Finding time to play video games at home can often turn into a negotiation, especially with kids around. Lately, my living room has been dominated by Just Dance 2025 on our PlayStation, a source of endless fun for my children, but limited playtime for me. To carve out some personal dance time, I’ve been secretly exploring Just Dance VR on the Meta Quest 3, keeping its existence under wraps to avoid sharing. This VR iteration offers a distinct Just Dance experience, built with a completely new infrastructure for player interaction, both with the dances and with each other.
Just Dance VR successfully translates the familiar Just Dance formula into virtual reality, but it goes further by creating a novel ecosystem for dancers. Whether you prefer dancing in private within a virtual apartment or socializing with others, the game caters to both preferences. For those seeking community, Ubisoft has crafted an engaging social hub called Dancity. It’s worth noting that live chat is confined to your personal apartment space, preventing unwanted interactions in the public Dancity area, although expressive avatars still allow for non-verbal communication.
Before stepping into Dancity, players customize a Just Dance avatar using a comprehensive character creator, offering a range of styles beyond the typical blue-faced figures. Once your avatar is ready, Dancity becomes your social stage, filled with brightly lit billboards advertising the game’s 25 available tracks. Each song features online leaderboards, facilitating matchmaking with other dancers for real-time competitions. The visual style is unmistakably Just Dance, bathed in purple neon and energetic vibes. The hub also provides quick access to daily and weekly song challenges, encouraging leaderboard participation. Achieving the top daily score even rewards you with a grand display of your game card within the hub.
Just Dance VR incorporates a substantial progression system with 300 levels. Advancing through these levels unlocks a stream of customization items for avatars, game cards, and emojis. Early gameplay is particularly rewarding, with frequent bursts of trophies and digital goodies appearing after completing songs. These rewards include interactive toys for the virtual space, new avatar clothing options, and fresh ways to engage with Dancity. The sheer volume of unlockables can be overwhelming, making it worthwhile to regularly check your inventory to appreciate your latest acquisitions.
Navigating menus and customizations is managed through an in-game disco ball companion, accessible with a button press. While initially a bit awkward to use, the disco ball interface becomes manageable with practice. I encountered minor control quirks, such as issues with registering selections and an inability to set left-handedness, but these are likely to be addressed in early updates.
A significant enhancement in Just Dance VR is the introduction of two-hand dance tracking, made possible by VR controllers. This feature profoundly changes gameplay, most notably by making scoring considerably more lenient. With both hands tracked, achieving five-star scores on almost every song on the first attempt became commonplace, a stark contrast to the console versions where it typically requires multiple tries. While the exact scoring mechanics remain unclear, Just Dance VR definitely offers a more forgiving and accessible experience than its traditional counterparts.
However, seasoned Just Dance players might notice something familiar, or rather, too familiar. Despite the VR setting and two-hand tracking, the in-game dancers still sport the iconic single glove, a visual cue from the phone-based games to indicate the tracking hand. And yes, many of the songs might trigger déjà vu. Unfortunately, a major drawback of Just Dance VR is its reliance on recycled content. The game reuses songs and dances from past Just Dance titles, including Just Dance 2014, 2015, and 2017. These aren’t just inspired by older hits; they are the exact same dances and visuals, now rendered in 3D. While there are some newer tracks like Blackpink’s “How You Like That” from Just Dance 2024, the core song list largely consists of “greatest hits” from nearly a decade ago, lacking original songs created specifically for VR.
Adding to the sense of nostalgia, Just Dance VR also omits the wonderfully bizarre and unexpected tracks that often feature in the main series, meaning no “Danger! Danger! High Voltage!” this time. In recent years, Just Dance Games have evolved to offer stunning visual spectacles alongside creative choreography, moving away from costumed dancers and kaleidoscope effects towards fully realized 3D environments and thematic special effects. Just Dance VR largely reverts to the visual style of older games, focusing on familiar elements. Kind critics might call it a “greatest hits” compilation, while less forgiving ones might label it “reheated leftovers.” Perhaps “enhanced remaster” is a more balanced description.
Yet, in VR, many of these performances gain a new level of impressiveness. “Bad Liar” and the humorous moose-themed “Hollaback Girl” are particular standouts. There isn’t a truly bad song in the selection, and the 3D reimagining of the visuals is often striking. The environments swirl around the player immersively, and Dancity itself is visually rich, pulsing with energy and hidden details.
Just Dance VR performs admirably on multiple fronts: it looks great, sounds great, and plays smoothly. It’s polished, mostly bug-free, and very user-friendly. The effort invested in building the game’s infrastructure and features is evident. However, beneath the impressive exterior and plentiful features, the core content of Just Dance VR sometimes feels like recycled material from a decade past.
Despite the age of the song selection, Just Dance VR remains an enjoyable and engaging experience. It successfully brings the fun of just dance games into virtual reality. However, one can’t help but wonder about the untapped potential of a Just Dance VR game built from the ground up with fresh content and taking full advantage of Ubisoft’s creative resources. Just Dance VR is undoubtedly neat, but it had the potential to be truly revolutionary within the realm of just dance games.
