Now, I’m not about to go ahead and say that Ubisoft has reinvented the wheel here (it has not), but the first and most impressive thing that’s been done here is that the UI is so much better. Once you’re through the initial load screens and chosen between Kids and regular Dance sections you’re greeted by a lovely, white, clean UI that is less of an assault on the eyes and much more of a pleasure to navigate that the overly busy ones that went before.

All the information you could want about what you’re about to take on is given to you – song title, artist, difficulty – only now you also get a nice preview video to go along with the song giving you an idea of the horrors that await you. Not only this, but instead of the game’s workout mode being hidden away in a sub menu now you just press X to enter sweat mode. Once Sweat mode has been activated the game replaces the difficulty icon with one showing the intensity of the workout, you’ll also get indicators showing how long you’ve spent dancing to said song and how many calories you’ve burned doing so. This is all very helpful to those of us who may be piling on some unwanted excess weight and actually want to do something about it.

The game now has challenges that you can complete to earn coins which in turn go into a Gacha machine for the chance to earn bits and bobs for your dancer card. The problem is that straight from the off these challenges ask you to do things through the Just Dance Unlimited subscription, which even though you get a month’s free trial to begin with it still feels a bit shitty.

That’s right though, Just Dance Unlimited is back, offering you all the feeling of a growing platform of music to dance to while only really allowing you to play what has gone before. All Unlimited songs now have a great big icon on them stating that they’re for Unlimited subscribers only, and with the new UI all the old songs aren’t segregated into their respective game’s segments. Granted you can use the game’s search function to look for songs, but unless you specifically know the song’s title or artist you’re going to be on to a loser trying to find it in a lengthy song list. You can’t filter by title and there’s no sub menus per section.Oh, did I also mention that the search UI is based on the old PS Store letter ribbon Sony recently ditched? Good times.

Then there’s the usual dancewalls that the Just Dance development team are so fond of. Locking features away until you’ve danced the required amount of songs to get them. I still can’t get my head around why this is necessary, especially when features like the playlists (themed songs for special holiday events or ones recommended to your tastes) are pretty cool, even if the majority of the tracks are once again locked behind that darned Unlimited paywall.

I say this in every Just Dance Review now, but, I guess what really bothers me about the Unlimited thing is that it seems like Ubisoft are dabbling with the idea of a subscriber based platform. It’s a sound idea, and would really help people who love to play these games be it for parties, fitness or general enjoyment, and here it presents that case even further.

I’m not going to say that the music here is bad, but once you’ve jigged away to Liam Payne’s Familiar, or bounded around to Elton John’s I’m Still Standing you’ll find very few songs worth dancing to and songs like Mi Mi Mi or Milosc W Zakopanem are good for their novelty value but won’t really warrant return visits. On a side note there’s a Pac-man song with a video featuring dancers dressed as Pac-man and the ghosts, I couldn’t bring myself to dance to this and decided to feel ever so sorry for those dancers instead.

That’s my biggest problem with Just Dance 2019, the track list just feels so devoid of much genuine quality and when you delve into the Unlimited free trial you really see it. Whether this means I’m some sort of music hating muppet who doesn’t understand what ‘the kids’ are into these days I don’t really care, I know a song I like to groove to when I hear it, and I just didn’t feel that here.

If you really like to dance then the Just Dance games are your only real outlet these days barring going to a nightclub, getting drunk and dancing with people you fancy. I guess in the grand scheme of things Just Dance is a cheaper alternative to having a life, and comes with a fitness segment to boot. I just don’t feel that outside of the hit and miss elements of the UI redesign that Just Dance 2019 does enough to justify a new purchase after 2018, you’re probably better off getting a temporary Unlimited subscription instead.

The post Just Dance 2019 review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

I’ve owned the PS4 version of this for a while now (one of my son’s Christmas presents) and I can say that the Switch version is aesthetically identical in every way. Every feature is here aside from the camera recording that uploads to Just Dance TV; this itself is a shame as the scrappily cut videos were always a source of unintended hilarity when you’re dripping sweat gasping for breath, but, other than that it’s the same experience as you’ll get on any other console, even to the point where if you’ve run out of Joy-Cons you can use the Just Dance app to tether your phone to it and use that as a controller.

As I’ve stated before, I’m not the best dancer, so it’s hard to tell if the game picks up my controller movements adequately enough, all things told though very few beats were missed, and my ratio of ‘Good’ to ‘Perfects’ was decent enough for me to pick up at least three stars on every track (with one five star rating, but we won’t go into that); so, it’s safe to say that how the game picks up Joy-Con movement in 3D space is good enough. All things told, despite how knackered it made me the game is pretty fun and it really brings out your competitive side when you realise your star rating is sliding under that of your seven-year-old son.

The tracklist comes in at a respectable 40 songs, with a considerable range in quality – thankfully there’s no Drum ‘n’ Bass, Garage or Dubstep, but there’s plenty of cheesy pop for you to get your teeth into. You can gyrate to Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’, go silly with PSY’s ‘Daddy’, slow it down with Maroon 5’s ‘Don’t Wanna Know’, Whip it to Silentó’s ‘Watch me’ or go completely mental with Miku’s ‘PoPiPo’ although why you’d want to take on this ludicrous challenge is beyond me, even if you do want to see some poor Miku cosplay in action.

There’s also another 200 songs through the game’s premium service Just Dance Unlimited, for which you’ll have to pay a subscription for. You’ll find costs ranging from £3.29 for 24hrs up to £25 for a full year, and on your first use of the game you get 90 days of access to Unlimited for free, so you can try it out and see if it appeals to you before you start paying out.

This sub-service is fair enough; I mean games like this and Singstar should be platforms rather than singular games, but it does highlight that 40 tracks for £42 (lower on other consoles) isn’t really good value. You can go down to HMV and buy Now That’s What I call Music for £12, get more songs and dance away to your heart’s content without anyone judging you. Also kept being this pay-wall are the game’s mashup feature which allows you to select songs to put together in a ‘mash-up’ just to give you more of a challenge and even more gutting is the gate-keeping of a selection of kids songs; it just feels unfair to keep that away from you unless you pay more money.

The game’s topped off with a mode for using the songs as a workout routine, which is good for people who like to use dance as a means of keeping fit. The amount I was sweating from regular dancing was bad enough for me, and I wasn’t brave enough to take this on lest I not be alive to write this review. Sorry, but sacrifices must be made somewhere.

If you’ve played Just Dance before you’ll know what to expect from the 2017 installment; a bunch of new songs to gyrate your body to and make yourself look like a fool at parties, now you can take it with you and create dance parties wherever you like – what could be better? The gate-keeping of features behind the Unlimited service sticks in the craw a bit, but what Ubisoft needs to do now is stop making Just Dance games and focus more on making Unlimited a value proposition for people to get behind. But otherwise this is an enjoyable, tiring time and the way my back feels right now can attest to that.

The post Just Dance 2017 Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

One of the few things that really works in Rodea the Sky Soldier is the story. The sky kingdom of Garuda is being invaded by the Naga Emperor Geardo and Rodea, a machine soldier, stops him. This is where the prologue ends. A thousand years later, an inventor named Ion discovers Rodea, who wakes up and tries to catch up with current times. As expected, Naga forces come back, and you traverse through stages defeating enemies and collecting various things to help you on your journey to fulfil your promise of protecting Garuda.

Rodea starts off with one of the worst openings I’ve ever had the misfortune of experiencing. The prologue area looks hideous, and this is where the controls are explained. Imagine playing a point and click adventure mixed with what is seemingly meant to be a fast-paced game with only the buttons available on the old 3DS systems. It just doesn’t work as it should. Rodea has to fly from one island to another to reach his goal. This becomes very annoying thanks to the circle pad targeting system and the flight system that requires pressing A to propel you towards a target. Pressing L and R to rotate the camera by 90 degrees is all the control you have over that and this makes everything less fun overall. I would have enjoyed Rodea the Sky Soldier a lot more had there been proper Circle Pad Pro or C-stick support for free camera movement because many situations involve you being stuck in awkward positions made worse thanks to the horrible camera.

Once the prologue ends and you have some backstory, everything feels slightly better with brighter visuals, good music, and proper explanations of objectives. I had the prologue bug out on me twice and it feels so poorly designed that I couldn’t even tell what I was doing wrong initially. Every few stages of Rodea the Sky Soldier, you’ll face a Shadow of the Colossus-style boss fight. These fights are interesting, albeit a little annoying thanks to the camera again. There’s a lot of replayability thanks to lots of collectibles and some hidden areas, and you’re awarded a rank for each stage.

Voice acting in Rodea the Sky Soldier is a pleasant surprise: there is a lot of spoken dialogue and you have the option to use Japanese or English for voices. This is decided when you start a new game and can’t be changed later. I also really enjoyed the catchy, memorable soundtrack after the prologue ended.

I played on a New 3DS XL and the performance was poor. I noticed the frame rate drop in various areas and when you consider the bland visuals, that’s really disappointing. Rodea the Sky Soldier on 3DS is a poor version of what looks like an otherwise fun game on the Wii. If it had a better camera and controlled well, I would recommend it to everyone, but as it is, it just isn’t worth playing for the sake of a few interesting boss fights, a decent story, and a good soundtrack.

The post Rodea the Sky Soldier Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

With the addition of World Dance Floor last year, which provides the option for solo players to still compete against others, despite there being no physical adversary present, what started as very much a party game for groups of players has developed into something that can be played socially even when you are by yourself. Just Dance 2015 tries to add some more layers to this experience, with virtual dance crews, themed challenges and more community options than before. The Xbox One version also adds the ability to track six players movements at once too, so even more players can join the party – although you would need a very large room to dance in!

One of the main new modes, Challenger mode, is available across most dance modes, whereby even if no-one else is online you can dance-off against saved high scores and performances from other players around the world. This does add an element of competition to even practice dances – which certainly makes proceedings a little more exciting, and gives you a target to aim for, without going up against live opponents. Of course, through World Dance Floor you can dance live versus other players too, but having the option to add challengers to other modes is a nice modifier that can change a simple one-off dance into a score challenge.

All of the other usual modes make a return, with Karaoke mode rewarding you with bonus points for correctly singing along whilst dancing (which is frankly a bit distracting when you are trying to concentrate on the dance moves), the option to dance as back-up to the main player rather than performing the full lead dance, and Sweat Mode, a simple toggle that will track your calorie usage across pre-set or customised playlists, but sadly doesn’t offer any different workout other than the regular songs. Autodance videos have been more closely integrated to all modes now though, with your short, automatically-cut highlight reels now being very easy to upload and share after every dance. This feeds into Community Remixes of songs, whereby the development team will pick their favourite videos of the week to cut into a playable version of a particular song.

“Just Dance 2015
tries to add
some more layers”

These are all good one-off modes, but Just Dance still lacks any sort of campaign or career mode to keep you returning again and again. Of course, World Dance Floor is supposed to fill that gap – with global leaderboards to follow, the Just Dance Wall to track and share your stats and achievements and themed challenges to take part in such as girls versus boys or country-specific teams. Perhaps because there is no campaign to play through, there is also no sort of tutorial or practice mode whereby you could actually learn the ropes and hone your skills.

This ties in closely with my main criticism of Just Dance 2015. Despite the jump to next-generation consoles – what with their more advanced motion control devices and greater power – the actual mechanics seem to have made no real steps forward. The movement detection still seems quite loose and forgiving, which, whilst suitable for a part game where you want players of all skills to join in, doesn’t offer a very accurate reflection of the moves you’re performing either correctly or incorrectly. But more frustrating than that, the in-game presentation is simply still a pre-rendered character who performs their dance for you to follow, with no feedback on what you are getting right or wrong.

For instance, the Dance Central series from Harmonix will highlight the limbs of the on-screen dancer that you aren’t performing correctly, so that you can adjust your movements and improve accordingly. It also offers in-depth tutorial and practice modes, allowing you to practice songs and breaking down more difficult sections of dancing so that you can master them more easily. In Just Dance there is simply no feedback other than “good”, “bad” and so on. The flash cards telling you what dance move is coming next are also a little too simple and unclear, meaning that often the move that actually comes next bears little resemblance to what you imagined it would be. Of course, you can learn these through repeat playthroughs, but it does make following the dance routine very confusing.

Just Dance 2015 remains a party game at its heart. New additions and expansions to the formula try to make the title more enjoyable as a solo pursuit too, and to create a more competitive atmosphere, but the lack of any solid career to progress through, no training mode to practice in, and the reliance on simplified dance mechanics simply confirms the casual nature of the game. By now I would have hoped for some sort of development and evolution in what Ubisoft are offering.

Of course, many fans of the series will be perfectly happy with this, as Just Dance 2015 delivers more of the core gameplay that they have come to know and love. As a party title Just Dance still provides quick access fun – which is no longer limited to those playing with a group of friends – but the improvements year on year don’t necessarily justify an automatic upgrade, when the release of an add-on song pack at a lower price may have proved just as popular. This dancer has still got the moves, but could do with learning a few new routines.

The post Just Dance 2015 Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.