Just Dance 2024 Ultimate Edition from Ubisoft is the latest release in the popular rhythm series. How does it stack up to previous versions? Check our Just Dance 2024 Ultimate Edition review to find out!

Dance and share exciting moments all year long with the #1 music video game platform of all time! Just Dance 2024 Edition features 40 songs from the latest hits and beloved classics, including “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus, “Tití Me Preguntó” by Bad Bunny, “How You Like That” by BLACKPINK, and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston!

I can easily say that I’m a fan of the Just Dance franchise. Over the years, I’ve played most of the releases with my family,
including games such as Just Dance 3, back when each sequel still had a sequential number attached to it, as well as from Just Dance 2014 up to Just Dance 2019. As you can imagine, I have played enough installments to have a good idea of what to expect from this new release, so I was looking forward to checking out this year’s version, along with five other players at once, since this game supports six concurrent players!

My first surprise came as I was installing this new game as I realized that the base game shrank from the 20+GB install from the last time I played to a minuscule 500MB. Since this franchise has you watching videos as you copy the instructions for each dance move, this instantly made me realize that most of the Just Dance 2024 experience is of the streamed variety instead of having all the content on the disc.

The heart of a Just Dance game is its music and videos, and the team behind the song selection always chooses a wide array of song types to reach the greatest possible audience. There are always songs from the 1970s/1980s, then a few from the 1990s/2000s eras, and then some of the more recent hits. For example, this year, we have Flowers by Miley Cyrus, which is still a huge hit, Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo, Butter by BTS, Gimmie More by Britney Spears, and many others. The full list can be checked here: Just Dance 2024 Soundtrack. On top of that, a few songs have a more intense version that is meant for exercising, so you have a lot to look forward to.

As for the gameplay, in the Just Dance franchise, you have to mimic the moves of the selected character in the dance video shown in front of you by holding your phone in your right hand. The moves are varied, although you should have already seen most of them if you played previous entries in the franchise. If you have a sound system, you’ll want to use it because most songs have solid bass that a standard TV speaker can’t really render.

As a bonus, Just Dance 2024 includes a subscription service known as Just Dance+, which is the evolution of Just Dance Unlimited from previous entries. Purchasing the base game will give you a month of the service, while the Ultimate Edition will grant you 13 months of the service. In Just Dance+, you can access songs from previous games in the series as well as new additional songs exclusive to this service. Included in this one was the Miraculous TV show theme song that my 14-year-old daughter saw and danced to five times in a row! As of now, the list felt a little shallow, and we felt like we had gone through quickly, but this service is meant to expand during the next year.

With that being said, I had issues with this game that I needed to discuss. The first and most important one was the controller itself. The DualSense controller must be used to navigate the game’s menus and select a song, but once a song is selected, the DualSense becomes incompatible with the game. You are required to install the Just Dance 2023 controller (JD2023 controller is compatible with JD2024) cellphone app (Android and Apple versions are available at their respective online stores).

On the first day, I started to play the game for this Just Dance 2024 review and spent close to half an hour trying to connect any of the four different cell phones I had available, and nothing worked. I work in IT, so yes, every idea was tried – LAN, wi-fi, PS5 console in DMZ, you name it – with no success. This is an issue that some of you might also run into. This is something that can hopefully be fixed as the companion app is patched since it can end up frustrating users – especially when most homes have several cell phones to try. This was an issue at first, but it’s something that Ubisoft has now patched and the companion app works as intended.

I mentioned that the Just Dance base game had shrunk from 20+ GB for previous releases to a mere 500MB in this one, meaning that the content is now fully streamed from Ubisoft’s servers. The idea in itself is not new, as it was already seen in the Just Dance Unlimited content that was accessible for previous releases. As you select a song, the game begins downloading the video in the background, and the few seconds you have to wait is noticeable. Moreover, there’s a chance that the video will begin with poor rendering quality for the first 30 seconds or so until the stream catches up and the quality increases.

Not very often, but about once per gaming session when I was testing this game, I also reached the end of the downloaded video buffer, and a spinner showed up in the middle of the screen, telling me that I’d have to wait until the download had caught up to resume dancing. This is unfortunate and felt odd. And yes, I have a very fast internet connection (500+ Mbps) – and my PlayStation 5 console is on a wired connection (LAN) directly to my router.

You can download up to 40 individual dances to your local PlayStation 5 storage, which is a good option for when you’re having a party… except for when your guests might want to try a different song. The Just Dance servers are definitely being hit since downloading a single song could sometimes take 3-4 minutes, which shouldn’t happen when the full game took a minute to download and install to my PlayStation 5, thanks to my fast internet connection. This is why you’ll end up playing through the streamed version of many of the songs available to you. If you do not have a solid internet connection at home and you open the game, the available dances list will be empty. If you did download some songs to your local storage, those will be available when offline.

I’ve been a fan of the Just Dance series since its early games, and I still enjoy breaking out previous games in the series and dancing with my family and friends. Just Dance 2024 brings us a solid list of songs that will make it easy for you to find at least a dozen or so that will be kept in heavy rotation. My experience was, unfortunately, held back by a few technical issues at first since the companion app didn’t work as intended and had connectivity issues, but the good news is that this has now been patched. Every day, we’re transitioning to a more digital world, and that’s now the case for Just Dance. I’m sure a lot of people will end up getting this game under their Christmas tree! Just Dance 2024 is out on PlayStation 5 with a $59.99 asking price. The Just Dance 2024 Ultimate Edition, which includes 13 months of access to Just Dance+, is available at an $84.99 price tag.

Disclaimer
This Just Dance 2024 Ultimate Edition review is based on a PlayStation copy provided by Ubisoft.