Blog Archives
Dance Central is putting fitness in the spotlight with Dance Central Fitness Club
The makers of Dance Central know that dance-gaming is a fun and effective way to lose weight and shape up, and they’ve started a Dance Central Fitness Club that is looking for fitness success stories via Facebook, Twitter and their forum. Dancers are reporting weight losses as much as 55 pounds in the past year, as well as hitting performance goals such as passing gym tests. Nice!
I wanna be a Fruit Ninja!
Frooooot salad!! (courtesy Xbox.com)
I just got the Internet back at home after more than a month without, which is why my posts over the last month have been sporadic and short – guess I’m to blame for McDonalds doing well in the stock market lately. Sorry food police, but I’ve been lovin’ their iced coffee and free wifi.
Now once I get my wifi at home set back up, I’m gonna celebrate by downloading Fruit Ninja Kinect. This popular smartphone game is now available on Xbox Live for $10, and there’s also a free demo.
Fruit Ninja is exactly what the title says: you hack up flying fruit. A lot of reviews are assailing it for being too simple and repetitive for home use, but I think it sounds like a heckuva workout – and I love other slashing and chopping games, such as Exerbeat’s karate and Gold’s Gym Dance Workout’s karate and sword-slashing. Fruit Ninja Kinect allows 2 players, so my kids can join in the hacking instead of having to wait their turn.
$10 sounds like a great deal for a shoulder/core workout that also raises awareness about good nutrition. McDonalds out, fresh local peaches in!
Woorio Ware? Deepak Chopra meditation minigames coming to Wii and Kinect
If mashing arrows, picking giant noses or seeing Zumba outselling Zelda has you all stressed out, Deepak Chopra’s Leela game promises to get your mind back in balance through meditation, and you don’t even have to leave your console. From an article on Yahoo:
The game will use the Kinect sensors to guide users through the seven “chakras,” or points along the body that many believe serve as a body’s energy centers. Somewhat like Wii Fit or other games like Flower, Leela will have minigames that get more difficult over time, but it will not have scores or other competitive aspects. Instead, it will be more about learning how to better do the exercises and enjoy the soothing visuals and music. In one exercise called the “root chakra,” players must tilt their hips to seed a plant on the screen. The “heart chakra” has players use their hands to direct fireballs that destroy rocks to release hidden gems.
I’m not into yoga (and have yet to try the yoga on Exerbeat) and remain skeptical of “brain training” claims by games. But this sounds interesting, like a cross between Kinect’s Body and Brain Connection and the types of games where it’s not so much a “game” as exploring a virtual world, like Kinectimals, Endless Ocean or even Walk It Out. Just plain dumb fun, like any good game. Leela is supposed to be released in November.
Call of Booty: Zumba game owns the UK sales charts
Call it the Legend of Zumba. Here and abroad, the Zumba fitness games are taking over the game consoles much like Just Dance did last year. It’s been number one in the UK for 4 weeks, which has resulted in an increasingly disgruntled (and funny) series of articles from guy gamers.
Metro’s game bloggerhas called Zumba “one of the most acclaimed games in the history of things called ‘Zumba’” and added, “Sales for Zumba Fitness shot up 43 per cent last week, as flabby wastrels continued to sign up at gyms for the real thing – further strengthening the might of the Zumba Empire.” Hee hee!
But now that they’ve burned up enough calories tearing their hair and palming their faces, the gamers are starting to embrace the dark side. Metro later published a feature article, The Year of Zumba Fitness, in which they mull over the divide between what “core gamers” like and what the general public is buying and enjoying. And Eurogamer has a pretty level headed review of the Kinect version, which concedes that it’s a “bloody hard” workout and fun, but correctly points out the technical failings and asks, why play a Zumba game instead of a workout DVD?
The answer to that, in the states anyway, is that Zumba games at about $30-40 are cheaper than the $50-90 DVD bundles, and if nothing else, you get the automatic workout calendar and the progress-and-unlock-new-levels aspect with the game. But I think that to “get” Zumba, you need to get out and attend a live class. Perhaps in the near future, there will be a Zumba 2.0 game that lets you do just that – shake it with a class online much like playing online multiplayer with Dance Masters (which I haven’t done, since no one I know owns it).
