Gaming Age


Just Dance

Author: Aaron Vaughn
Publisher: Ubisoft
Machine: Nintendo Wii (US Version)

Just Dance

A world run by the creatively bankrupt and crippled talent vomits out the next generation of dance titles.

This is awful. The following is my review of Just Dance for the Nintendo Wii. It began as my pre-review rant that I normally write for games that blow this hard, but this time I couldn't help myself. This isn't for Edge or EGM magazine and even then I'd probably submit it for review, because that's what Ubisoft did when they sent Just Dance out to publishing; they sent a turd to print and charged $40 for it. Every now and then, an editor of entertainment journalism is sent to critique or review a piece of crap that is so insufferable that it sends their best hand for a gun or bottle of whiskey. Just Dance is such an insult to the video game industry that it does both at once. In fact, the most confusing time of it all was thirteen songs into the game, when the title screen started to ooze blood from between the pixels on my television screen and my mother's maiden name was ripened from the ceiling in a spine-tingling scream that caused me to black out and wake up outside a local elementary school in the snow wearing only my sweatpants and a burn mark on the back of my neck that looked like the Ubisoft logo. I apparently went on a real bender in trying to turn off the Wii or ended up fighting to save my soul for a good four blackened hours.

And they call this a family game. The lesson should be to teach your children the value of money, not how easy it is to let it coerce you into swinging your arms around at a television screen to teenie bopper hits for hours at a time. I swear to god that the next time some game company pulls some bullsh

Just Dance

Eventually I started taking notes. Skipping through the ones that urged me to burn animals alive, it looks like the game is completely unplayable. Maybe its goal is an exercise in "idiot shopping" to show how little reviews mean. For instance, this review is not going to stop people from buying this game at full price, and it's certainly not going to change anyone's mind about paying five dollars less for my used copy on eBay. Maybe it's a proof of how much we loved "Who Let The Dogs Out" for .02 seconds. Just like the proof on the bottle in my liquor cabinet, it means nothing when you're given enough of it.

As in the game, when I say controls like crap, it controls like if you pooped in your hand and tried to play tennis with that instead of a racket. But at least it's just as awful to look at while you're doing that.

So why do we torture ourselves with this ? Other reviews focus on the price of the game as a slap in the face. None of us paid for it. Nobody paid $40 to write a review for Just Dance except for the mom who put her thoughts on YouTube, let's get that straight. So why are we still that offended? Because it took or time? Time is priceless after all. But I don't reel like I need to attend an abusive relationship session when I spend hundreds of hours playing Peggle, that could really be put more creative and challenging tasks like looking for a job or getting back to my lawyer. I don't know whose kid it is anyway. One thing's for sure, he's great at "Pump up the Jam" on the full song mode.

Just Dance

I'd Love Just Dance if it didn't make me feel like I was on full retard mode as soon as I hit the menu screen. If a game was ever a cash-in it was this. And on top of that I'm no better for putting it back into the garbage pile circulatory system of mainstream media when I offer it up to the used market, so is there really anyone to blame but ourselves? Is this why I'm giving up video games? Is this the sound when doves cry? No, this is the sound doves make when you jerk them down a drainpipe with fishing line around their neck. This is why the bottle of cold coffee and Nyquil mix in my refrigerator is labeled "angry medicine."

I'd call it an accomplishment to play through the entire game without creatively strangling a bystander with a cable just for watching you go through the jumps of self-depreciation that Just Dance asks of you, but then you could call Hitler's rise of power an accomplishment in its time. He really did a lot for those German people.

In fact, I owe it to Just Dance for being the first game that pushes its audience to consider suicide on an active basis, thanks to leaving three other spots open at all times on every song when playing alone-just to remind you that you are playing alone one of the worst games published and printed. Just to remind you that on New Year's Eve when the three parties you turned down for the one date you'd be on stood you up and left you alone with a bottle of angry medicine and your cat in a living room, there was Just Dance... waiting... watching... basking in its self-satisfaction and the endless hall of graves it had already dug for your self-confidence. And I beat Superman 64.

Superman 64 was a birthday party next to Just Dance.

There is nothing like psychological horror and inducing self-mutilation into another person due to how messed up you managed to get them within an hour. I hereby revoke my opinion that Just Dance has been unabashedly the worst game I have played in my recent years and announce it to be the most influential and expressionistic piece of commentary on the world's endeavors and state of human condition in the current day. Thank God we have developers as involved, as ground-breaking, as philosophically engaging as Ubisoft to be awarded the opportunity to experience the trials of Just Dance and have our eyes opened in a new way towards the state of video games in today's world. They reached for the moon and never stopped grasping their outstretched fingers at it. Not until its surface slid beneath their delicate fingernails and welcomed their effort with endless gratitude. God bless you Ubisoft Paris. God bless you all.

Aaron Vaughn

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