THE ULTIMATE PARTY GAME RETURNS WITH JUST DANCE 2019
Celebrate every moment with 40 new hot tracks and 400+ more in Just Dance® Unlimited
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – June 13, 2018 – Ubisoft® has announced that Just Dance® 2019, the newest installment of the #1 Music Videogame Franchise Of All Time*, will be available October 25 in Australia and New Zealand on most gaming platforms, including Nintendo Switch™, Wii U™, Wii™, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system. Ubisoft also announced that the Just Dance® World Cup will return with its 5th annual competition, this time heading to Brazil for the Grand Finals in early 2019.
Just Dance 2019 brings the party to players with 40 new songs ranging from chart-toppers like “Finesse (Remix)” by Bruno Mars ft. Cardi B and k-pop classic “Bang Bang Bang” by BIGBANG. Plus, keep the party going with one-month access to over 400 more songs through Just Dance® Unlimited, the dance-on-demand streaming service, included with every copy of Just Dance 2019**! New for this year, Just Dance partnered with creative experts from around the world, like French street artist Chanoir and Spanish stop-motion studio Clay Animation to creating stunning universes for the game. More partnerships are to be announced alongside new songs soon!
The first songs revealed at E3 include:
- Finesse (Remix) – Bruno Mars Ft. Cardi B
- Bum Bum Tam Tam – MC Fioti, Future, J Balvin, Stefflon Don, Juan Magan
- Bang Bang Bang – BIGBANG
- Mad Love – Sean Paul, David Guetta Ft. Becky G
- Shaky Shaky – Daddy Yankee
- Dame Tu Cosita – El Chombo ft. Cutty Ranks
- OMG – Arash Ft. Snoop Dogg
- Mi Mi Mi – Hit The Electro Beat
- Mama Mia – Mayra Verónica
- Narco – Blasterjaxx & Timmy Trumpet
- Fire – LLP Ft. Mike Diamondz
- … and many more to come!
Just Dance 2019’s new interface algorithm learns players’ dancing preferences and habits and curates pre-made playlists and song suggestions, making the Just Dance experience more intuitive and personalised than ever before. Players can also stay up-to-date on community news and Just Dance Unlimited events all year long with the dynamic new home screen. Fan-favourite modes also make their return, such as World Dance Floor (available on all current gen platforms), bringing more online multiplayer challenges to its 120 million players worldwide, the calorie-tracking Sweat Mode, and the Kids Mode, bringing eight new choreographies developed alongside childhood development experts.
Available on PS4 and Xbox One, the Just Dance Controller App makes the game more accessible for current-gen owners with its phone scoring technology that allows players to dance without any additional accessories like cameras, available for free on iOS and Android.
The Just Dance World Cup is also back, with the Grand Finals happening in Brazil in early 2019. Online qualifiers will be live in the Just Dance 2018 edition of the game from July 20th to August 26th on Nintendo Switch™, Wii U™, Xbox One, and PlayStation®4 and will be followed by national offline qualifiers in select countries. The list of the offline qualifier events and details on the Grand Finals will be unveiled soon on JustDanceWorldCup.com. The competition will be fierce once again as dancers compete to get one of the 18 coveted finalist slots in Brazil, and defeat the two-time World Champion, 18-year old Umutcan Tütüncü from Turkey.
For the latest information on Just Dance 2019, the Just Dance Controller app, or Just Dance Unlimited, please visit: www.justdancegame.com. Follow Just Dance on Twitter @JustDanceGame and use hashtag #JustDance2019.
* Source: NPD, GfK & GSD – August 2017
** Available on Wii U, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch
About Just Dance Controller App
The free Just Dance Controller App enables players to use their smartphone to play the game without any peripherals or added console cameras. The app transforms the player’s smartphone into a motion sensor that tracks the accuracy of their moves and allows them to navigate through the game.
About Ubisoft
Ubisoft is a leading creator, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and services, with a rich portfolio of world-renowned brands, including Assassin’s Creed, Just Dance, Tom Clancy’s video game series, Rayman, Far Cry and Watch Dogs. The teams throughout Ubisoft’s worldwide network of studios and business offices are committed to delivering original and memorable gaming experiences across all popular platforms, including consoles, mobile phones, tablets and PCs. For the 2017-18 fiscal year Ubisoft generated sales of €1,732 million. To learn more, please visit www.ubisoft.com.
You see, androids have begun turning “deviant” and turning against their programming and players are first introduced to this concept through Connor, a prototype detective android designed by CyberLife to track down these deviant androids. Alongside Connor we see the struggle of the androids through the eyes of Kara, a housekeeping android who is abused by her owner, a drug-using single father, and Markus who happens to be a caretaker android that assists an elderly famous artist with his day to day life.
Moving on from that we have the third lead, Connor who ends up being the most moldable of the three protagonists. Designed to track down deviant androids Connor follows his orders to the letter with players initially not even having options regarding some of the early instances in the game. That changes overtime however as his interactions with his human partner, Lieutenant Hank Anderson, and the player’s own choices can lead to him growing more human throughout the story. That being said, with his core directive being to track down deviants he will often be at odds when it comes to Marcus and Kara, with a few scenes quickly shifting control between two characters during some events.
Player choice plays a large role in how events will play out and even unlock various routes depending on how certain variables are met. As you play the game not only will each character either raise or lower the “affection” of side characters in the story but they can also change the public’s view on androids as a whole. Alongside these factors come new dialogue options or branches that can only be unlocked if you have seen or committed certain acts in previous chapters.
It is also worth noting that although some worldbuilding is directly handled through televisions and side conversations with characters, there is a wealth of extra information in magazines that are scattered throughout the world. Often these little collectibles tend to simply be bonuses in games but in Detroit: Become Human they can offer extremely interesting information about how the world actually came to be in its current state adding a large amount of depth to the world itself, especially when your own actions start to make headlines.
Talking with characters is done through a series of face button prompts that are occasionally timed and depending on what you say you may gain or lose reputation with characters around you and the public perception of androids as a whole. These dialogue options range from being simple to being incredibly important and some of these may not even be hinted as being as important as they are until later in the story. This means that you will always need to be careful of what you say if you want to keep your storyline moving smoothly without it taking a drastic turn.
It is interesting to note that the game does display a flowchart of events that occur during your time in any given chapter. These will show various things that you may have examined and how your own actions or dialogue choices have sent you down branching paths. Sometimes these branches will usually merge together at the end but it is incredibly interesting to see just how diverse a chapter can be played and what you may have not unlocked, especially when you see just how many ways a chapter might have ended. Players can even compare their choices with percentages of the player base, something that ends up being quite intriguing to see at the end of every chapter.
Again outside of certain side characters that appear to mostly fill in cliche roles and oddly enough the young child ward Alice who is voiced pretty terribly even for a child actress, the voice acting in this game is impeccable. Marcus, Kara, and Connor are all handled incredibly well with their voice actors fitting their personalities perfectly for these scenes. In fact, a wide range of the main side-characters who accompany these characters tend to be voiced quite well as well, really pulling players into the experience. That being said, thanks to numerous hamfisted dialogue elements and certain visuals being as subtle as a sledgehammer, be prepared for some incredibly poorly handled segments that focus on the most obvious themes on portrayal here.
All is not lost however as a capable soldier and a experienced doctor have stayed behind and are more than willing to help out your pair. This is a bigger boon than one may initially think as your partner quickly is infected with the brand new “blood plague” that is always fatal, only this doctor has managed to learn a way to cure the disease. Joining with this pair, your small group of survivors finds themselves on the road with three choices of locales and a hope for survival.
Unfortunately these character missions can glitch rather frequently, either not triggering when swapping to that character, vanishing randomly with plenty of time left to complete said mission, and often occur at inappropriate times, occasionally locking players to a character that is either incredibly tired, injured, or even sick unless they opt out of the mission entirely to swap to a fresh character from their group of survivors.
This means that most of your time in the game players will need to be on the move with a number of improvements made to the scavenging systems. If you aren’t playing with others in the game’s new co-op system that allows up to four players to play on a game at the same time, you can now ask a fellow member of your survivors to travel with you while scavenging the world, allowing players to carry twice as many resources (by swapping to that character when your previous one has filled up) and have an AI companion watching their back while looting or taking down a small group of zombies.
It is worth noting that while the risk of permanent death for members of your group is always a possibility, the actual threat of such an instance tends to be rather low unless you end up coming across a special zombie such as a Juggernaut, Feral, or forget what a Bloater does and happen to run into it with your car while being unprepared or take on a plague heart destruction. Wounded survivors can heal over time in an infirmary and even those that contract the blood plague can be cured if you have enough resources. In fact, unless you find yourself woefully undersupplied, your base can even defend itself against higher level hoard threats drawn in by noise caused by large groups of survivors, various facilities or modifications made to facilities, and other factors.
It is unfortunate however that despite how great combat can feel and the improved nature of scavenging for resources that the game does suffer a surprisingly large number of bugs. Even with the most recent patch for the game, a shockingly large number of issues will come into play even during a single gameplay session. Whether it is as simple, albeit annoying, as having your UI flicker constantly or miss entire words in descriptions to bothersome with environment objects spawning too late, causing a vehicular crash, to disastrous as your character and partner completely ignore a ladder they were meant to climb down and cripple both of them. These issues come into play far too often and are still a problem with the game as of the time of this writing and can quickly become annoying when various other bugs rear their heads to add to the frustration.
The game has an overall eerie feeling to the world with the way that the soundtrack and voice work has been handled. The quiet nature of the environment ruined by screams or groans of the undead makes for a great feeling of dread. The voice work is decent enough for the randomly generated characters though the best voice actors happen to come in the form of a friendly voice on the radio reporting on the state of the world and a familiar voice that fans of the first game will remember.