Tancap Blog

Ubisoft’s past efforts on the Wii were a bit of disappointment.  Last year, they failed to deliver acurate camera based motion tracking on the Wii with “Your Shape”.  This year they try again on the 360 with “Your Shape Fitness Evolved”.

From the point you create your profile and are measured using Kinect, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved doesn’t try to hide the fact its an interactive exercise program.  With workouts created by “Men’s Health” and “Women’s Health” magazine everyone should be able to find something that is challenging for them without being overwhelming.  Also, I found that by showing your figure on the screen next to the computerized instructor Fitness Evolved made it much easier for me to diagnose whether I was doing a given exercise right or wrong.  Fitness Evolved offers 3 different types of activities: Personal Training, Gym Games, and Fitness Classes.

Personal training is the closest to a traditional exercise program.  Before choosing a specific program you will be prompted with a number of questions including weight, activity level, and fitness goals.  Additionally, a short fitness test is administered.  Based on your answers and the result of the fitness test programs will be recommended, but you aren’t limited to the ones it recommends and can choose whatever you want.  Each program consists of a number of sessions.  Each exercise in a session is graded both on maintaining sync with your instructor and key characteristics of the exercise.  For example,  for Squat Punches you will be measured on doing both a quality side punch and doing a wide deep squat.   Overall the Kinect integration worked very well, but it did have some problems detecting how wide my stance was for some exercises and didn’t pickup my leg curls correctly.  Also, once you start a program you can’t switch without losing your existing progress.  Also, in my opinion it took a bit too long for the exercises used in the sessions to vary compared to EA Sports Active 2 or other titles I’ve tried.  Calorie count was at time measured to be only half of that measured using a Timex chest based heart monitor, but this isn’t a problem limited to Fitness Evolved.  All other games of this type I’ve tested have had calorie counting issues.

The “Fitness Classes” mode features two additional programs “Zen” (Yoga) and Cardio Boxing.  Both offer short series of focused routines.  Instead of having you do a variety of exercises these programs are focused on perfecting a short sequence of movements.  For example, in Cardio Boxing you might have a 2.5 minutes of a repeating sequence consisting of a block, a cross punch, and two kicks.  These offer a nice break from the personal training program and are useful to add to the beginning or ending of the personal training program session if they aren’t long enough for you.

The “Gym Games” mode offers a number of exercise mini-games including Virtual Smash, Light Race, Loop-a-Hoop, Stack ‘em Up.  I found Virtual Smash to be the most fun a best exercise of the bunch.  It has you gain points by completing series of punches, knees, and kicks.  Light race has you moving your feet to touch sections of a ring on the floor as it lights it up.  Loop-a-Hoop has you moving your hips to keep a hula hoop spinning.  Stack ‘em up has you holding a virtual plank to catch blocks and then dump them in a container to get points.

Fitness Evolved also offers integration on the web that tracks calorie count, goal status, the ability to compare status with others, and events.  Unfortunately, the functionality is incomplete and in a beta state as many functions either don’t work properly and display messages such as “translation missing:”.  Hopefully in time these issues will be worked out, but it shouldn’t be accepted practice that games like these are released with parts of their advertised functionality missing.  I also would have preferred to see the personal training sessions include warm up and cool down routines and integrate some of the “Gym Games” as well, but neither of these faults are deal breakers.  Overall, Fitness Evolved is by far Ubisoft’s best entry into the interactive exercise / exercise game genre that with a bit more polish could be the best overall exercise title for 2010.

Scores:

Graphics:

Clean and stylized graphics do a good job of presenting what is going on.

Sound:

Music is somewhat generic, but the beats do a good job of helping you to stay in sync with your instructor.  Voice instruction is clear, but can get annoying when the game doesn’t pick up your movements correctly.

Gameplay:

Overall everything works well.  The lack of warm-up and cool down routines is missed, and it would have been nice if some of the Gym Games were fully integrated.

Controls:

Although Kinect integration is not completely trouble-free, controls overall work well.  Most of the problems I encountered had to do with detection of how far my feet were spread apart.

Originality:

The first exercise game to make use of the Kinect.  Its method of integrating you into the game deserves special mention as well.

Overall Single Player:

Despite a few control glitches, Fitness Evolved has a good single player experience that should get better as new DLC is released.

Reviewer’s Opinion:

Only minor control glitches, lack of warm-up and cool down routines, and half-baked web integration get in the way of a perfect score.

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