know them a little bit more. Even the last song they danced to—basically a high-octane father/daughter dance—was cute. Mission accomplished.

Quizzes challenge your knowledge of the decade. They're not hard, but I was surprised at how I mixed up certain decades. They tended to focus on certain subset of cultures. I'm a child of the 90s and early 2000s, but I didn't remember half of what the 90s quizzes were talking about because I was either too young or that just wasn't my experience. Still, it's nostalgic to think back on some the moments and times the quizzes bring up.

The biggest problem with DOH is that it doesn't seem Adventure is required to play in order to dance to this year's catalog of songs. I reached out to Ubisoft to clarify as I jumped into Adventure before checking the catalog—I haven't heard back at the time of writing—but if the songs are all unlocked when you buy DOH, then there's no reason to do the Adventure. The story isn't that interesting, and going through the campaign just for the secret unlocks doesn't feel worthwhile enough. There's a missed opportunity to include fun facts about the decades, the songs and the dances that accompanied them. Without any more to do, it's unfortunate people can just skip it. I typically like options in my games, but this effort feels like a waste if there's no incentive to engage with it, particularly because it is pretty good.

Creating a catalog of songs for each decade was basically an impossible task. We could all name songs that represented our understanding of that decade. For me, the 70s was Motown; the 80s and 90s were hip-hop; the 2000s was pop, R&B, and Gangsta Rap; the 2010s and on have been more nomadic for me with the rise of Spotify creating more opportunities to listen to different things. I'm sure each decade represents something different. My tastes weren't as represented as I would've liked, but I felt the song selections were appropriate. The 70s obviously included Motown, leaning on instantly recognizable songs like a cover of The Jackson 5's ABC by the Just Dance cover group Groove Century. Or Mamma Mia by ABBA. The 80s have Run-DMC's It's Tricky and Into the Groove by Madonna. The 90s include Wannabe by Spice Girls, which is Just Dance's first five-dancer song. The 2000s have songs by Britney Spears, *NSYNC, and TLC. The 2010s feature Ariana Grande, Pitbull, and Lil Jon. DOH also includes the current decade represented by artists like Bad Bunny, Olivia Rodrigo, and Sabrina Carpenter. Lesser-known names are included as well, but generally, the songs included are a good mix.

I felt mixed about the dances, though. I was very disappointed in the routine for Lil Jon's Turn Down for What. It was too silly for the type of energy the song brings. But TLC's Scrubs was much more enjoyable—elegant but strong moves representative of the song's theme. Most of the songs were fine, but there were definite outliers that felt like they were created under a specific overall choreographical direction. But each song features very detailed backgrounds. Usually some songs are limited to glowing psychedelic patterns, but care was taken to bring out the personality with every song included, which is a welcome improvement to the franchise. I'm sure it was costly, but it made even the worst dance routines feel better.

Shockingly, there are a lot of easy songs. I don't recall how many easy dances there typically are in each edition, but DOH felt like a lot more than usual. There are medium, hard, and extreme songs, but most of the catalog is made up of easy dances. But also interestingly, the easy dances are harder than the typical easy ones in previous editions. The staple of easy songs, doing the same moves over and over, is still there, but the individual moves require more movement than I recall past easy dances requiring. Even if that's not necessarily true, it felt like a better balance, especially for those who enjoy using Just Dance for a workout.

This year, I chose to play on Xbox as I haven't been able to grab a Nintendo Switch 2 yet (it's available on Switch 1 with a free upgrade to Switch 2 on November 10), and so I was forced to use the Just Dance Controller app. I wasn't impressed when dabbling with it while playing the last Just Dance. Its rating on the Google Play Store is 2.8. It's why I chose the Switch for my past reviews. I wanted to focus on the dancing, not whether or not my moves were registering. I can confidently say that the app is still inconsistent. Some songs, it read perfectly. For songs that required faster moves, it seemed like it had a harder time keeping up. I wasn't sure if it read well because I was in the perfect spot or if the radio wave gods just smiled upon me. Other songs, I couldn't tell if the sun was messing me up, maybe I wasn't raising my hands high enough, or if accidentally pressing my lock screen button messed things up. 

Connecting was always easy. I never had any problems with that. But dancing? It needs improvements.