Weight Loss with Wii Fitness Games and Nutrisystem

On November 17, 2009, Ubisoft first released a groundbreaking game called “Just Dance”. Just Dance 2 a year later was an improvement, and Just Dance 3 a year after that pushed the franchise forward with creative innovations like workout modes and multi-person choreography.

But as usually happens when a franchise gets big, a company and its competitors will milk and milk that cash cow until way past the point where the public is saturated with it. We’ve seen dance games for summer parties and country music and Broadway. We’ve seen dance games for kids, including one with Dora and one with the Smurfs. We’ve seen specialized dance games for specific artists like Michael Jackson and ABBA and specific shows like Grease. At some point you just want to shake these game publishers and tell them to THINK OF SOMETHING ORIGINAL FOR A CHANGE. But I digress. I suppose as long as we keep buying them, they’ll keep making them.

The Black Eyed Peas Experience is the latest entry into the morass of dance games, based on the eponymous pop music group. Even if you’re not an avid follower of this group, you’re no doubt familiar with some of their most popular songs such as “Let’s Get It Started”, “I Gotta Feeling” and “Boom Boom Pow”, which have all become popular in the mainstream.

I’ll start off by saying that if you’re a die-hard fan of the group, you’re going to want to get this game and you’re going to love it, no matter what this or any review site will say about it.

For the rest of us, here’s my take on this game.

The Black Eyed Peas Experience is not a horrible game in itself. The menu navigation is among the smoothest I’ve seen in a Wii game. The motion detection is mostly spot-on; I’d say it’s a bit less forgiving than Just Dance 3, but if you practice the moves it’s not hard to get a high score. Not surprisingly, it borrows a lot of great elements from Just Dance, from the use of pictograms to show you upcoming moves, to allowing up to four players to dance at the same time. In fact, one improvement over Just Dance is that all you need to do is to pick up your controller and the game will automatically recognize you as a player.

There are, of course, a lot of “Black Eyed Peas”-specific details within the game. The four silhouettes you follow on the screen are the Peas themselves, so at any point of each song you’ll be dancing as Will.I.Am, Fergie, or…the other two. The background images are all nicely detailed in the ‘hip pop’ style of the Black Eyed Peas and in some cases you’ll see excerpts of the actual music video playing in the background. The choreography is definitely inspired by the style of the Black Eyed Peas on stage–meaning that anything with an intensity level of 2 to 3 sweat drops is going to be a great workout.

One gripe I have is that even though the game supports up to four dancers all songs are choreographed for one or at most two different dancers, so in most cases all four players will be dancing to the same steps. This is somewhat ironic given that the premise of the game is to experience a band that consists of four people. In fact, the scoring is set up to encourage four people to dance together as a team. Even more aggravating–each of the Black Eyed Peas characters will jump in and out of some songs when the came could very well have supported all four of them dancing independently.

Another gripe of the game is that while they did inject a few Black Eyed Peas elements in the game play, it really still feels a lot like Just Dance and not an “experience” of its own. Contrast this with Michael Jackson: The Experience, which I really liked because Michael Jackson’s style of dancing was so unique and so revolutionary that the dance moves in the game really did transcend the typical kinds of moves you’d see in Just Dance. Another plus in that game was seeing videos and tutorials from Jackson’s own dance coaches which really made you feel like you had an “insider’s view”.

In the case of The Black Eyed Peas Experience, there’s hardly anything in this game that couldn’t have been accomplished by just having it as downloadable content of The Black Eyed Peas to Just Dance 3. Heck, if they could get Mario as DLC they could certainly get the Peas in there. At the very least I would have liked to have seen special features such as behind-the-scenes videos from the Black Eyed Peas themselves, insights into how they design their dance routines, or even a break-down of some of the more complex dances by the Peas themselves. This game had none of that, leading me to believe that the Black Eyed Peas weren’t really involved with this game other than allowing their songs to be licensed.

Not that the game is a bad deal as far as the songs go; if you buy the game for its list price of $49.99, that comes out to about $1.66 per song (which goes down to 83 cents a song if you can find the game at the street price of $24.99). But by making this a separate game, they take away any chance of enjoying the unique features of Just Dance 3 such as its workout mode and its support of four-person independent choreography.

In terms of the songs, you can choose from 30 Black Eyed Peas songs from four of their albums:

The Beginning
Don’t Stop the Party (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 3)
Whenever (Solo, difficulty 1, intensity 1)
Someday (Solo, difficulty 1, intensity 1)
Fashion Beats (Duo, difficulty 1, intensity 1)
Everything Wonderful (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 3)
Take It Off (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 1)
The Best One Yet – The Boy (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 2)
Light Up The Night (Solo, difficulty 3, intensity 3)
The Time – Dirty Bit (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 2)
Just Can’t Get Enough (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 2)

Monkey Business
My Humps (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 1)
Disco Club (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 1)
My Style (Solo, difficulty 1, intensity 1)
Don’t Lie (Duo, difficulty 1, intensity 1)
Dum Diddly (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 3)
They Don’t Want Music (solo, difficulty 2, intensity 3)
Don’t Phunk With My Heart (Duo, difficulty 1, intensity 1)
Pump It (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 2)

The E.N.D.
I Gotta Feeling (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 2)
Imma Be (Solo, difficulty 3, intensity 2)
Meet Me Halfway (Duo, difficulty 2, intensity 1)
Boom Boom Pow (Solo, difficulty 3, intensity 2)
Rock That Body (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 2)

Elephunk
Hey Mama (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 2)
Let’s Get It Started – Spike Mix (Solo, difficulty 2, intensity 3)
Shut Up (Duo, difficulty 2, intensity 1)

With all respect to The Peas, I think there are only probably 5-6 songs which most people who buy this game will dance to; the rest will probably be appreciated only by their biggest fans.

One other point I should make. While this didn’t play a part in my rating, one thing that parents should be aware of is that the songs are uncensored, and are not even the “clean” radio edits. So the language can get quite explicit. Some examples (I bleeped out the cuss words here, but they’re unexpurgated in the game):

• Boom Boom Pow: ”I’m on that next s*** now”, “next level video s***”
• Pump It: “Your girl admits that we do da s*** and When we play you shake your a**”
• Lady Lumps: “What you gonna do with all that a**, all that a** inside yo’ jeans? What you gonna do with all that breasts, all that breasts inside yo’ shirt?”
• Don’t Stop the Party: “Get up off my genitals”
• Hey Mama: “Hey Mama, this that s*** that make your groove”
• Take It Off: “a** up side-to-side, come on girl, take it off”

With Just Dance 3, even though some of the songs were suggestive, the publisher took time to at least bleep out the profanity. But with this game they didn’t. And even beyond the profanity, as anyone who follows the Black Eyed Peas knows, just about every song is suggestive and full of sexual double-entendre.

Again, I’m not making any judgments here and this is not factoring into my rating of the game–I’m sure for everyone who decries the profanity in the game, there are just as many people who are happy that the game has remained true to the artists’ original songs.

But this is just something that parents and educators may want to be aware of who may not know The Black Eyed Peas beyond the sanitized versions played on TV shows and at sporting events. I’m actually surprised that this title got a “T for Teen” rating, as I would guess many parents would probably hold off on getting this for their 13 and 14 year olds if they knew the content. I actually thought the ESRB had made a mistake in this case, but sure enough on their site they reiterate their Teen rating with the following summary:

Rating summary: This is a rhythm-and-dance simulation game in which players follow along to dance routines from the Black Eyed Peas. Players score points by accurately moving their bodies in time with the music and scrolling indicators. During the course of the game, a few background videos depict suggestive behavior (e.g., gyrating female dancers); some women are depicted in form-fitting outfits that reveal moderate amounts of cleavage. Some songs contain the words “sh*t” and “a*s”; others reference sexual material (e.g., “(Hotness) sex with clothes on . . . And I got a Trojan/Just in case we get it,” “Just wanna squeeze t*ts,” “You know my style is naughty, right/So don’t c*ck block me,” and “Maybe if you’re lucky/You’ll get a peep show”).

I’m no prude, but this seems like it should be closer to an M for Mature (aged 17 and up) than a T for Teen (aged 13 and up).

All that aside, I’d give this game 3.5 stars. It’s not a bad dance game, but for the reasons I mentioned above, it does feel like it falls short of an “experience” that’s worth paying $49.99 for. As I said, if you’re a big fan of The Peas, you’ll probably want it at any price. If you’re just a causal fan, I’d say this would only be worth it when it goes under $20. And if you’re a parent or educator, you might want to take a good look at the lyrics of the songs before bringing it home or to your school.

Nickelodeon Dance is one of those games where half the world wouldn’t touch it with a 39 1/2 foot pole, while the other half of the world will say it’s one of the greatest video game of the century. You can tell them apart easily: the latter group will have a house full of bouncing preschoolers.

It’s for this latter group of people that I’m writing this review. If you’re in the former group, take a break and hold on until my next review (which will involve the decidedly-more grown-up Black Eye Peas).

If your TV is turned on to Nickelodeon more than a few hours a week, chances are your kids are going to love this game (and by extension, so will you). As with its predecessor Nickelodon Fit, it features some of your favorite characters from Nickelodeon, including Dora, Diego, and the  Backyardigans. Ni-Hao Kai Lan and her buds were left out of this one for some reason, but in her place is the Fresh Beat Band.

While Nickelodeon Fit had a great variety of different kinds of activties, there’s only one activity in Nickelodeon Dance: dancing. The dance moves aren’t nearly as complex as what you’ll see on games like Just Dance or Dance Central, but many are simplified versions of familiar dance moves like the cha-cha or the twist.

The game starts out with an introduction by Dora. Throughout the opening menus, Dora will out reminders incessantly (I mean every two seconds) such as “don’t forget to press the A button to choose what you want!!!!!!” and “you can scroll through the list of things you can choose by pressing up or down on the plus control panel!!!!!!!!!” It gets annoying very quickly (even to small kids, who are really more intelligent than some of these games give them credit for).

The opening menu is pretty simple:

• Quick Play
• Dance
• Workout
• Achievements
• Options

When you start out, you’ll be automatically sent to a tutorial. If you are familiar with Just Dance, it should all be very familiar to you:

• Three of your favorite Nickelodeon characters will dance on the screen, and your goal is to match the moves of the character in the middle, as if you’re looking in a mirror.
• There are icons on the bottom of the page that tell you what move you should be doing and what move is coming up. I didn’t find the icons particularly intuitive, but that didn’t matter too much because the moves themselves are very simple. Also, the character will shout out the dance move, which even small kids will quickly catch on to.
• As you hit moves correctly, stars will fly out of the character into a “score meter”. The score meter only consists of three stars, and there isn’t a numerical score count at all. The game supports either one or two players dancing together; one player will have a blue score meter, the other’s will be purple.

There doesn’t seem to be any difference between “Quick Play”, “Dance” and “Workout”, except that with “Quick Play” you’ll see a list of all four song categories, while with “Dance” you’ll see songs from only three categories (“Starting Steps”, “Smooth Moves”, “Fancy Footwork), while with “Workout” you’ll see songs from the fourth category (“Workout Songs”).

You start by selecting a song. If a second player wants to play, they have a few seconds to press the “A” button on their controller to join in.

Each song has one of three icons to distinguish how much physical activity the song involves. There’s 1) a “walking” icon, 2) a “jogging” icon, and 3) a “running” icon. If you’re a parent that wants to wear out your kids, go for the “running”.

Here’s a complete list of the categories and songs:

Workout Songs
Down by the Bay – Dora the Explorer (3)
Great Day – The Fresh Beat band (3)
Limbo Rock – Go, Diego, Go (2)
Rhythm is Gonna Get You – Dora the Explorer (3)
The Lion Sleeps Tonight – Dora the Explorer (3)
We Did It! – Dora the Explorer (3)

Starting Steps Songs
A Friend Like You – The Fresh Beat Band (1)
Al Rescate – Go, Diego, Go (3)
The Backyardigans Theme Song (1)
The Fresh Beat Band Theme Song (3)
Get On Your Feet – Dora the Explorer (2)
Dora the Explorer Theme Song – Dora the Explorer (2)
Oye Como Va – Dora the Explorer (2-locked)
Santa Claus is Coming Aqui – Dora the Explorer (1-locked)

Smooth Moves Songs
Alouette – Dora the Explorer (1)
Go, Diego, Go Theme Song – Go, Diego, Go (2)
Joy to the World – Go, Diego, Go (1)
Locomotion – Dora the Explorer (1)
We Got the Beat – Dora the Explorer (2)
Yeti Stomp – The Backyardians (2)
Iko Iko – Dora the Explorer (1-locked)
P.U. (Stinky Swamp Song) – The Backyardigans (1-locked)

Fancy Footwork Songs
Dancing in the Street – Dora the Explorer (2)
Music (Keeps Me Movin’) – The Fresh Beat Band (3)
Here We Go – The Fresh Beat Band (3)
Rockin’ Robin – Go, Diego, Go (2)
Tuba Polka – The Backyardigans (3)
We’re Unstoppable – The Fresh Beat Band (3)
Animal Jam – Go, Diego, Go (2-locked)
Sleigh Ride – Dora the Explorer (1-locked)

The songs are all cover versions of popular songs. The singing is done by Dora, Diego, or the Fresh Beat Band, and is characteristically high pitched and energetic, just like their TV shows. From my observations, I’ve found that adults generally fall into two categories: those who hear such cover versions as fingers on a chalkboard, and those who love them (primarily because their kids’ eyes perk up and their feet involuntarily start moving whenever such a song starts playing). Play through the demonstration videos I’ve posted here and decide which camp you fall under before buying the game.

For parents who are worried that the lyrics of games like Just Dance 3 are too suggestive, there’s obviously nothing at all to worry about here. Even very, very mildly suggestive lyrics (such as the phrase “every guy, grab a girl” in Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Streets”) are rewritten to something very innocuous (in this case, “ever-y boy, and ever-y girl”). And as is often done in Dora songs, some of the lyrics are rewritten to teach kids about different hispanic and latino concepts (in the same song, places like “Philadephia, PA” and “Baltimore” are replaced with places like “Puerto Rico” and “Columbia”).

One think I always check for in dancing games is how accurate the controllers are. In this game, the controller response is very noticeably lenient. First, I tested it out by playing normally, and easily scored three stars. Second, I tested it out by just waving my arm up and down to the beat, and scored three stars again. Finally, I decided to just lay the controller on the table–and I still got one-and-a-half stars.

Of course, this would be a detriment in most dancing games, but because the audience for this game is pre-schoolers, it’s actually an advantage. If a child in your family has felt left out while everyone is playing and having fun with Just Dance, they’ll love the game that’s “made just for them”.

On the other hand, I imagine some children may realize very quickly that no matter what you do (or don’t do), you’ll get a high score. So I think the best way to approach this game is not so much to focus on the score, but just on having fun dancing with their favorite characters. Since they’re probably dancing to songs that play on the TV anyway, this game adds an additional layer of interaction with their on-screen friends that they’ll get excited about. There are also “Achievements” that you earn as you progress through the game by completing songs and earning stars.

Overall, this is a very basic dancing game that’s accessible to preschoolers. I would have liked to see more options, such as the ability for different dancers to dance at different levels (this way a parent or older sibling could dance with a child and be somewhat challenged). I also wish the game could accomodate more than two players, as sometimes the whole family would like to get involved (my guess is that they limited it to two players because they wanted to keep it consistent with the version on the Kinect, which by definition can only accomodate two players). Finally, it would have been nice to have had a little more personalization in the game, as this is something that would have brought the interactivity far beyond what kids already see on the TV–for example, making use of the child’s Wii character or allowing the child to be greeted by name (or even to store their name and their progress).

All in all, I’m giving it 4 stars out of 5 and my recommendation, but really only for a very specific group: parents of preschoolers who are fans of shows like Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go. Parents of older kids may opt for Just Dance Kids, and families of teens and older will probably want to stick with Just Dance 3 or its many variants.

I’m not a big site, but already I’ve seen what overzealous lawyers can do to a site. When I posted my review of a major release last year, I did my usual thing and posted a long review and some YouTube videos of my gameplay.

The next day I came back to the site and found that my YouTube account, which had hundreds of videos and thousands of followers, was in the process of being taken down due to “copyright infringement”. I was flabbergasted. Here I was giving positive free publicity to this company, but they wanted to shut me down. And of course, my silly little videos of Stii-Wii shaking his booty didn’t infringe on anyone’s copyright nor prevent anyone from buying the game–to the contrary, I know for a fact that hundreds if not thousands of people ended up buying it because of me.

I wrote in desperation to the legal department at the company who was trying to shut me down. No response. I wrote to their Marketing department. No response. I wrote to the publisher. No response. The clock was ticking and soon the years of time and literally sweat I put into my YouTube Channel would be gone.

Thankfully, I knew enough to file a counterclaim, and knew all about fair use and copyright law. But that’s just because I’m a computer geek. Most bloggers would have given in.

Don’t get me wrong–I understand the reasons behind SOPA and PIPA. The United States hardly produces anything anymore…tragically we don’t manufacture TVs or electronics or pharmaceuticals or practically anything. The only thing we still produce is entertainment like movies and video games, and yes, thieves are stealing them and getting rich by selling them for pennies on the dollar or giving them away for free and benefitting from online advertising. So in a sense, one of the last vestiges of our gross national product is under assault by thieves and counterfeiters from China to Eastern Europe.

I have indeed been the victim of copyright infringement myself. A few years ago, I found an offshore site that copied all the hard work I’d done on my site (as little and inconsequential as it is) and serving it up as its own. So yes, I see the rationale behind these laws. But the way they’re implemented is flawed. It would essentially deputize sites like Google and GoDaddy to become arms of the FBI. Any lawyer anywhere can take down any site just by complaining about it; you are guilty until proven innocent. This threatens every site from YouTube and Wikipedia to his one. Read more about it here.

The US Congress and presumably the President who would end up signing this bill Have good intentions but are under a delusion that this bill will solve more problems than it creates in its present form. I always marvel at our politicians who triumphantly sign bills that are supposed to help we consumers and never realizing that the bill only ends up making lawyers rich, giving bureaucrats busywork to do, and empowering lobbyists in all industries to continue buying off their favorite politicians, left and right…and not even solving the original problem it was supposed to.

I agree…there oughtta be a law. But just not this one.

To help everyone with their New Year’s Resolution, Amazon is having a big sale on a whole bunch of fitness games.

Some of the better deals you’ll find:

Just Dance 3 for $29.00
Zumba Fitness 2 for $29.99
Zumba Fitness for $27.99
Cyberbike Magnetic Edition (Wii Exercise Bike) for $149.99

Not a bad way to start the New Year. But jump on it quick before the sale ends!

Okay, a little off topic, but if you happen to own an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, here are some great free apps you can download. They’re a great way to supplement your Wii workouts, or to let you exercise when you’re on the road and don’t feel like traveling with the Wii.

Fitness

• iYoga
• 8 Minutes Abs Workout
• iMapMyRUN – Running, Run, Jogging, Training, GPS, Fitness, Workout, Diet, Calories
• StrongLifts
• Nike Training Club
• Gym Training by Weightplan.com

Meals

• Healthy Food Finder by Caloricious
• Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal
• Healthy Grocery Recommendations, Personalized Nutrition Info, & Food Scanner by ShopWell
• Meal Planning by Food on the Table
• Must-Have Recipes from Better Homes and Gardens

Medical

• iTriage
• WebMD

Expectant Mothers

• Pregnancy Journal

Whether you use your iPhone, your Wii, or that coat rack in the basement that was once a piece of exercise equipment, here’s to a healthy 2012. Oh yes, I will be providing details of my own weight loss efforts again soon.

I notice that people love to visit this site the day after Christmas. I always wondered why, and then it hit me. People get Wiis and Xboxes and PS3s for Christmas, and they also happen to enjoy their share of candy, cookies, and turkey. The confluence of events means a lot of searches for “Wii Fitness Games” and “Wii Exercise Games” the next day.

Well, you’re in luck. I’ve been reviewing Wii fitness games for almost three years now. Over the years there have been some spectacular ones and plenty of duds. Here on Nutwiisystem.com we try to review all of them. You’ll see an unbiased review here on the blog, and you can also go to our list of the best Wii exercise games to see the best of the best.

One question I hear a lot is, is it really possible to lose weight using video games? The answer I always give is the same one. Yes, but only if you STICK to it and really put all of your energy into it. In other words, sitting on a sofa playing Super Mario Kart is probably not going to do it for you. But if you get off the couch and dance with all your energy to Just Dance 3 or stick to the predetermined schedule of EA Sports Active 2, as long as you’re breaking a sweat and your heartrate is elevated for a good 20 minutes, and you’re controlling your portions while you eat, you WILL lose weight.

So take the rest of the four days off, but starting on January 1, 2012, let’s make a resolution to jump, dance, and Wii our way to fitness!

Here’s some late breaking news! Best Buy is holding an after-Xmas sale with some great prices on lots of new games in our top 10 list, including Just Dance 3 and Zumba Fitness 2. Best Buy has certainly been the retailer to beat this year, so kudos to them for setting the bar with great prices this year. Click here to see the sale…

By now, you’ve probably heard the news that President Obama stopped by his local Best Buy to do a little Christmas shopping. Okay, we all know it was a photo op, because quite frankly, all the President of the United States needs to do is snap his fingers and he can have every video game in the world delivered to his front door, as well as have two Secret Service agents play them and get high scores for him.

Anyway, in case you were curious as to what he bought, the answer is…Just Dance 3! (in addition to a $100 iTunes gift card and The Sims 3: Pets for PC) As good as the deals from Best Buy have been this year, someone should have told the president that he could have gotten it $10 cheaper at Amazon. But maybe he was willing to shell out the extra $10 for the Best Buy Katy Perry bonus tracks.

Addressing  the crowd of Christmas shoppers, he said “In case you all are wondering, Just Dance for the Wii,”which must have sent a tingle up the collective legs of Ubisoft and Nintendo and cause a lot of folks at Microsoft to consider voting Republican.

He went on to comment to reporters about his skills. ”The girls beat me every time on these various dance games,” Obama told the crowd of Christmas shoppers. “You guys will never get a picture of me doing it. Because I get graded ‘F’ every time.”

But oh, what I would give to see the President dancing to “California Gurls” or “Land of 1000 Dances”.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, there are a LOT of video dance games that have come out lately vying for your hard-earned cash for Christmas 2011.  Here are the titles that have been or are pending release since October 2011. (I’ve linked each title if there’s a review on XboxFitness.Org, Nutwiisystem.Com, or PS3Fitness.Com).

• Dance Central 2 for Xbox
• Everybody Dance for PS3
• Just Dance 3 for Wii
• Just Dance 3 for Xbox
• Dance Dance Revolution II for Wii
• Just Dance 3 for PS3
• Get Up and Dance for PS3
• Get Up and Dance for Wii
• Country Dance 2 for Wii
• Black Eyed Peas Experience for Xbox
• Black Eyed Peas Experience for Wii
• Grease Dance for PS3
• Grease Dance for Xbox
• ABBA: You Can Dance for Wii

Big list, right? Let’s add in the “dance games for kids”

• Nickelodeon Dance for Wii
• Just Dance Kids 2 for Wii
• Just Dance Kids 2 for Xbox
• Nickelodeon Dance for Xbox
• Just Dance Kids 2 for PS3

And I’m not even counting other new games that incorporate dancing like Happy Feet 2, Victorious Time to Shine, and Zumba Fitness 2.

It’s enough to make you want to shake these game companies by the throat and say “WE GET IT. DANCING GAMES MAKE YOU A LOT OF MONEY”.

Now, if  you had all the money in the world, you could certainly shell out $40-50 each game and all three consoles. But of course, these days none of us have that luxury. So this post is intended to help you figure out which dance game reigns supreme, so you know which dance game to spend your money on.

And in the process, we’ll talk about platforms as well. Since I have all three platforms (Wii, Xbox, PS3) and I love all of them, you can rest assured that everything I say here will be completely unbiased (go onto other message boards and you’ll see fans of each platform defending theirs with near-religious ferocity).

So what’s the verdict? Which Dance Game reigns supreme? I’ll do this in the form of an awards show.

Best Motion Tracking
Dance Central 2 for Xbox Kinect

Hands down (and arms, legs, and torso all over the place) the best platform for dance games in general is the Kinect, and the best dance game as far as accuracy of full-body motion tracking is Dance Central 2. Now I should say that I have (and love) my Wii and PS3. I love the Wii for its fun graphics and I contend that it’s still by far the best system for families and groups of people. I love the PS3 for its superior graphics and the amazing accuracy of the Move controller, which makes it the perfect title for any game which requires you to hold an object like a sword, a tennis racquet, or a baseball bat in your hand.

But at the end of the day, dance games for those platforms require you to hold a controller in your hand, while the Kinect just lets you dance freely, and the system knows not just when your right hand is or isn’t in the right place, but evaluates your whole body.


Best Multiplayer Game
Just Dance 3 for Wii

Dance Games are fun to play alone if you’re exercising or learning how to dance, but there is nothing better than being in a group of people and competing against each other; the players get to see who the better dancer is, and bystanders can enjoy a “dance-off”.

As much hype as the Kinect and the Move are getting (deservedly so) for their groundbreaking progress in motion control, the old trusty Wii still is by far the best platform for multiple people to play. Why? Because the Wii remote control uses radio signals to transmit the user’s motions,while the Xbox and the Playstation both rely on a camera. Granted, the Wii will probably never approach the sheer accuracy of the other two systems. On the other hand, unlike the other two systems, the Wii doesn’t require two people (or four) to squeeze within a small 8-10 foot space. So while two people can play the same game at opposite sides of a room on the Wii, the same two people will have to squeeze together on the Xbox and Playstation and try to figure out how not to hit each other.

Just Dance 3 for the Wii has songs that are choreographed for two, four, and even eight independent players. It makes for a ton of fun at parties.

Best Choreography
Dance Central 2 for Xbox Kinect

This is a subjective call, of course, but overall I found the choreography in Dance Central 2 to be the best of the lot. When I look at the individual dance moves (as depicted on the “cue cards” that appear on all the games), I find that Dance Central 2 is the only one which really depicts real “dance moves” that I see performed by professionals and in clubs.

If you spend enough time to learn them (and there’s are great training sessions which will break down the moves for you very well), not only will you excel at the game, you’ll wow people the next time you’re on the dance floor.

Best Choreograph-Your-Own-Dance Feature
Everybody Dance for Playstation Move

For aspiring choreographers and people who have played dance games and said “I could design a dance better than these people”, the new trend in these games of being about to choreograph your own routines will be a welcome new feature. This was a toss-up between Just Dance 3 for Kinect and Everybody Dance for Playstation, but at the end of the day the winner is Sony. It’s a seamless process to record your own video and share it with friends (or the world). The fact that the Move controller is used is actually a bonus in this case, as it makes motion detection for people who play your routine seamless, something that is a bit more complex to do on the Kinect especially in different lighting levels, camera angles, and body positions.

Best Workout
Dance Dance Revolution II for Wii

This winner is going to surprise a lot of people, but I found that the best dance game for just working out is Dance Dance Revolution II. This is not to say you can’t get a great workout with the “real dance move” games, especially if you put a lot of effort into learning the precise moves and do them over and over again. But DDR has been and continues to be a game where you’re constantly in motion, stepping and stomping faster than any aerobics or step class. It’s not a surprise that schools around the country have begun to use DDR in their phys ed classes. Dance Dance Revolution II brings some long-awaited new features to the franchise, including the ability for one player to use two dance mats, and an upgraded workout mode. Yes, the concept is dated, it’s no longer as “fun” as a real dance game, and you won’t “wow” anyone on the dance floor with any moves you learn in DDR. But it’s still the best sweat-inducing dance title out there.

Funnest Game
Just Dance 3 (all platforms)

For this award I did a little experiment. I brought all three major dance games to different gatherings and sat back and watched how easy it was for them to pick up the game and start playing, how much the players enjoyed it, and how much the spectators enjoyed it. The winner was no contest. Just Dance 3 had the most people wanting to jump up and take their turn, and had the most people on the floor doubled over with laughter, especially during the multiplayer routines.

I really admire how Ubisoft has kept the franchise “true” to itself even amid other games encroaching on the “turf” which it invented. It could have tried to be like Dance Central and focus on precise dance moves (even on “Easy” level, Dance Central 2 is not easy and will take several repetitions for you to start matching the moves, something people at parties will not have much patience for). But instead, it kept true to what it was–a game that did a passable job at motion control but focused on bright and happy graphics, whimsical and fun choreography, and just plain fun. In many ways, Dance Central 2 and Everybody Dance sometimes feel that they’re games which take themselves a bit too seriously, but Just Dance 3 is content to just be fun.

Best Song Selection
You Make the Call

Ultimately, I can’t choose which game has the best song list because musical tastes are very subjective. You can view the complete song lists on my review of Just Dance 3,  my review of Dance Central 2, and my review of Everybody Dance, and make your own call!

And if you’re the fan of a particular niche, say the music of the musical Grease, ABBA, The Black Eyed Peas, Michael Jackson, Broadway showtunes or country music, you’re going to be better off buying the specialized dance games for those. (Although be forewarned, all of those standalone dance games are definitely far less polished than Dance Central 2, Just Dance 3, and Everybody Dance–the developer obviously felt they could make more money selling standalone games rather than as downloadable content for one of the top dance games).

Overall Best Dance Game
You Make the Call

Again, I’m going to weasel out of making a call here. The choice for which dance game is best for you really depends on your goals. If your goal is to learn real dance moves that you can take to a dance floor, Dance Central 2 is the way to go. If your goal is to have a lot of fun, Just Dance 3 is the winner. If your goal is exercise, DDR still provides the most exhausting workout. For the best social networking features, Everybody Dance has set the bar that hopefully others can meet in the future.

Bottom line, if you’re planning on using a video game for fitness, the rules are and have always been the same. Can you get your heart rate elevated for a sustained 20 minutes a day? If so, you will lose weight. But like any other workout, you need to be committed to doing it. IMO, the challenge of perfecting dance moves helps a lot more in the commitment than repetitive actions like walking on a treadmill or an elliptical machine. But it’s up to you to keep it up and not sit down after every 4-minute song

For today only (Monday, 12/5/11), as part of their Gold Box and Lightning Deals, Amazon is having a big sale on all kinds of Wii games throughout the day. Check this link throughout the day:

Amazon Sale

Some of the highlights (using my best guesses, as Amazon is often cryptic with their “clues” of sales that are coming:

- All day (while supplies last), Just Dance 3 is only $25.99, the lowest you’ll likely see it this season.

- At 1:00 PM Eastern (10:00 AM Pacific), Cyberbike will be going on sale, a Wii game that comes complete with its own exercise bike. Whenever this becomes a Lightning Deal, it always sells out within 2 minutes, so be there right on time if you want it!

- At 7:00 PM Eastern (4:00 PM Pacific), Zumba Fitness will be on sale.

- At 9:00 PM Eastern (6:00 PM Pacific), Zumba Fitness 2 will be on sale.

It’s a great time to stock up for Christmas, so get them while you can–these deals are not going to last long!

For those of you who watch Star Trek movies, you’ll recognize a phenomenon where every even-numbered movie was a huge success, while every odd-numbered movie was a dud. With the Active Life series, Namco seems to be following a similar pattern. The first Active Life game, Outdoor Adventure, was a groundbreaking title that was among the first to introduce “fun” active kid’s gaming to the Wii. The follow-up, Extreme Adventure, was by most accounts a sub-par game. The third title, Explorer, was once again a fantastic game, full of imaginative use of the mat controller.

With Active Life: Magical Carnival, it feels that the series is running out of gas a little bit again. It’s a collection of 24 mini-games. I’ve grown to become very suspicious of games that jam in as many mini-games as possible, as if the game publisher were hoping that more quantity would make up for less quality. I get that impression here.

Like the other Active Life games, this one uses a special floor mat controller from Namco that you plug into the Gamecube connectors of the top of the Wii. The mats work similar to mats used by Dance Dance Revolution, but are not compatible.

With this game, you enter a virtual theme park. Various games support 1, 2, or 4 players. Unfortunately, as with previous Active Life games, all the players have to squeeze on one controller and/or take turns playing; there’s no way to use two controllers. With small kids this isn’t a problem, but with grown-ups it starts resembling a bad game of Twister.

You can play an “adventure mode” which isn’t much of an adventure, you just play as many different activities as you can to fill up a sticker booklet which will make your park more “popular”. Or, you can play each of the mini-games individually. As with previous Active Life games, you can play as your Mii (they’ll attach a weird looking human body to it), or as one of their default creepy characters with the Little Orphan Annie lack of eyeballs.

Here are all the mini-games, broken into five different “Zones”:

Fantasy Zone:

1) Flying Carpet (up to 2 players). Here, you get on your hands and knees and press buttons to steer or accelerate a flying carpet, similar to Aladdin. This one is hard on the neck, as you need to really strain your neck to see the TV.

2) Magic Lesson (up to 4 players). This is a pattern matching game like “Simon” where you have to memorize sequences of buttons given to you by a magician.

3) Ballroom Dancing (up to 2 players). This was a game where you have to press certain buttons with your feet in time to a waltz beat in a ballroom strangely reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast. Not a bad concept, but the execution isn’t great–the music is terribly non-distinctive, which means there’ll be a lot of trial-and-error before you get it right.

4) Flying Broom (up to 2 players). Once again you’re flying through the air chasing a fairy, reminiscent of Tinkerbell. You need to have good reflects to press buttons to turn or to avoid walls.

Haunted Zone

1) Monster Panic (up to 2 players). Here’s another game where you’re kneeling on the floor and have to press buttons to flip switches.

2) Haunted House (up to 2 players). Finally, a game that uses the mat controller for walking. You need to tiptoe through a haunted house to avoid waking up ghosts, and then avoid obstacles by running or jumping. This one came closest to what the Active Life series should be all about, although some of the obstacles seemed frustratingly random.

3) Who’s the Ghost (up to 4 players). An interesting “spot the intruder” game where you have to memorize a group of Miis in the room. The screen goes blank and then you need to spot who wasn’t there before and press on the appropriate mat button.

4) Ghost Hunder (up to 2 players). This is a “Ghostbusters” type game where you use the Wii remote to snag a ghost and then press the square buttons with your feel to “reel it in”. The concept was done before and much better by Nintendo in Wii Motion Party.

Circus Zone:

1) Ball Balance (up to 2 players). Another button-stomping game where you need to match random sequences of buttons in time to stay balanced on a ball. Very similar to other games in the previous Active Life games.

2) Trampoline Tricks (up to 2 players). Another button stomping game where you need to jump and then mash the correct sequence of buttons before you land. This one has also been done, but I do appreciate the use of the mat controller in this one.

3) Rope Crossing (up to 2 players). You’re on a tightrope and need to balance yourself using the Wii remote and walk by pressing the square buttons. Again, I do like the use of the mat controller for this, but conceptually the concept was done better in Wii Fit Plus.

4) Giant Swing (up to 2 players). This is another timing/reaction game where you need to jump on the right set of two buttons with precise timing to get your player to go from swing to swing. This one was an exercise in frustration, as it took a long time to get the timing right.

5) Lion Show (up to 2 players). A game where you have spot the pattern by which a lion is charging you and crouch (by standing on the square buttons and holding the top arrow buttons) or jump accordingly. Not a great game for people with big bodies.

6) Spinning Wheels (up to 2 players). A game where you basically run in place and jump when you see clowns in your way. Another exercise in frustration, and the clowns will come out of seemingly nowhere.

7) Motorbike Challenge (up to 2 players). A game where you steer a motorbike in a cage by standing on the square buttons. The more balloons you collect, the better you’ll do.

Clown Show (up to 2 players). A rather incongruous activity where you can string up to three random activities under “Circus Zone” together.

Carnival Zone

1) Hammer Strike (up to 4 players). Here, you mash the blue button as much as you can, which will dictate the force by which your hammer swings to ring a bell. This was decent, although the use of the game pad seemed forced–this (as well as all the carnival games) would have been much better just using the Wii remote.

2) Frog Jump (up to 4 players). Another game where you get on your hands and knees and swing a hammer by pressing on the blue left button to try to get a frog to jump onto a moving lilypad.

3) Balloon Maker (up to 4 players). A carnival game where balloons will inflate, and you need to stop the gas flow before the balloon pops. This was was fun, but again the Wii remote would have made infinite more sense.

4) Ball Rolling challenge (up to 4 players). A well-executed game where you roll a ball onto a curved rail and try to use just enough force that it ends up in the designated spot.

Pirate Zone

1) Chase the Monkey (up to 2 players). A running game where you run in place on the mat and jump to avoid obstacles in your pursuit of a runaway monkey.

2) Bomb Panic (up to 2 players). A “hot potato” game where you press a button on the mat to pass a ticking time bomb to the next player.

3) Pirate’s Duel (up to 2 players). A game where you press the up arrow and down arrow that’s displayed on the screen with the proper timing to defect a sword wielding pirate.

4) Pirate Adventures (up to 2 players). A game that uses a lot of different controls. Run in place to climb up a mast and run, step on the square buttons to turn a wheel, and mash a bunch of random buttons to prevent skeletons from boarding the ship. This was a fun one, very similar to the “runaway train” game from Explorer, although there were times the controls weren’t as responsive as I’d have liked.

From an aesthetic perspective, the game is pretty and colorful. From a gameplay perspective, the controls are pretty responsive. And if you have multiple kids in the house, this is still one of the stronger multiplayer games out there.

The biggest beef I have with this game is that it just seems to lack the imagination that made #1 and #3 so strong. Many of the games are weak copies of other games that have been done elsewhere on the Wii. And virtually all the gameplay involves fairly and contrived generic button mashing that doesn’t feel very natural and/or is a thinly veiled imitation of what’s already been done in previous Active Life games, just in a different environment. I would have hoped that with new evolutions of the Active Life series would come new and innovative ways to use the mat and truly bring “active gaming” forward. Instead, it feels like a rehash of everything that’s been done before.

Not only are there practically no new ways of using the mat, as I pointed out multiple times above, in certain cases the use of the mat is almost superfluous–the same game would have been much stronger using the Wii remote.

I also get the strong sense that the game developers were trying more to play “catch up” with other games. The theme-park concept is being done right now in Kinect Disneyland Adventures for the Xbox and Carnival Island on the Playstation. There’s even a part of this game where you “take your picture”. Of course, the Wii doesn’t have a camera, so the “picture” that’s taken is of your avatar. There’s a clown that says “Ha Ha, You look so ridiculous”. It might as well have said “Ha Ha, our developers are trying to copy the photo-taking capabilities of the Xbox and PS3 on a system with no camera”.

This is sad in a way, because I think the mat controller that Namco introduced is a very strong one whose potential hasn’t even come close to being fully tapped and which can accomplish gameplay that the Wii remote, Balance Board and even the Kinect and Move can’t.

I will say that if you already have a mat and have enjoyed the first three games, at $29.99, this is a relatively cheap way to extend the use of your mat. But if this will be your first Active Life game, I would definitely recommending skipping this one and going with either Outdoor Life or Explorer. While I’d easily stand by my earlier ratings of both of those games of 5 out of 5 stars, with this one I can only muster a 3. It’s OK, but not earth-shattering.