Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012

Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 Fitness Evolved 2012 really shows off the Kinect technology. It "scans" your body at the start to project a real-time model of yourself into the game. I was eating a bowl of ice cream at the start and I could see my avatar holding the bowl of ice cream in the game. It doesn't scan/render my head/hair correctly though and I don't have a funky hairdo. The tracking is nearly accurate all the time, I only had a few instances where it didn't seem to register my movements correctly in Zen/Yoga and brick breaking. There are a lot of exercises in this game, some are broken down by difficulty and stages. There's even a personalized fitness program that recommends exercises based on what you want to achieve. You don't have to follow it, and can tailor it however you desire. The running and jump rope games seemed interesting at first, but they're essentially games that require you to run in place (lift knees higher for more speed) or jump in place (coordinate with the footprints on the screen). The stomp it had an interesting premise but I had to be really coordinated and the calorie burn rate was minimal. My favorite events are balancing a platform with boxes falling down (strengthens core muscles), brick/wall breaking, cardio kickboxing, and Zen energy. Cardio kickboxing starts off slow but it builds you up quickly and the full-speed exercises are a lot of fun. I was definitely sweating big time after each event and have felt improvements in my core muscles, legs, and arms. The Zen Energy combines Yoga with Tai Chi. The really great part about Fitness Evolved 2012 is the computer trainer. She will make suggestions in real-time and provide audio/visual cues on what to do next. Games like Just Dance 4 and Zumba Fitness Core may provide visual cues but it's not always that useful. Fitness Evolved 2012 is not just about matching the movements, but doing the movements correctly with assistance and practice, as well as using calories as a performance metric. The core, abs, and other focused training events work exceptionally well. The crunches and other ab work that requires you to lie down on the floor somehow track accurately in Kinect. Although I do have a 8 foot space from the Kinect in my living room. There's quite a few pay-to-play DLC in this game, including one that requires you to buy a Gatorade G02 bottle to scan in order to unlock. I won't be buying any of the DLC or the Gatorade because the existing events are fine as-is. I didn't see anything that made me want to go out and spend Microsoft points or money to purchase. Remember to load the Kinect Playfit app for Xbox so you can get more achievements by burning calories, as Fitness Evolved 2012 is a compatible game. Overall: 5/5 stars, my favorite fitness game for Kinect with many fun and useful training exercises. Cardio kickboxing and Zen Energy are my favorites!

My family and I love this game. We've had it for about three months, and are still using it several times a week. The variety is wonderful, with everything from some pretty intense work-outs (especially some of the boot camp and cardio work-outs) to light fun games (stomp it, stack 'em up) and all kinds of things in between (cardio boxing, yoga, lots of new dances- African, hip hop, Latin, etc). My daughter has been much more motivated to exercise with this than with any of the other fitness games we have. She loves all the games where we can compete against each other, and she especially enjoys the Run the World and jump roping. She also thinks it is really cool that she can actually see herself as if she is looking in a mirror. That's a big improvement over avatars in the other games, or the humanoid blob in the previous version (although we liked that too). Another big improvement over the previous version is that there are more choices of longer routines. I still wish they had some that were 45 minutes or more, but there are several 20-25 minute choices in all different sections (cardio, Run the World all races for London and New York, boot camp, yoga, etc) and the menus are very smooth and easy to use, so you can put together a longer work-out without really having to pause very much. I find this one to be the most accurate, least buggy, and to have the most real variety with totally different kinds of activities, not just slightly different versions of similar activities. I have a very small living room and I never have trouble with Your Shape picking up movements accurately, so I would most strongly recommend this game for people with limited space, and for people who need fun and variety for motivation.

Listen up you 'on the fence ' wannabe fitness people! If you are like me, tired of living with 'Dunlap Disease' where your belly done lap over your belt, this will help. You have to make the decision to use it, but it will work! I am a 42 year old former Marine whose glory days are long past. This program is helping me get back in shape. It can help you too! Warning: if you have a smaller room, and use the Kinect with a magnifier, you may have issues with floor exercise or issues with exercises that require using your feet. (jump rope, sit ups, push ups etc.) You can still do them, the game just may not recognize your efforts. The warms up are good, but could use basic stretching. Routines are awesome and diverse. You can go from Cardio Boxing to Balli-Wood Dancing (yes, I tried it!), Yoga to jogging. Great diversity within the routines. You can set goals, based on your desired type of results you are looking for. Unfortunately, learning the the workouts does not account toward your progress ( a little counter productive IMO) However, once you learn the basics, the work outs are great! Make no mistake - this program will make you sweat!! Like everything, you get out of it what you put in, but over all the experience is great, and fun! I especially like the Tai Chi the Zen routine offers and the Cardio boxing as well. The Wall Breaker is a great warm up and sweat builder! Bottom line is, if this 42 yr old former Marine can get up off the couch and get back in shape, while sweating my butt, or gut, off... So can you!! Don't hesitate BUY IT!!

I got this game shortly after the holidays when the family got a new Xbox. I have a hard time carving out a gym schedule and was in the process of terminating a gym membership when this game arrived. Wow! If you are a gamer - the kind of person who is driven to earn points and achievements - this is the game for you. Even after a month, I felt driven to work out regularly to meet the goals I had set for myself. The kinect is just the tool for a video-game workout. Although (as others have mentioned) it sometimes misses your moves and you don't get the points you should - which can be frustrating - this is only a tiny minority of the time (although it happens most often with things like sit-ups that have you on the floor). The graphics are crisp and things happen as you progress through a workout that keep it visually stimulating. My favorite activity is wall breaking, which involves using your hands and feet to knock out blocks in a grid. The dance classes are fun, and the workout routines can range from laid back to cant-catch-your-breath challenging. I would highly recommend this game to anybody looking to get in shape and lose some pounds, or who has a limited budget or a difficult time getting to the gym, and especially if you are the kind of person who will do ridiculous things to excel at video games!

I am probably a mid level athlete -- somewhere between couch potato and personal trainer. Staying active is important to me, but not enough to commit to a structured regimen. And I've learned, if exercise isn't fun I simply won't do it. With that in mind, I started YSFE by avoiding setting any kind of objective, based on other reviews that said doing so creates flagged workouts that are the only ones that count in your progress. I opted instead to browse as the whim took me to see what works for me and what doesn't. First impression: They must have fixed something in the update, because this is definitely one of the better games for Kinect recognition. It's also one of the most forgiving for my tiny (6 feet, and that's being EXTREMELY optimistic) play space. When shopping, it was a toss-up between this and the Wii Active Life games, but I was turned off by the pad controller that limited movement and apparently flopped around. I'm very glad I went for this one. I started with the warm-ups (naturally), which are a bunch of mini-games and the main reason I was attracted to YSFE (I vastly prefer exercises disguised as games, like the Sports and Adventures! titles). I have to say, if you did nothing else on the disc, these provide a pretty good workout on their own, getting your heart rate up quickly and starting a burn in your muscles (unless you're already ripped, in which case these might be boring and too simple for you). They are short, but as I'm not in prime condition they're long enough to have me more than grateful for the breaks for menu selections. The main workouts are broken up into sections, first by body part, second specialized programs (cardio boxing, boot camp, dance classes, yoga, etc). The first day for some reason I was drawn to the Bollywood dance class. I own Zumba Fitness Rush, and by comparison this is much easier. There's plenty of time to learn the moves slowly, although my first attempt at full speed was a bit disastrous. But I'm not a dancer. So I jumped over to Cardio Boxing, and I wish I'd started here. This is like an extremely simplified Tae-Bo class, which I appreciate as I never got into Tae-Bo because it started at level 11 and only got worse from there. I did some of the intro moves, and by now I was tired and sweaty enough that I called it a night (the game has one of the best reasons for working out at home -- a trainer who evaporates the second you're done and doesn't hang around for awkward small talk). The next morning I was seriously achy, which made me very happy. Means I did some work. I spent the entire day looking forward to working out. If that doesn't speak highly of a product, I don't know what does. So day two I did my favorite warm-up activities and tried out a focused exercise on abs. The sensor lost me on the floor a little, so I moved it closer to the edge of its little shelf (cursing out Microsoft all the while -- whose brilliant idea was it to make a gaming system that only works in massive living spaces?) This fixed it enough to finish the set. I haven't looked at the other focused workouts yet because this is my least favorite way of exercising, repetitious sets of movement for no reason apart from performing the movement. Boring. I went back to the cardio boxing and it was still great fun. The graphics are really good in showing you what's expected, and again they add new moves slowly, giving you time to perfect the old ones first. It reminded me a little of my kung-fu class in college. (Edit: I've since tried out the Humana section called "Strengthen Your Heart," which is more boxing, only here you repeat one move 5 or 6 times and then move onto the next, rather than having one long complicated routine. Halfway through you go back and do the first half again. This entire section lasts about 13 minutes and really got me sweating.) Then a "Zen Energy" cooldown (Tai Chi. Just call it Tai Chi), which was surprisingly far less forgiving than the more rapid exercises (though I suppose form is much more important for that discipline). I was again satisfyingly sore after day two. I think some older reviews complained about non-cumulative calorie counts and having to manually track them. This has been fixed and total calories burned are remembered day to day (this isn't as important to me. I measure success by tired aching muscles). My one complaint, since nothing is perfect, is my appearance on the screen. Either I have a severe self-misperception (entirely possible) or the scanner somehow manages to add ten pounds. Maybe this is a subtle way to keep you motivated. Fortunately once the workout gets going you're more focused on other parts of the screen other than yourself. (Edit: Second complaint. Last night had to tap out of a routine temporarily. As long as the sensor detects even a little bit of you in range, it continues on as if you were still performing the moves, complete with encouraging praise. Makes me doubt its sincerity if it can be that effusive to just my elbow sitting at the edge of the screen.) I haven't tried playing this with a friend yet, though if it's true that things have to be done in turns rather than simultaneously this is a big design flaw. (Edit: It's true, no simultaneous play. Though might be a blessing in disguise in my tiny space, to avoid injury.) In summary, I understand other users' frustration that there's no way to just set up a 30-minute workout and do it straight through, but I'm easily bored and like the fact that you can jump around and do only the exercises you're in the mood for. I like that there's a large variety of workouts (although wish there were more mini-games. If anyone knows of other titles that sneak in a workout while you think you're just playing a game, feel free to comment). And I like that they seem to be highly effective, as far as "feeling the burn" the next day. (Edit: Burn confirmed. After the first week I seriously needed a day off, I was so sore. Again, a good thing. If these workouts don't kick your butt, at least a little, then you don't need an Xbox game, you need a fully equipped gym with treadmills, weight machines and stair climbers.) Going into "Xbox season" (my name for winter), you could certainly do worse than add this to your repertoire. Makes me actually a little excited for the cold weather.

I'm revising my original review. The game itself? Pretty fun. The games are enjoyable, the feedback is useful, the motion control is pretty accurate. My sole complaint in that regard is that it doesn't really give you much training, basically just throwing you into it and assuming you'll pick it up. That makes the first several iterations of trying a lot of the exercises very frustrating. Since I could do them if I knew how. If it had a training mode to drop into (or maybe there is one that I just overlooked), I'd have no complaints. The feedback is good (though a bit condescending, since the system'll pop up alerts and ask if I want to take a break if I slow down. Ha), the games are fun,a nd it's definitely tiring. It's very nice not having to swing around a wiimote like I did with the wii active, and I'm looking forward to using my free weights instead of resistance bands. So far I've just done the cardio exercises. I revised the review because this game was consistently overheating my xbox. It's an elite model, about 3.5 years old. After playing this game for a little while, I got 2 red rings (ram overheating), and just have not been able to recover the system since then. It'll limp along marginally well, but if I popped in Your Shape Fitness, it'd overheat and shut down just a few minutes into the workout. I had no problems at all before trying this game. So I went and picked up a new xbox and have now been playing the game on the new system for several hours w/o any issues at all. So while this game does seem to stress your system, it's plausible that my console was just old enough that it merely pushed it over the edge, as opposed to anything else. Playing it on the new slim shows absolutely no issues whatsoever. I'm not going to blame ubisoft for that. Definitely recommended.

I have several workout games for several different systems. From the Wii Fit to the Golds Gym for X-Box and even Biggest loser. So far this one gives you the best workout I have ever done on a game system. There are several options for starting out and expert levels. You can do individual workouts or a long one that has more of a circuit thing with 6 intervals and three exercises per interval. I do this and I actually am sweating. The jump rope is an excellent cardio and so is the boxing. There are a few workouts where it is hard for it to recognize my movements or sometimes it cuts off my head but that is nothing resetting it can not do. I will say it takes a bit to load but once it is loaded it is fine. I wish the add-ons where not so expensive but I have gotten a good workout without them so it is not a big deal to me. (You can pay for more workouts and different dance routines) It has Zumba and 2 other dance workouts on it. It also tells you if you are not doing an exercise properly, which can get frustrating at times when you feel you are so I just ignore the beep that tells me I messed up. I do not like how it keeps track of your calories burned though. I wish it had a setup like the wii where it tracks by each day but this just adds them all up from the beginning of the game. You can't see a daily report. (At least not that I have found yet)

I returned this game. It doesn't collaborate well with the Kinect, which is absolutely essential in order to play. The Kinect works fine with other games, but with this one, it has some serious issues. I was able to use it a grand total of three times before it stopped working. The three times were not without their frustrations, either. During game-play, it's important that the game recognizes your movements in order to track your physical progress and score. When first using this game, I noticed that my movements were not recognized at least 50% of the time. This was extremely annoying, not only because my score was lagging, but also because I couldn't select the exercises in order to play (you have to use your hands on the screen to select everything). The activities themselves last about 7 minutes maximum, which doesn't give you much of a workout. You can't stack up the activities either. You have to continually go back and select new ones, and with the lagging movements, this equates to a cool-down process. Not the best if you're trying to get a work out. The second time I used it, my first game was not saved despite the fact that I did save it. This would have been fine, except I had to sit through the 15 minute intro in order to play again. My movements were still not registering properly either. I made absolutely sure I saved this time. Third time using it, the game had not saved again. Also, my movements were not recognized AT ALL so I was unable to select anything at the start-up menu. Every other time I tried to use the game after this, I had the same issue. Essentially, I could no longer use the game. Don't even bother with this one. It has some positive reviews, but it's not a good product. I'm just grateful I was able to return it.

The cd cover was broken. Not happy with the condition of the product as does not seem to be new

one of my favorite ways to work out. everything about this game is awesome. I actually never used to care about working out, and I am competitive, so having a GAME to work out that gives you scores and percents is a huge motivator for me. This combined with the UFC game are AWESOME. Very helpful to have a system to pick up on your body and make sure you are doing the workouts properly. I love all of the workouts, and time flies when you are using this game. I never feel like giving up, and when I finally do stop, sometimes my legs are almost jello. You can go to the gym and feel this way, or you can save yourself the money and do it at home, being comfortable and confident, no distractions or people watching you, and actually be effective. awwww yeah I love my xbox now.

If you're looking for a personal trainer for your Xbox 360, look no further. This is an awesome game with variable difficulty for the whole family. It actually makes working out fun and I've had it for about a month now. Just make sure you have enough space (although I'm guessing if you have a Kinect already, you probably know that). There's also a lot of variety in this game, whether you want to play warm up games, work out a particular body part, or do some exercise classes (cardio boxing is my favorite). Before you begin, you set up a profile and the game will choose exercises based on the goals you set. I usually do the warm up games and the jump rope simulator, which is enough to get me sweating. The yoga class and zen class are great ways to stretch and relax as well! This is the best exercise game for the Xbox 360 and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to work out at home.

I haven't really used this enough to get to grips with the style of this workout mode. I found that I couldn't string different workouts together with no break between each workout segment. But on the plus side I do like the coaching, ensuring that you have correct posture, and a way to improve technique. I'll probably use it more when its colder outside.

What a fantastic game! I'll have to agree on the negatives, similar to what many users have written, the calorie count should be daily as opposed to overall, I wish I could view all of my "stats" without having to log onto the internet and some games didn't pick up the motion accurately (especially in wall breaker) The positives far outweigh the negatives though, there is a lot of variety and difference in the levels of difficulty when playing activities and games or taking classes. I love that you can see how long each activity is and the varying levels of difficulty before selecting what you want to do. I've only had the game for a month and I haven't even played every single activity there is, nearly though. I'd have to say my favourites are run the world, cardio, skipping rope (for a fast and hard work out) African rhythms dance class and more! I would definitely recommend this game to anyone looking to lose a little weight, shape up while having fun! It's really up to you how intense of a workout you want and how long you want to play each day but I found it easy to use the game daily, you always have the time to squeeze in even a 2 min workout!