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My Fitness Coach Cardio Workout Nintendo Wii

Format:
Nintendo Wii

Genre:
Improvement

Further reading:
Fitness Gamer

Buy/Support:
Support Simon, click to buy via us...

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Other GamePeople columnists have reviewed this from their perspective - huh?:
Fitness Gamer (Wii)

My Fitness Coach: Cardio Workout focuses your efforts with a simple clean experience. Technically speaking, it offers textures, environments and animation combine with responsive controls keep the game fun and interesting especially when 'shape boxing' to eye of the tiger.

I won't be judging the game on it's fitness regime, our own Fitness Gamer, instead I'll only look at the game from a technical standpoint.

Personally, I liked the graphic style of the original My Fitness Coach, which can be best described as a digitised fitness DVD made into a game - which I believed helped the game appeal more to its imagined audience of 30-40+ year olds. This time though, My Fitness Coach: Cardio Workout delivers a Japanese, almost chibi style (doe eyed) aesthetic which makes the game feel like it's aimed at a younger demographic.

Because of this change of style - textures, animation and the overall quality - the delivery has improved vastly. Everything is pin sharp and avoids the previous trouble with blurred textures and changing frames rates which threatened to put you off from prolonged workouts.

The game is also much simpler in design than before. Backgrounds play a big part in setting the mood in graphically sparse games like this, and My Fitness Coach: Cardio Workout does some great work here with location backdrops. Cardio takes you to the great outdoors, the beach and a futuristic Gym. These serve their purpose without distracting you from the task in hand. Bright coloured prompts and amiable instructors keep you focused on what you need to do next.

Cardio can be played with either Wii-mote and Nun-chuck or two Wii-motes. Both schemes are simple and responsive, with the two Wii-mote option offers a bit more feedback from the rumble in each hand - a real help when throwing a quick succession of motions and knowing they hit. You can also include a Balance Board in the scheme if one is available.

One complaint against the game would be, it sometimes asks you to throw a uppercut (and other shots like a hook) but as long as you swing the correct hand that it's asking for, it'll recognise you did that shot regardless if you did the uppercut or not.

The game offers a bit more of a focused work out than the previous title, with cleaner and simpler graphics but improved controls. From a game design perspective it will be interesting if these changes attract a new audience or alienate their existing base.

On balance, you can't go wrong with Cardio Workout as it concentrates on shape boxing rather than trying to do a bit of everything. Plus when the game offers some nice workout music, and the amazing (and funny) Eye of the Tiger song by Survivor. Classic.

Written by Simon Arquette

You can support Simon by buying My Fitness Coach Cardio Workout



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Simon Arquette writes the Tech Gamer column.

"Gaming technology and techniques fascinate me, always have and always will do. They've driven me to a gaming degree, and aspirations to a whole lot more. Here though, I'll be reviewing games for how they put their technology to work to deliver a compelling experience."

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