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by Josh Baltzell.
Original Post: Xrcising with my XBox
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It's been
a while since I've posted due to a recent rekindling of my love affair with
video games. Multiple games have been tempting me (and succeeding in their
attempts at temptation.) These game include The Sims 2, Burnout 3 and (don't laugh) Yourself Fitness.
Yes that's right an exercise game. Got a
problem with that? I'll fight you right now. That's just how
über-manly I am.
Okay maybe I wouldn't fight you.
Maybe I'm not what you would actually call
"über-manly".
Maybe you would never refer to anyone as
"über-manly".
I'm not sure about any of that, but I am
sure that I am a bit more pleasantly plump than I used to be and I would like that
to change. I considered my options carefully (Meaning I justified
this purchase in Best Buy in about 90 seconds.) It seems that I could do any of
the following:
Join a health club, pay a monthly
fee, never go.
Buy a workout machine for a lot up front
and never use it.
Buy a workout DVD and watch it from my
chair because I am so out of shape that I would not be able to keep up with
anything other than "Sweatin' to the Oldies Geriatrics Only
Edition"
After I made those options seem laughably
stupid in a series of worst case scenarios I considered my fourth
option.
Buy a video game.
See doesn't that sound better? I think
more marketing in retail stores should be this way. The box should have
terrible images of your other options to make their product win by
default.
So with fiancee approval I bought the fitness
game for $35 and started it this week. As strange as it sounds (especially
to people that know me and what kind of physical activity I usually take part
in) I am really enjoying it.
The game is basically a personal trainer in a
box. You don't do weight lifting or any of the stuff that requires
expensive equipment, but the day after each workout I can
feel the muscles that the game had me working on aching - so it must
be doing something.
The trainer in the game is named Maya.
She starts you off by asking a lot of questions about how much physical activity
you have had in the last six months, what you weight, how tall you are, gender,
goals (Increase in flexibility, core strength, upper body strength, weight loss,
etc.), goal weight (If you are going for weight loss), and a couple of other
things I can't remember now.
After she asks all the questions she tests
you to figure out where to start you on your workouts. You do a resting
pulse and then 2 minutes of (brutally paced) jumping jacks. After the
exercise she has you take another pulse. You then do a series of other
exercises to test some boundaries (Push-ups, crunches, etc.)
When you finish the testing she builds a
weekly workout schedule that no one could ever fit in to their lives. So
you adjust it to be more realistic. To start I am doing two 15 minute
workouts and one 30 minute workout per week.
After you scale back her insane workout
schedule to something that will do you no good she tries to get you do go on a
diet. She started showing me all these delicious recipes but I decided not
to let my xbox dictate my diet just yet.
So on to the workout. Maya recommends
a type of focus for each workout, so you might get flexibility one day and cardio
another. You choose a virtual location to do the workout in (these are
like a loft apartment in a city, a dojo, etc.) as you
do certain numbers of workouts more unlock, but they really have no
impact on the actual game.
You choose from some generic music choices
(latin, 80s, Hip-Hop) with more unlockables, tell her if you have any fitness
equipment (heart monitor, free weights, etc.) and you
start.
When the workout starts she asks you how you are
feeling and you are give the choices "Nothing can stop me", "Not too bad", and
"You're lucky I'm here". Being a programmer I had to explore my options so
I have chosen each answer at least once so far. It seems to me that the
only answer she wants is "Not too bad" because she seems to try to pep you up if
you complain and bring you back to the reality that she is going to kick your
ass of you say "Nothing can stop me". Really though I'm sure these are
used to adjust the intensity of the workouts to keep you interested and
encouraged.
When the workout begins a horizontally
scrolling bar moves along the bottom of the screen telling you how far you are
through each exercise she is having you do. This is cool because the end
of each segment is almost always in sight. Many of these exercises are
pretty standard aerobic stuff that makes you feel like an uncoordinated idiot,
but you get the hang of them after a while (The "V Step" makes me want to shoot
myself because I can never get it right.) The cool part is that you can
always press A on the controller and a model will show you exactly how to do
each exercise while Maya explains it to you. Maya is animated on screen
doing each move to keep you in pace.
After a warm up, and the first segment of the workout she
asks you how you did with that last section. If you say you could not keep
up she says she will adjust future workouts like this so that you can keep
form. You have two other options that amount to keeping it the same or
making it harder. She repeats this after each
section.
Now aside from a Yoga section you can get in
to (Yoga is impossible, it's a myth that people actually do it) there is one
section that I am really interested in. A statistics section. I have
not worked out enough times to have this populate with info, but it can give you
progress information for weight, cadio, upper body strength, lower body
strength, core strength and flexibility. I like statistics. They
make me happy. Now how can I expose this data so I can pick it up from my
PC and crunch the numbers myself? Think the XBox could expose a web
service or at least a socket? Think I could be any more of a
nerd?
That's pretty much it for the game. I
have been looking forward do doing the workouts (most of the time) so that must
mean something. Maybe it is the geek factor. So I have to say that
it was worth the money.
Now there is one small point I would like to
illustrate in the picture below about the avatar Maya that guides you through
hurting yourself with your XBox.
She seems to have somewhat of a camel toe or at least a
small bulge. Now I don't have any problem with her since I actually think
she looks quite realistic compared to most women in video games. I would
just like to point out that any graphic in a game has to be worked on by a 3D
artist at one point. So at some point in time there was someone spending
time getting the bulge in Maya's workout pants just right.
Anyway I'm not sure how this post got so
long, it must be a defence mechanism that I started by admitting that I have
been doing aerobic exercise.
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