Most music-based, rhythm games, while sporting hulking peripherals on the consoles, boil down to simple button presses and swipes on the phone. So the idea of playing Just Dance, a game that uses your body as the controller, on your phone might be strange to some. Ubisoft does this surprisingly well, and uses the app as a controller for the browser version of the game.
Browser version? I know, I know, but stay with me. You install the game, and it will instruct you to go to justdancenow.com to pair the mobile app with the web service. You don’t need any sort of special hardware apart from your phone. You’ll join a “room” for the actual dancing, with just you or any number of fellow dancers at your location, each with their own phone or tablet and the Just Dance Now Android app installed. You don’t even need to be on the same network. From there, you select a game, select your dancer, and begin playing.
The actual gameplay is identical to its console brethren. You dance to various pop songs, trying to follow along with your dancers moves and trying not to embarrass yourself too badly. It’s not as sensitive as, say, the Kinect or even the Wiimote, but it does a decent job at tracking your moves.
Just Dance Now is free with subscription-based IAPs. You can buy a VIP pass for the app and the service, for as little as $1.27 for an hour or $63.92 for a year. The upgraded app lets you pick from 49 pop dance songs and skip the advertising. It seems like something that could be fun for a party, if you don’t have a console version lying around.
