If you’ve been using your Wii for exercise, one of the things you find is that you go through a lot of batteries. Just a few workouts swinging the Wii remote or stepping on the Balance Board will run your batteries dry very quickly.
Not only is it bad for the environment to be tossing all those Duracells and Energizers away every couple of weeks, it’s not all that great for your wallet either.
Personally, I haven’t bought an alkaline battery in the store for years. Instead, I got these Eneloops by Sanyo. If you’ve been disappointed by rechargeable batteries in the past, whether because they don’t last long or because they completely die very quickly, it’s time to give rechargeables a second look.
These batteries are different for a couple reasons. First, when you buy them they already come fully charged, just like regular batteries. Just pop them into your Wii and you’re good to go for as many hours as you could expect with regular batteries.
The magic happens when they run out. You just pop them into a recharger, and in a few hours you’ve got a brand new set. For me, I’ve charged and recharged my Eneloops so many times I’ve lost count, and yet they still keep a full charge. I actually keep two sets for each Wiimote, one to use in the Wiimote, and the other fully charged so I can swap them out. They say you can charge them up to 1500 times (3 years) before they start losing a charge–multiply that by the price you pay for batteries and you’ll realize how much money you’ll save. They even use arrays of solar panels to charge the batteries to full capacity at the factory before they ship–talk about being green!
The performance is actually superior to alkaline batteries and standard NiMH batteries.
When I first heard about Dance Sensation by Majesco, I was looking forward to trying it out. They claimed that you could “Learn 4 different dance styles…each with a progressively complex set of over 40 real steps”. So when I read that, I figured this would a game where one could actually learn and perform real dance steps. Sort of like Just Dance, but where you’d learn real hip-hop, jazz, ballet, and Latin dance moves.
Unfortunately, after I got the game, I found quickly that it fell far short of those expectations.
Like many rhythm games before it (Dancing with the Stars, High School Musical, etc.), the game doesn’t involve real dancing at all. Instead, you just swing your arms to match on-screen cues.
Each dance move corresponds to a specific combination of Wii remote and nunchuk movement. For example, when performing ballet routines, you “perform” a “pique arabesque” by twirling your Wii remote in a counterclockwise circle. To “perform” a “grand pas de chat” you move your remove in a downward semicircle. As you progress to “intermediate” and “advanced” steps, you start to use the nunchuk as well.
If you match the required movement correctly, your on-screen character performs the “real” dance move. The on-screen animation of the actual move is accurate and the name of the dance step will be displayed and called out. By tying different dance moves together, you can make your character dance a complete routine.
The problem, of course, is that you’re not really dancing nor even learning the steps. At the very least, it would have been nice to have a step-by-step tutorial for each step that the on-screen character performs. But the character moves so fast and the steps are so complex that you don’t really have a chance to examine the real moves, much less to “learn” them.
The game is definitely geared towards young girls, with the usual trappings of typical Wii games. All the on-screen characters are girls whom you can name, dress in different outfits, and change hairstyles for. As you progress through the game, you can unlock different locations, medals, costumes, and hairstyles. And of course, there’s the high-pitched, overly effusive “Great! Way to go!!” positive reinforcement every step along the way.
All in all, I’d say that a few years ago this would have been a great game. In fact, on a positive side, the use of the MotionPlus controller gives it a level of accuracy that previous rhythm games didn’t have. But of course, with the advent of Just Dance and the influx of games coming in the next few months that tout “real dance moves” such as Gold’s Gym Dance Workout and the new Dance Dance Revolution, a game like this seems outdated and passé.
If you have a young girl in the house who’s taking dance and would appreciate having the reinforcement of learning different dance moves (by seeing, if not doing), I’d say this would be a good title for you. But if the goal of you or your child is to actually dance those moves, chances are you’ll be disappointed.
Just Dance was a revolution in dancing games. Before it, most dance games just consisted of moving your hands or stomping your feet to an on-screen cue. Just Dance was the first game to incorporate real dance moves to choreographed steps.
Dance on Broadway plays pretty much the same as Just Dance. It retains most of its features, both positive and negative.
You follow one of four silhouetted on-screen characters, mirroring their moves as they dance.
There are also icons that scroll across the bottom of the screen that tell you what moves are coming up (basically, what “pose” you should be hitting when the icon hits the arrow). Honestly, I didn’t find this as useful as simply mimicking the on-screen characters themseves, but I’m guessing over time once you memorize what the icons mean it’ll help you perfect your performance.
Up to four players can play at the same time. Like Just Dance, this makes for a ton of fun with friends or family.
Each player holds one Wii remote. No nunchuk, no second remote, no MotionPlus is used. This is good in that it simplifies things and there are no cables to get tangled up in. It’s not-so-good, as Dance on Broadway still suffers from a lack of precision in motion tracking.
In addition, Dance on Broadway adds a few neat enhancements that its predecessor did not have.
The casting of the four characters matches the song. For example, for “One Night Only”, there are four African American women which allows you to live out your dream of being one of the “Dreamgirls”. For “Aquarius”, there’s a nice mix of hippy guys and girls.
The choreography is more detailed. For some of the songs, each of the characters has their own individual dance steps resulting in a pretty cool and fully choreographed Broadway routine when four people are playing together.
The precision of the motion tracking is a little better than before, but still leaves a lot to be desired. Still, as before it’s so fun learning the dance steps that you don’t really care (I was thrilled with my “70%” accuracy, even though I knew it was really closer to 90%). They do give the advice to hold the remote firmly in your right hand, which I found helped.
The songs are decidedly less “intense” than the ones in Just Dance. The songs are rated by “difficulty” and “effort”, but in all honesty, even the most difficult songs were pretty simple. So it’s not as good a workout game as its predecessor, but more suited for those of us who have always dreamed of being on Broadway.
There’s the option to turn vocals off, meaning you can not only dance, but you can also sing along with the words.
Here’s a complete list of songs, the shows they’re from, and their rating of Difficult / Effort in parentheses:
All That Jazz from All That Jazz (1/2)
Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In from Hair (1/1)
Bend and Snap from Legally Blond (2/3)
Cabaret from Cabaret (3/2)
Dreamgirls from Dreamgirls (1/2)
Fame from Fame-The Musical (1/3)
Good Morning Baltimore from Hairspray (1/1)
I Just Can’t Wait to Be King from The Lion King (2/2)
Luck Be a Lady from Guys and Dolls (3/2)
Little Shop of Horrors from Little Shop of Horrors (2/3)
Lullaby of Broadway from 42nd Street (2/2)
Money, Money from Cabaret (3/3)
My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music (1/2)
One Night Only from Dreamgirls (3/3)
Roxie from Chicago (1/2)
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins (2/3)
Thoroughly Modern Millie from Thoroughly Modern Millie (3/3)
Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Show (3/3)
We’re in the Money from 42nd Street (2/3)
You Can’t Stop the Beat from Hairspray (2/2)
In short, while I gave Just Dance 5 out of 5 stars, I’ll give this one 4 out of 5 mainly because I would have liked to see Ubisoft improve the motion tracking more than they did, as well as include more cardio-intensive choreography. Still, it’s a solid title which I definitely recommend.
There are a lot of titles coming in the next few months like Ubisoft’s Gold’s Gym Dance Workout, Majesco’s Zumba for Wii, and Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution which will also focus on real dance moves. I definitely commend Ubisoft for starting this trend, and hope between these companies they can really perfect the motion controls and get the world dancing
It’s been a big week for announcements of new games for Wii fitness, most likely due to the big E3 conference out in Los Angeles (this is the big conference where video game companies show off their new stuff for the next year).
The biggest news came out of Microsoft and Sony. It took them a few years to figure out that Wii motion control is the wave of the future with video games. So they introduced two different approaches to copying the Wii.
Microsoft introduced “Kinect” (Kintec? Kinetic? Kentic? Kinnect?) for the Xbox. From the same marketing geniuses that brought you names like “Zune” and “Kin”). This is a system that uses only a camera to sense your body position and movements. It’s a bold experiment, and time will tell if Microsoft pulled it off.
Sony introduced “Playstation Move” for the PS3. This is a system that pretty much mimics the Wii–it has a “Wand” which acts like a Wii remote and a “Analog Controller” that acts like a nunchuk. It also uses a camera to interact with a bright ball of light on top of the wand.
I see this competition as a good thing for the Wii. Wii game makers have been getting decidedly lax in making great games. While games like Wii Fit and EA Sports Active pushed the genre ahead, lately all we’ve been seeing are copycat games with substandard motion controls, which the public would eat up simply because there wasn’t anything better out there. Maybe this will be a wake-up call for Wii game manufacturers and Nintendo to improve.
Perhaps not coincidentally, several game manufacturers announced upcoming Wii fitness games too, most of them arriving in the Fall in time for the holiday shopping season.
Majesco announced a while ago that they’re developing Zumba for the Wii.
Ubisoft will be coming out with Just Dance 2 and Gold’s Gym Dance Workout.
2KPlay is launching Nickelodeon Fit, a promising game targeted at young children.
I’ll keep the list of upcoming Wii fitness games updated as I hear more. But it’s looking like we should be set for another influx of games to try out.
Konami announced today that there will be a brand new version of Dance Dance Revolution for the Wii coming in the Fall of 2010 to replace their solid yet admittedly aging Dance Dance Revolution series.
The new version of DDR features a new “Choreography Mode” which will feature actual dance moves from choreographers. If this sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen this already in the wildly successful Just Dance from Ubisoft.
This is where competition can be a great thing. As fun as Just Dance is, the most frustrating thing about it is its imprecise motion tracking, and given Ubisoft’s track record with motion and exercise games, they haven’t seemed to have the expertise nor the will to improve it. Konami has always done a great job with precise motion tracking due to its dance mat controller–but after 11 years, jumping on squares is admittedly getting stale. Can they extend their technology to track real dance moves?
And so the race is on. Who will come up with the best game featuring real dance moves for Fall of 2010? And will it be one of these two companies or a dark horse who will produce the best game for the PS3 Move or the Xbox Kinect? I’ll be reviewing both games when they come out in a few months. Stay tuned!
Here’s the full press release from Konami:
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – June 15, 2010 – Konami Digital Entertainment Inc. today announced DanceDanceRevolution for Wii™. Featuring an all-new Choreography Mode, a wide variety of hit music, and enhanced multiplayer capabilities, DanceDanceRevolution makes its triumphant return to the family-friendly platform with over 11 years of dance history.
“DanceDanceRevolution is back and better than ever, combining entertaining and physically engaging gameplay with all of Nintendo Wii’s interactive capabilities,” said Shinji Hirano, President of Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. “The newest addition to the DanceDanceRevolution family will offer fans the complete DanceDanceRevolution package full of movement, fitness and fun.”
DanceDanceRevolution will have players back on the mat with the introduction of the all-new Choreograph Style mode, allowing gamers to move with the model dancer on screen utilizing their body, mat controller, Wii Remote and Nunchuk, simultaneously. Completing the traditional style Wii gameplay, DanceDanceRevolution will also bring back the use of the Wii Balance Board™, taking the dance party to the next level with both beginner and expert dancers. As an added bonus, everyone can join in on the fun with a new multiplayer mode that allows up to four players to become the ultimate dancers using their upper body to follow the on-screen dance moves.
I had high hopes for Jumpstart Get Moving Family Fitness Wii. This was the first Wii fitness title released by Knowledge Adventure, a leader in educational software. I figured with the higher price point ($29.99), maybe we’d see a fitness game of the caliber of EA Sports Active or Wii Fit rather than the shovelware that so permeates the landscape.
The game is a combination of eight different sports categories: basketball, volleyball, football, baseball, race (running, speedskating, flying, and bicycle), boxing, step aerobics, balance games (including dodgeball and “pinball”). You can play each activity individually, or you can go through circuits.
There are a few kid-friendly gimmicks. You can choose different workout locations, including Atlantis, Beach, Bug View, Castle, Egypt, Farm, Jungle, Jurassic, Ruins, Space, Volcano. But all this does is display a generic animated background–you don’t really interact with the environment.
Unfortunately, this game is a big disappointment in many other ways.
First of all, the vast majority of games are blatant copies of activities already found in EA Sports Active, Wii Sports Resort, and Wii Fit. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing in itself if they improved upon the originals. But in most cases the games here They did not–to the contrary, in most cases they took a big step backward.
Secondly, the activities really aren’t that strenuous. Given its title and its price, I would have thought this game would allow entire families to work out together. But with the exception of one or two activites, the workout really isn’t much better than any other Wii game.
Here’s my take on all the activites:
Balance Games. There are two activities under this heading. The first is Dodgeball, which is just a complete and utter ripoff of “Soccer Heading” game on Wii Fit Plus. Because it uses the Wii remote held sideways instead of a balance board, there’s really not much workout or balance benefit here. Plus, the controls are extremely inaccurate. The other is called “Pinball”, where you tilt the Wii remote to control a ball on a pinball machine. Again, not sure how this could be considered “fitness”.
Baseball. There are two activities under Baseball–fielding and batting. Both are very obvious imitations of the same activites in EA Sports Active, with much less sharp graphics and much less accurate controls. At the end of the day neither are as good as the original baseball game in Wii sports, even though that was released years ago.
Basketball. Again, there’s a passing game and a three-point shooting game. The passing game, again, looks like it was ripped from the “lunge right, lunge left” exercises in EA Sports Active. The three-point shooting game looks like a complete copy of the same game in Wii Sports Resort. I did like how they improved it to add support for the balance board so you could simulate a jump shot, though.
Boxing. This is the typical punching and ducking game that has already been done well on the Wii, most notably with games like Wii Sports and Gold’s Gym Cardio. This is another low-quality imitation. The controls are woefully sluggish–you’ll often throw punches that are not at all registered.
Football. This was the one bright spot of this game, maybe because it’s the only game which is truly original. You wave the Wii remote to throw the football short or long, and all the time you’re moving left and right with the nunchuk joystick to avoid tacklers. Again, you don’t get much of a workout and the controls can be inaccurate, but at least it’s original and fun.
Race. You can choose from Bicycling, Skating, Flying, or Running. Bicycling is a copy of the same title in Wii Sports Resort, where you alternate moving the remote and nunchuk with your left hand and right hand or step lively the balance board. The steering is pretty much automatic, which younger players may appreciate (you can move left and right with the nunchuk joystick, but it’s mainly to avoid obstacles). Skating is basically a timing game. You alternate moving the remote and the nunchuk in sync with an on-screen prompt which simulates the skater pushing off. Crouch to duck below yellow barriers as they come. Again, not a very “fitness” intense workout, but it’s fun enough.
Flying is a game where you swing your remote and nunchuk up and down to flap your wings and tilt to steer through the course. It’s not bad, but not great either–the same idea was executed much better on Wii Fit Plus.
Running is much like the same game in Wii Fit. You alternate the Wii remote and nunchuk to run, and press “B” to jump over the occasional hurdle.
Step Aerobics. Once again, a complete ripoff of Wii Fit. Aggravatingly, it tell you to “Dance along with Brooke to the music”, but the “music” is actually a frenetic tune that has nothing to do with the beat and actually throws you off your steps. This one is a major disappointment.
Volleyball – A poor imitation of EA Sports Active’s volleyball game, where you can practice setting, bumping, and serving. You use the nunchuk joystick to control your direction, and swing the remote upwards when bumping the ball.
It probably should have been a warning sign that Jumpstart signed on Brooke Burke to be the B-list celebrity featured in this game. As with Daisy Fuentes’s disastrous Pilates title or Jenny McCarthy’s disappointing Your Shape, it seems that having a celebrity endorsement for a Wii exercise game is the kiss of death.
There are some bright spots of the game. One thing I did like was the ability in many activities to compete head-to-head against someone else in a split-screen. There’s also the ability to choose from three difficulty levels, a good way to have parents and children competing against each other.
In short, I would not recommend this one as a serious “fitness” game, but if the price goes down it might be a decent collection of mini games to play with your family that’s a step above shovelware games. That said, you can find much more polished “family fun” games in Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus and much better “family fitness” with games like DDR and Just Dance. As for Jumpstart, I hope the next time they try this, they spend more time creating original ideas like their football game and the improvements they made to the basketball game, instead of focusing all their energy on copying others who have already done it better.
Here’s an upcoming title from Ubisoft, set to be released in the Fall. Gold’s Gym Dance Workout looks like a really promising game.
For a long time, Dance Dance Revolution was the king of the hill as far as dance games go. But of course, hopping on a plastic mat isn’t really dancing. I found this out the hard way at a wedding when I tried to participate in a dance-off using DDR moves. There were a lot of copycat games like High School Musical and Dancing with the Stars that were variations of matching movements with arms and legs. Great exercise, great challenge, not really dancing.
Just Dance proved that people want to has enjoyed a resurgence in recent months. Perhaps buoyed by popular TV shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars, suddenly, people wanted to exercise but also learn real dance moves and choreography.
Gold’s Gym Cardio has had a long-time place on our list of top 10 Wii Fitness games because it taught “real” boxing moves. If all goes well, Gold’s Gym Dance Workout should do the same (it was developed in collaboration with fitness and dance experts). There’s still no official song list, but hopefully there’ll be plenty of popular songs.
Here are some other highlights:
The game will include mini-games such as rodeo bull riding, karate, rowing, kangaroo boxing, and sword fighting.
Support for creation of circuit program, which are continuous dancing or mini-game sessions lasting up to 30 minutes.
Tracking of your exercise history, including play time, calories burned, and BMI.
Support for two players, so you can workout with a friend or loved one.
While Ubisoft’s recent history of exercise games has been a little spotty, this one should be another good one.
One of the biggest problems with Wii fitness games like Jillian Michaels and The Biggest Loser is that you’re flailing your arms around, but there’s just no resistance. As a result, you get a pretty good lower body workout (because your legs are carrying the weight of your body), but after the workout you really don’t feel like you’ve gotten a very good upper body workout. As a result, games like this usually get played a few times and then go back on the shelf.
There’s also another possible problem that arises because of this. Early on in my Wii exercising days, I experienced a somewhat frightening phenomenon. After a few days straight of playing a Wii game (I think it was EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis), my shoulder started to get really sore, even to the point where it was uncomfortable moving it. I looked online, and I realized I had rotator cuff tendonitis. The phenomenon of Wii-related injuries due to lack of resistance has become so widespread that there’s even a name for it: Wii-itis.
Yes, most Wii games manufacturers (no doubt at the request of their lawyers) put in screen to tell you to take time to rest, but when you’re having fun with a game it’s easy to ignore those.
The cause of shoulder tendonitis is when you simulate sports movements, but you don’t have the natural resistance that comes with a tennis racket hitting a ball, a baseball bat hitting a ball, or boxing gloves hitting a bag (or a person ). When your body hits those kinds of resistances, it eventually tells you to slow down. But with the Wii, your body never stops, which can result in joint and muscle pain (and if left unchecked, even damage).
Happily, my tendonitis cleared up after a few weeks. But I’m a lot more careful nowadays about playing long sessions at once.
One of the best ways to give your arms resistance is the use of hand weights in your exercise. I received a pair of Riiflex hand weights, and they have breathed new life into my Wii workouts.
Riiflex weights are 2 pound weights that snap onto your Wii remote and nunchuk. While 2 pounds may not seem like a lot, it’s just about the perfect amount of resistance, especially as you’re playing reflex and rhythm games, which essentially are like doing reps.
The weights are bright green in color, fitting well with the whole millieu of Wii Fit and the bright happy colors of those games.
They’re really well built. The weights themselves are solid 2-pound weights, and yet they’re pleasant to hold because the entire surface is made of rubber which is very smooth in your hands. How they work is ingenious. You literally slip your Wii remote and nunchuk into the weights so that the weights and the controllers become unified–they will snap in place into the perfectly-shaped molds and remain there securely. Once they’re in place, you can use your Wii remote and nunchuk as normal. But instead of swinging and flailing your arms wildly, you get a good amount of resistance–and in the process you’re building up and toning the muscles in your upper and lower arms.
Just the other day, I gave my review of My Fitness Coach 2. If you can’t tell from my review, I was not very pleased with it. But with the Riiflex, it breathed new life into the game. Suddenly, those all-too-short exercise routines were much more challenging not just for my lower body but for my upper body too.
The game that really got new life was Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout. While this game did make the Top 10 list, it always struck me that somehow this game was missing something. At the end of a 20-minute session, I really didn’t feel too much “cardio”. That all changed when I slipped on the Riiflex weights. After just one round of the punching bag, my heart was racing, my muscles were toned, and I felt great. So a game that was collecting dust on the shelf is now part of my daily exercise routine again, something that would never have happened without the Riiflex weights.
There are a few drawbacks to the Riiflex weights, more a function of how the Wii was designed than any design flaws on the part of the manufacturer.
First, you have to take the Wii remote out of the protective plastic sleeve to put it in the Riiflex weight. It’s a minor inconvenience, but a necessary one to keep the Riiflex weight’s design streamlined. Luckily for me I have an extra Wii remote that I can dedicate just for this purpose, so I don’t have to keep switching it from the weights to the sleeve.
One good piece of news is, unlike other companies who make Wii dumbbells, the makers of Riiflex were forward-thinking enough to allow theirs to accomodate the MotionPlus (the Wii remote will just stick out of the end a little).
The other thing I would have liked to see is the ability to use two Wii remotes instead of a Wii remote and a nunchuk. Many game designers are realizing that the nunchuk is not as precise a controller for fast movement as the Wii remote (plus, it’s easy to get tangled up in the nunchuk cable), so they’re designing their games to accomodate two remotes. But since most of these games (such as Gold’s Gym Cardio) will allow you to switch between two Wii remotes and a Wii remote and a nunchuk, it’s not the end of the world.
Overall, the Riiflex gets a 5 out of 5 stars from me. It’s a bargain when you consider that it will breathe new life into a bunch of games you have sitting on the shelf, not just traditional fitness games, but even games like Wii Sports (if you’re a grown-up finding yourself easily outplaying the kids in your life with some games, using a Riiflex weight is a great way to equalize the playing field while giving yourself more of a challenge).
Disappointing follow-up to a Wii fitness game classic.
Reviewer: Nutwiisystem
May 30, 2010
I’ve actually had Ubisoft’s My Fitness Coach 2: Exercise and Nutrition since it was released back in January. But after seeing the awful reviews on Amazon, I was admittedly not in any particular rush to pop it in the Wii.
The original My Fitness Coach was a pioneer in Wii exergaming which enjoyed a very long stay on my Top 10 list. Wii Fit had been around for a few months, but for all the hype around it, people just weren’t getting fit from it. It seemed more like a fun set of games than a serious exercise program. With My Fitness Coach, which was actually a port of an old Playstation 2 game called Yourself!Fitness developed by Respondesign, you had your own personal trainer who customized workouts based on your needs, you had over 500 calisthenics exercises to choose from, and you could even customize your music and your workout environment, all things which you could never do before. The exercises didn’t really make use of the Wii’s capabilities, but it didn’t matter much because with the calisthenics, you could get a very good cardio workout. One thing I liked the most about the title was the running bar at the bottom which told you which exercise you were working on and which one was coming next.
All told, My Fitness Coach sold over 1.89 million copies and no doubt raised the eyebrows of people in boardrooms from EA to Nintendo. And so, like most fans of My Fitness Coach, I was looking forward to seeing what Ubisoft would do with the sequel. I figured they’d take all the best parts of My Fitness Coach and make some improvements.
Well, what happened next was really a series of flubs by Ubisoft’s marketing department.
The first mistake was that they decided to take a completely different game developed by Lightning Fish in the UK called NewU Fitness First Personal Trainer and to hastily release it in the U.S. as “My Fitness Coach 2: Exercise and Nutrition”, obviously hoping to cash in on the name. The problem is this new game bore absolutely no resemblance to the original My Fitness Coach. This terrible decision led to a number of problems.
First, fans of the original game and its in-game trainer Maya were completely disappointed. The expectation with any sequel is that the best parts of the first game are retained, and improvements are added on to the experience. But instead, My Fitness Coach fans were subjected to a completely different and foreign experience (literally, as you’ll see below). Simply put, Ubisoft didn’t respect the intelligence of My Fitness Coach fans—assuming they’d purchase any fitness game thrown in front of them without question. The fans responded by rejecting it flat out. Case in point: The average review of NewU Fitness First Personal Trainer on Amazon.co.uk is 4/5 stars (with an average critics’ review of 7.8/10). The average review of My Fitness Coach 2 on Amazon.com is 2/5 stars. Exact same game, but Black Bean did their own marketing in the UK, while Ubisoft did the marketing in the US.
Another flub made by Ubisoft was how they pushed Respondesign, the developer of the original My Fitness Coach, to develop the game Your Shape. It would have been a worthy successor to My Fitness Coach except for two things—two things which all but ruined both it and possibly the Yourself!Fitness and My Fitness Coach legacy along with it. Respondesign had to use a Ubisoft-developed USB camera to track movements (something Microsoft spent years and millions of dollars trying to perfect with Project Natal, why Ubisoft felt they could do it faster and a lot cheaper is beyond me—it certainly didn’t work), and they forced the loud and annoyingly perky Jenny McCarthy to replace Maya, the virtual personal trainer everyone loved, as the on-screen personality.
The third negative consequence is that people who may have been new fans of the NewU series in the United States never got a chance to embrace the new brand. Lightning Fish Games has since launched a well-received sequel to NewU Fitness First focusing on Yoga and Pilates, which Black Bean has released in the UK. But Ubisoft has painted themselves into a corner. If it takes off in the UK, should they bring it to the US as My Fitness Coach 3? Your Shape 2?
Anyway, now that my ranting is out of the way, I figured that I should provide an unbiased review of the game that should have been called NewU Fitness First Personal Trainer, but was released in the US as My Fitness Coach 2.
The first thing I did when starting up this game was to forget everything I knew and liked about the original My Fitness Coach. Forget Maya, forget that I could use exercise equipment in my workout, forget the gauge which told me my progress, forget that I could choose from 500 different exercises, forget fitness tests.
Having said that, the game on its merits is really not as bad as the poor reviews on Amazon indicate.
When you first start up the game, you’re brought to a colorful startup screen with five options: My Plan, Express Workout, Challenges, Profiles, and Options.
My Plan focuses on a personal fitness plan that you can create for yourself. It has four sections: Fitness, Nutrition, My Progress, and Lifestyle Tips.
When you select Fitness, you can either do today’s workout, preview tomorrow’s workout, show your progress, change your workout scenery (you can choose between a beach, a green meadow, a snow-covered mountain, or a gym), or change your trainer (you can choose between two men or two women—they’ll do the workouts on-screen with you as you do them and make faces and gestures in response to your progress). The daily workouts are extremely short. This could be a good thing if you’re in a hurry (in fact, there a new game called “10 Minute Solution” from Activision that will target this market). But it’s frustrating if you were expecting the kind of 20-to-30 minute continuous cardio workout you get from the original My Fitness Coach.
When you select Nutrition, you’ll see a handy collection of recipes of healthy food you can cook. While this is very well and good, I have the same complaint I have about this as I do when I saw it in other games like The Biggest Loser. Who in the world has their TV and their Wii set up in the kitchen? You can’t even connect a printer to the Wii to print out these recipes. And so as good as the recipes look, they’re not very useful if you need to copy them on a piece of paper (as with the grocery list they provide for this week’s meals). Worse, while Ubisoft evidently re-programmed some parts of the game to suit an American audience (I presume the voices of the trainers were British at one point, but they overdubbed them with American accents—I personally wouldn’t have minded if the voices stayed British), they forgot to change these pages. As a Yankee, I have no idea how many 14oz of potatoes are or how hot the oven should be if I set it to 200C/Gas Mark 6. I could have done without this section.
Lifestyle Tips are basically 2-3 sentence tips, mostly nutritional trivial about different foods. Interesting reading, but I question how many people are going to sit through to read on the Wii. As with similar sections on Jillian Michaels and The Biggest Loser, these games would do much better if they used the interactive capabilities of the Wii rather than just plopping a book for someone to page through. For example, how cool would it be to incorporate elements from a simple cooking game to teach about nutrition and healthy cooking?
The Express Workout section lets you choose from four quick workouts: a Quick Workout, a morning workout for Before Work, a midday Lunch Break workout, and an Evening workout for before bed. The exercises consist ofroutines such as marching, stepping on the balance board, hip swings, punching and dodging, and similar exercises that use the Wii remote and the balance board to check your progress (more on that below). All the workouts are short, around 10 minutes.
The Challenges section is, in my opinion, the best part of the game. There are five options: Dance, Cardio Test, Army, Boxing, and Baseball. It’s a little misleading at first, because I was expecting to do dance movements under Dance, baseball simulation under Baseball, etc. But what it really means is that it’ll do basic workout routines to exercise the muscles and build the stamina that a dancer, a trainer doing cardio work, someone in the Army, a boxer, or a baseball player would need. And unlike the short and simplistic exercises in the rest of the game, these challenges really make your heart pump and last a good long time for meaningful toning, muscle gain, and weight loss.
Of course, the most important question in an exercise is, how do the controllers respond? The quick answer is, they’re okay. They’re not as super-responsive as Wii Fit Plus is; on the other hand, unlike My Fitness Coach, it does use both the Wii remote and the balance board to track movements. And the responsiveness is a ton better than Your Shape or Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum, two games which woefully fall short in that department. I’ve pretty much come to accept that outside of EA Sports and Nintendo, game developers simply don’t have the expertise nor the inclination to make the Wii remote, nunchuk, and balance board very responsive.
So what’s my verdict? Well, I think the two stars that the US Amazon customers gave it may be a little harsh, but again, it’s understandable why they’d rate it that low. But on the merits of the game itself, I’ll give it three stars. Certainly not up to par with games like Wii Fit Plus or EA Sports Active or even The Biggest Loser, but definitely an improvement over games like Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010 and Ubisoft’s own Your Shape. If you see it on sale or in the bargain bin, it’s worth getting, but otherwise there’s nothing too special here.
Namco-Bandai just announced that this Fall they’ll be releasing the third in the Active Life series: Active Life Explorer.
Active Life Outdoor Challenge, of course, has been a mainstay in the Top 10 Wii Fitness Games list with its innovative use of a mat controller. Active Life Extreme Challenge was a bit of a disappointment. But let’s hope Explorer redeems the series and drives it forward.
The early screenshots look pretty promising:
Admittedly, I was a bit disappointed they didn’t bring back the “cutsie” characters of the first series nor allow use of Miis, opting instead for the gangly awkward looking cartoony characters from the second series. But if these screens are any indication, it looks like they may be bringing some new innovation to the gameplay, which the first had in droves and the second lacked.
Here’s the text of the press release:
NAMCO BANDAI GAMES ANNOUNCES
ACTIVE LIFE EXPLORER™ FOR Wii™
Exploration, Discovery and Thrilling Adventures for the Whole Family Abound in Newest Addition to Pulse-Pounding ACTIVE LIFE® Game Series
SANTA CLARA, Calif., (May 25, 2010) – NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., today announced ACTIVE LIFE EXPLORER™ exclusively for Wii™, the newest installment in the popular ACTIVE LIFE® series. ACTIVE LIFE EXPLORER takes players on a fun-filled, heart-pumping adventure as they use the Wii Remote™ and ACTIVE LIFE Mat Controller to explore exotic locales and complete a variety of energetic activities with modes for one to eight players. ACTIVE LIFE EXPLORER is scheduled to be released throughout North America this fall.
Jump into action as a fearless adventurer searching for treasure the world over. Explore an array of intriguing themed locales including dense twilight jungles, ancient ruins, lava-flooded caves, frozen ice packs and more each with their own traps, hazards and challenges. A veritable thrill-ride of activities will keep the whole family moving as they run across falling bridges, dodge perilous booby traps, escape from savage beasts, chase down bandits, and much more as they ride off into the sunset with a bounty of loot and rewards.
ACTIVE LIFE EXPLORER includes dozens of action-packed adventures with support for up to eight players in fun cooperative or competitive challenges with multiple difficulty options to cater to all skill levels. In the multiplayer Party Mode, up to eight players can play in a series of activities that gives everyone a chance to get in on the action. One to four players can play through a Treasure Adventure Mode filled with dozens of missions as they uncover new uncharted lands on a world map. A versatile Free Play Mode offers easy access to individual challenges, while gamers looking for a challenge can put their skills to the test in the Treasure Trials Mode with a variety of objectives to complete. With plenty of rewards such as medals, different outfits for their in-game characters and high score rankings, players will want to play again and again.
“ACTIVE LIFE EXPLORER takes the ACTIVE LIFE series’ signature full-body motion gameplay to new frontiers,” said Todd Thorson, director of marketing and public relations at NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. “With a fresh set of challenges based on exhilarating treasure hunting quests, great escapes and thrill-seeking crusades, the game keeps pulses pounding and offers a fun way to get everyone active.”
ACTIVE LIFE EXPLORER for Wii will be available as a bundle including the game and one ACTIVE LIFE Mat Controller, or as a stand-alone game by itself for Active Life fans that already have the Mat Controller. For more information, please visit www.namcobandaigames.com.
by Majesco, I was looking forward to trying it out. They claimed that you could “Learn 4 different dance styles…each with a progressively complex set of over 40 real steps”. So when I read that, I figured this would a game where one could actually learn and perform real dance steps. Sort of like Just Dance, but where you’d learn real hip-hop, jazz, ballet, and Latin dance moves.
series. 
from Ubisoft. 
. This was the first Wii fitness title released by Knowledge Adventure, a leader in educational software. I figured with the higher price point ($29.99), maybe we’d see a fitness game of the caliber of EA Sports Active or Wii Fit rather than the shovelware that so permeates the landscape.
since it was released back in January. But after seeing the awful reviews on Amazon, I was admittedly not in any particular rush to pop it in the Wii.
