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One of my picks from E3 was Ubisoft’s fitness title, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, and I was very interested to see the full title in a non controlled location.

Lets get this straight right from the beginning though, this is a fitness title. This isn’t a game and if you were hoping for a game that made you fit then this isn’t what you need. Your Shape Fitness Evolved is more like a gym in your lounge and while there may be a mini game styled exercise or two it doesn’t change the fact that the essence of this title is fitness.

The game starts off with you standing on a map and getting scanned by the Kinect with a bunch of vital statistics being thrown onto the screen during the scan. In my case the height and size of my limbs was being picked up correctly overall and then I just needed to enter things like gender, weight and age.

After which I chose what sort of workout I was going for from a pretty impressive list which included toning (you choose where), fitness, muscle building etc.

1

Since I want to tone my beer gut right off the body I went for that one and then chose a friendly female voice to be my instructor. We started up by warming up using all different positions. I generally did what I do in exercise classes and half assed my warm up only to be told by the instructor to do it again and what I was doing wrong at the time. So it’s more like a private exercise class than one you can hide in.

After the warm up we started doing some weird exercise where I needed to put my legs wide apart and sort of bounce between the two while lifting one leg after the other behind me. I have seen the ladies doing this in the gym before so I thought I knew what to do but it quickly became evident that I was doing it wrong and after a couple of friendly words from Christy (my new nickname for her) I was bouncing up and down like a regular gym bunny, and getting sort of tired from it.

Next we moved onto a move where we slid left and right while bringing our feet together at the edges, I could hear Helgha (Christy didn’t seem to fit anymore) was now getting a little irate with my inability to be elegant but bless her cotton socks she kept on trying to help me get it right and at the end I was getting some nice praise from my pushy trainer. I’m now not feeling all together awesome anymore.

2

After this we moved onto knee lifts and being a fully grown adult I was pretty sure I could lift my knee in time with Helgha, but alas no. The perky demonic trainer was now instructing me over and over again to lift my knees higher… HIGHER.. I was half thinking that she was trying to get me to knock myself out so that she could have her way with me. I couldn’t let her win so I continued on lifting my knees into the stratosphere until the compliments started raining in. By the end of this exercise I was pretty much shattered and well satisfied with my daily workout.

However Satan’s spawn herself, Olga (Helgha seemed too soft), decided we had more to do. This is where I gave up and made the wife try the game as well… for professional review reasons of course.

She went through the same setup and gym lesson I did and was happy to report that the game was a good reflection of what an aerobics class is, why do woman torture themselves like this?

After I had rested enough I loaded up the Yoga and tried out some junior poses, I was very impressed with how the game sees what you are doing wrong and helpfully corrects you. I’m not much of a fan of Yoga in general but the poses seemed hard enough to leave internal scarring so I guess it works.

The one thing I did really like is that it keeps track of what exercise you have been doing and uploads your results to the web so you can challenge your friends and monitor your progress from the office.

Scoring

Gameplay: 9/10
It’s not a game but the titles ability to track you and perform its function is very impressive indeed.

Presentation: 7/10
In truth it could look better, it’s got a very calm clean feel about it which was obviously planned but it does feel a little dull at times.
It has the best Kinect menu system that I have used though.

Sound: 8/10
It’s nice and calming and even Olga’s incessant whining was being done in a nice tone of voice.

Value: 9/10
If you follow your in-game exercise machine this title could be a staple in your household for a very long time to come.

Total: 9/10
If you are looking for a fitness title you shouldn’t go past Your Shape Fitness Evolved. While you still need some self motivation to turn the title on you aren’t going to be able to half ass this exercise title which is a big thing for lazy people like myself.

Last Updated: December 14, 2010

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved
9.0

8 Comments

  1. NiteFenix

    December 14, 2010 at 12:10

    Awesome review Gavin. Got me to chuckle there a bit.

    Are you trying to tell us something though, by taking all the Fitness Titles to review?

    Reply

  2. Geoffrey Tim

    December 14, 2010 at 12:19

    Yeah..Australia makes you fat.

    Reply

  3. Gavin Mannion

    December 14, 2010 at 13:11

    And I drink too much beer…

    Reply

  4. koldFU5iON

    December 14, 2010 at 14:00

    what an awesome review! I lol’d hard! thanks Gav, but now we want a video review

    Reply

  5. BobFlambeur

    December 14, 2010 at 16:32

    If you know the first thing about health and fitness, you can become very irritated with how limited this game or application or whatever you want to call it is. It focuses very heavily on leg exercises and is completely lacking good programmes for chest and core muscles.

    Rather join a gym or get a good DVD, unless the losing calories achievements are the only way you’ll get off your fat ass.

    Reply

  6. Gumdrops

    December 14, 2010 at 17:23

    LOL you said it BobFlambeur

    Reply

  7. Gavin

    December 15, 2010 at 00:00

    I doubt anyone would disagree that a gym would be a better solution but a DVD cannot help you correct your movements so I fail to see how that is better

    Reply

  8. IceGoose

    January 8, 2011 at 00:17

    The fact is that we’re all going to die eventually!

    Reply

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