Following the success of The Biggest Loser TV show, celebrity trainer Jillian Michaels has become a pretty valuable name in fitness video games. After several strong selling games on the Wii, publisher Majesco brings Jillian Michaels to the Kinect for the first time in Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure. Fitness games have been a genre that really takes good advantage of today’s motion control technologies. Let’s find out what Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure has to offer.
A couple of years ago, I experienced firsthand the benefit of fitness games. Overweight, somewhat out of shape, diagnosed with the back of a 50 year old and a hatred for the gym, I was introduced to EA Sports Active. That game unlocked a passion for fitness that had somehow abandoned me since my 20’s. I’m 38 now and in the best shape of my life. I’ve moved beyond the realm of fitness games in terms of what I do for fitness, but I credit video games for starting me towards 30 pounds of weight loss and an increase in core strength that solved my back issues completely.
Not all fitness video games are created equally though. The popularity of the genre invites a lot of entrants. Some are great, others not so much. Slapping a notable name on the box may get some sales but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good game. So, what does Fitness Adventure have to offer? The basics are as follows: 66 different exercise moves, 10 pre-set circuits, the ability to create your own circuits, stat tracking, and a pretty unique adventure mode. Let me be the one that coins the term First Person Fitness. It’s actually kind of neat.
The Fitness Adventure portion of the game has over 55 levels. Each level incorporates four exercise moves and is played from a first person viewpoint. Running on the spot propels you forward through the jungle temple themed levels. Along the way you will encounter certain obstacles where you have to perform one of the exercises offered to pass. You are measured on time to complete the levels as well as the accuracy of how you perform the exercise moves. As you run you can reach from side to side, or up in the air, with your arms to collect green tokens that act as time bonuses. Occasionally these tokens will turn red. It is a bit of a reaction mini-game because the red tokens negatively affect your time.
With each Fitness Adventure level lasting just a few minutes, I estimate there is over four hours of play time here thanks mainly to the sheer number of levels. I give credit to the developers for the first person viewpoint in the Adventure mode as it is unlike anything I’ve seen in a fitness game before. I enjoyed the novelty of it and I think it has tremendous potential for creating more replayability in a fitness game.
If you’re looking for more traditional training you can do any of the 66 moves in the game individually or do one of the 10 pre-set circuits. If you are really keen you can create your own circuits. It is a nice, but simple, feature to include. Unfortunately when choosing a circuit there is no indication of how long it will take. I think it would be really helpful if the game gave you an expectation of the time commitment for each one. My experience was about 10 minutes per circuit. While it tracks daily activity and offers leaderboards, the game simply presents the different circuits and leaves the player to come up with their own daily or weekly activity regimen. Majesco really should have included some form of goal and program planning along the lines of the EA Sports Active series. This would have really improved things.
While I think Kinect is the ideal motion control technology for a fitness game, it certainly isn’t without its limitations. I have a decent amount of space from my TV out (about 8-10 feet) and unlimited space side to side. I had to stand pretty much as far away from my TV as my living room would allow me to in order to ensure that I was captured properly. Being a pretty tall guy at 6’2” I constantly found myself extending out past the lateral boundaries of detection doing moves like the side lunges. Furthermore, the game and manual offer zero instruction on what is being looked for in order for the game to accept what movement you are doing as correct. While you are prompted to learn the individual moves in the single exercise section of the game, it is simply an exercise of trying to play copycat. There is no verbal coaching as to how to perform the move correctly, what muscles to focus on contracting, or anything else useful. It was disappointing and frustrating at the same time as I couldn’t for the life of me get the core exercises like sit-ups to work where you had to lie on the floor.
As I alluded to earlier, Fitness Adventure offers stat tracking and some online leaderboards. While these metrics are not displayed while you are actually doing the exercise, the game tracks the time you have spent playing and calories burned. I was concerned at first because this wasn’t apparent when you are doing the actual exercises. Seeing the tracking capabilities alleviated that concern, but this really is the bare minimum of what should be included in a fitness game.
In regards to the visuals, from the jungle temples to Jillian’s Lara Croft-like outfit, the resemblance to Tomb Raider is just too obvious to be ignored. The jungle and temple environments do not stand up to graphics in other games, but they are functional enough to do the job. Jillian’s in-game model does not do her any justice though as there is nary a facial expression or animation cue when she is offering you verbal prompts.
I might be nitpicking by pointing out specific graphical flaws because the bulk of your time looking at the TV will be spent trying to match your movements to those of Jillian’s onscreen moves. What I think is most important in a fitness game though is the animation. It is critical to properly show the player how to do each exercise and at the end of the day Fitness Adventure does an adequate job in showing the different moves properly.
Fitness Adventure’s soundtrack consists mainly of tribal beats. There’s really not much else to speak of. I didn’t mind the music at all but think it will probably get a little tiring over and over if you are using this game for any extended period of time. Where things really fall short though is in the use of Jillian`s voice. When you`ve got the licence, and you`ve probably paid a decent penny for it, why not use it? Jillian offers up token prompts here and there, mostly based around how accurate you are when following her on screen movements. It could have been so much more though. The game could really benefit from some vocal prompting about how you could do any given exercise better, especially so that you can learn how to perform each move with greater accuracy with respect to what the game expects.
In my experience, the benchmark for fitness games is the EA Sports Active series and Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure just doesn’t measure up. It attempts something unique by offering a first person fitness adventure mode, but I’m not sure this game will test folks with anything above a moderate fitness level. While it offers a decent amount of moves and circuits, there’s too much missing to make this one a worthy pickup. If you are looking for a true fitness tool that comes in the form of a video game there are some better options out there for you to explore.
