The Grumpy Old Gamers

September 3, 2019|All Reviews, Grump Fitness

So, a bit of back story…as a younger man, I used to enjoy running, and had no trouble maintaining a somewhat regular body shape. As recently as 2016 in fact, I was still running half marathons.  But a mostly sedentary job with occasional moments of extremely high stress and frequent travel, coupled with a couple of bouts with sciatic pain that would knock me out for a month at a time and I’m where I am right now. That is 50 + pounds overweight with a bad back.

This is where being the epic gamer that I am (cough, cough…) would get me into trouble. Why embarrass myself trying to exercise like I used to, when I could just eat chips and ice cream, and play Switch on the sofa, or in the recliner, or sometimes, just to mix it up, in bed.  While eating more chips…

Queue the major life change. After being bought out from said stressful job and taking a long family vacation to set my head straight, I decided to try and turn things around, so that my kids don’t remember me as that funny guy, who could never play soccer with them, but was really good at Mario Kart.  I mean, REALLY, really good at Mario Kart still, but….

So cue some dietary changes, mostly cutting out the chip and ice cream habit and trying to replace my 12 coffee a day habit with de-coffeed coffee…(blech, water) and a light entry back into jogging.  But being the l33t gamer I am (did I mention that yet??), I thought, why not try to mix exercise with the vidya games? So, I’ll be trying and reviewing a series of video games which either have exercise as the main focus or have an exercise aspect to them. 

To start off, with the recent thrift store acquisition of an Xbox One Kinect, I decided to start off with a game called Shape Up. So, when you mix video games and exercise, is it more like chocolate and peanut butter…or like nuts and gum? Lets find out.

The Presentation

The game is made up of many 3 min or so challenges, like Squat Me to the Moon, where you character do repeatedly to go shooting up on the screen, interdispersed with sections where you use your body to play Galaga like sections to shoot aliens and then continue on.  All the while, you are competing against a coach who is also superimposed onto the screen who, even at the beginning levels…is unfairly good. Prepare to lose, all the time.

You can do these challenges by themselves, or do one of the 4 week “Fitness Quests”, which have you doing 3 day a week workouts, with 6 of the mini challenges each day, with you doing a boss battle at the end of each week.  The idea that you’re on a quest to defeat a champion helps keep you going, because honestly, these challenges get old really fast. 

Graphics and Audio

This game is a real mixed bag for graphics, as the backgrounds for all of the challenges are wonderfully vivid and full of polygonal imagination, with robots fighting in the background, to crocodiles cruising down rivers, to rushing trains that you need to run on top of.  All of this is horribly marred by deciding to feature cheesily acted “Coaches”, with their badly captured video to be superimposed with your own, badly captured video onto said beautiful backgrounds.  This really does come of looking almost like an early PlayStation 2 eye Toy game, one where you’d pretend to clean windows, or swat away ninjas.  Not at all good for a modern system.

And the audio….oh man, don’t get me started.  With an acting range from “Annoying jock buddy” ranging all the way to “Annoying jock buddy, but this time it’s a woman!”, you will most likely be muting this after a couple of challenges.  With all the storage capabilities of a modern game, there is also no excuse for having the same 1 or 2 lines of dialogue after every event too. It is cheesy, campy fun at first, but it quickly becomes too much.

The Workout

The value you’re going to get out of this, is based on what you are looking for.  As a workout tool for someone who is just looking to get back into exercise, or for helping kids get exercise, you could do worse.  The challenges get the heart racing, and in small doses, it’s entertaining enough.  But as a long term exercise plan, this is just not going to work for most people.  It gets boring fast, and you’ll be left looking for more to do.

On top of it, this type of game focuses more on registering speed of the motions it asks you to do, rather than technique.  With the wide range of actions the game asks of you, without properly training you how to safely do them (such as squats), the possibility of injuring yourself whilst you embarrass yourself in front of your family is very real. 

The Verdict

Overall, I’m glad I gave this a try as it helped me jump start a healthier lifestyle, which at its core is the main job of the game, I think. But as far as finding a long term solution for health with video games, this is about as shallow as an episode of Housewives of Whatever County they are up to now. Coupled with the lack of teaching for the moves asked of the player, and I just can’t recommend this for someone looking for long term fitness help.  

But that doesn’t mean my quest to prove that video games can be used to achieve a healthy lifestyle is over, far from it in fact.  I’m going to keep looking, so please join me again next time, when I’ll review another game as I attempt to prove that you can indeed get fit with video games. Or I’ll end up throwing out my darn back again.  Either way, should be a good time!