It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on the blog, mainly because it’s been a while since there’s been a new Kinect active-motion game worth reviewing. You almost get the sense that game developers are sitting back and waiting to see what happens to the Xbox 720, which is rumored to be announced sometime in the next few weeks.

As we wait for the news–and for the future of the Kinect for exercise–the good news is that a lot of the old tried-and-true Kinect games that are great for exercise are on sale. In particular, Best Buy has these three games for the ridiculous price of $19.99 each (ridiculous for those of us who paid $49.99 or more for them when they launched, at least).

Kinect Sports: Ultimate Collection – Xbox 360

Dance Central 3: Best Buy Exclusive Edition with 2 Bonus Tracks – Xbox 360

Zumba Fitness: Rush – Xbox 360

Don’t miss this chance to get some of the best workout games at about half price. And rest assured, I’ll be keeping my eye on the Xbox 720 and seeing if there’s any workout potential!

I’ve previously written reviews of Just Dance 4 for the Playstation 3, the Wii U, and the Wii.

For the most part, the Xbox version of Just Dance 4 is identical to the game on other platforms, from the music selection to the choreography to the functionality (there are a few exceptions which I’ll talk about below). This makes the game ideal if, for example, you have friends who own a Wii or a PS3. You can each practice the same dance moves individually, and come together for a killer routine.

The biggest complaint I (and most reviewers I’ve seen) have about Just Dance 4 for Kinect is how difficult it is to use hand gestures to make menu selections. This is something that’s glaringly obvious immediately upon starting the game. If you’re read my other reviews, you’ll see that this comes up time and time again with Kinect games. In this case, the hand motions in theory are intuitive enough–you move your hand to make a selection and you make a “pressing” motion with your hand to select something. The problem is, if your movements are not precisely parallel with the screen or you’re standing at an angle, the Kinect sensor will sometimes not pick up your motions, or will sometimes think you’re pressing when you’re not. Happily, they do give you the option of using a wireless controller to make selections now, but I never cease to be shocked at how no game developer yet seems to have mastered something so basic as letting people easily navigate menus with the Kinect.

Perhaps after hearing some of the negative feedback, Ubisoft did build in an instruction page with the following tips:

• Don’t stand too close to the Kinect sensor
• In menus, relax and use smaller, gentle motions
• Select songs just like on your favorite touch screen device (I think they wanted to say the iPhone here but couldn’t).
• You can use a controller if you prefer, press any button

The second annoyance with the game comes next. You’re asked to sign up for UPlay, which is Ubisoft’s attempt to build its own online network. Evidently, to access certain features of the game you need to sign up for it.

I’d actually signed up for an account many years ago when playing another Ubisoft game, but I’ve long forgotten my password. There was nowhere on the Xbox where I could retrieve a lost password. After an eternity of searching, I finally used my PC to find a page where I could get my password emailed to me.

Once you finally log into UPlay, it’s a total mess. The menu options (Uplay TV, Shop, Actions, Rewards) don’t make much sense at all. They shout at you from every direction that you can earn “U Rewards”, but it’s never clear what they are or what you can use them for. The whole experience is just terribly confusing. Obviously, Ubisoft is trying to get into the money that’s being made by Xbox Live and PSN, but frankly I didn’t have use for it.

You finally get to the Just Dance 4 screen. Unlike the Wii and PS3 versions, there are four menu options as opposed to two:

“Just Dance” is of course Just Dance’s main mode. You scroll through a cover flow-like listing of songs you can dance to. Each song has the title, artist, highest score, and difficulty rating. You can also see the highest number of stars reached on the song, as well as the personal best from the player that’s signed in.

The Kinect supports one to four dancers (certain songs are have one version of choreography that all dancers share, while others contain complex choreography involving all four dancers dancing their own steps). Unlike the previous version of the game, where dancers had to stand in an awkward “staggered” pattern, Just Dance 4 lets dancers stand side-to-side, providing of course that you have enough room in front of the Kinect camera to fit everyone.

To start playing, you “move into position to select your dancer”. There’s a set of four vertical bars of different colors next to each other, and each dancer moves into the colored bar corresponding to the order they want to stand in. You can play with anywhere from 1-4 dancers, but you’ll need a LOT of space if you’re going to want to play with four dancers, and even then expect there to be some bumping into each other.

One neat feature the Xbox has is that the system automatically detects which dancer is in which bar, and then captures that dancer’s face and puts it up as that dancer’s icon throughout the dance to identify which dancer he or she is. Neat feature, and a neat use of the Kinect camera.

Dancing works the same as all other versions of Just Dance. You basically dance by mirroring an on-screen counterpart’s moves. Pictograms scrolling on the bottom of the page will show you what moves are coming up next. At certain points you’ll see a video camera icon flashing that shows that you’re being recorded at that point.

(For those of you new to the blog, yes, that’s me in the ninja outfit. As I’ve explained before, I wear it on account of my being bashful).

As the dance is going on you’ll see various cues on the screen that’ll tell you how well you’re dancing. On the left you’ll see a progress bar that’ll let you know how many stars out of 5 stars you’ve earned by dancing accurately. On the top of the screen you’ll see messages such as “PERFECT”, “GOOD”, and “X” that’ll tell you whether you’re hitting the moves.

I noticed that unlike Just Dance 4 on other platforms, on the Kinect my score was lower because the system didn’t just track my right hand but my whole body as well.

After the dance is over you’ll see your score, as well as “Mojo Points” which will let you unlock different features and songs in the game. I was surprised at how motivated I was to keep dancing just by collecting these points.

After the dance is over you’ll see a selection of videos and photos of you dancing, compiled from all the places in the game where a video camera icon flashed. You can select each of the videos to watch, as well as with the option to save an “Autodance” video. If you choose this option, a progress bar will pop up saying “generating funky moves” which will take a minute or two. After this, you’ll see the result: a roughly 30 second video of highlights of you and/or your group’s dance performance. Each song will stylize the video slightly differently with different lighting, color, and moves. The videos all finish with a little ad for Just Dance 4 that proclaims “Anyone can Just Dance”.

Your options are Play, Replay, Save, and Share. There’s no option yet for “Holy crap you just recorded me dancing to “Call Me Maybe” in my underwear and I want you to destroy all evidence on this video” (The closest thing is the “Back” button which I pressed early and often).

If you do wish to share your performance, you can “Share it” or “Save it”.
I got repeated error messages that said “your gamer profile does not have the correct permissions to access Xbox LIVE functionality”. Again, it was terribly difficult to troubleshoot this one, but I finally realized that it was a setting in my Xbox menu that was causing this. Here were the steps to fix it:

1. From the Xbox Main main menu, select the Settings menu (the last screen, with eight green buttons).
2. In the Settings menu, choose Privacy, then Change Settings, then Customize.
3. You’ll need “Kinect Sharing” settings to be changed to “Everyone”.

Once I got past this error, I now saw options to share to Facebook, JDTV (Just Dance TV). or with Xbox Live Friends.

By default, all three are checked. Again, I wasn’t not too crazy that it seems way too easy to accidentally share a potentially embarrassing performance with the entire world.

Perhaps because it has to compete with Dance Central 3, Ubisoft put some extra features in the Xbox version of the game that aren’t in the other versions.

The “Extras” option lets you create a UPlay account; redeem a code; select options such as turning lyrics, pictograms, and automatic captures on and off; and view credits.

“Just Sweat” is the workout portion of the game. Underneath it you’ll see four options with the estimated calories you’ll burn by playing each:

- Aerobics in Space (Moon Cruise) 50Kcal calorie count
- Sweat Around the World (Garden Steps) 40KCal calorie count
- Electro Body Control (Amateur Match) 45KCal calorie count
- Cheerleaders Boot Camp (Garage Rehearsal) 50KCal calorie count

Each workout consists of set playlists of music in different genres. For example, Aerobics in Space contains 80′s Pop music, Sweat Around the World contains music from different cultures, and so on. The “Dancer Card” option lets you see vital stats so you can track your workouts over time. You can see sweat time, calories, classes played, and you can set an avatar (which for some reason are just stick figure cartoon faces).

Just Sweat Mode has a 10 minute, a 25 minute, and a 45 minute routine for each musical genre. It also properly warms you up and cools you down, and songs are organized by intensity with the most intense songs happening in the middle of the workout.

“Just Dance TV” is something exclusive to the Kinect. This is where you can view any videos that you might have saved after your dances, as well as videos that others around the world have decided to share.

If you want to watch others’ dances, you can choose this option and view the “most recent”, “most popular” videos of strangers, view “friends” videos, view your own saved videos on “my channel”, and view “featured” videos.

As you’re watching videos, there’s a “like” button you can click if you like a video, and another button to “report” if you see something inappropriate. Surprisingly, all of the videos I saw, including those under “most recent” seem to be perfectly, clean, family-friendly videos. I’m guessing that there’s a team at Ubisoft that screens all the videos to make sure that those with less-than-fully-clad or less-than-sober performances are filtered out.

I was a little surprised at how many of the videos were uploaded by kids under 18. Granted, the kids are clearly having a lot of fun, some of the dancing is adorable and hilarious, and some of the performances are actually pretty impressive. On the other hand, in this day and age where you really don’t know who’s on the Internet, if I were a parent I’d probably think twice before allowing my kids to upload a videos to the Web. Given the amount of backlash that companies like Google and Facebook have faced recently over privacy, I wonder if the ease by which people can upload videos for the world to see at the touch of a button here will face scrutiny.

I shared my thoughts about the Just Dance franchise vs. the Dance Central franchise previously. Bottom line, Dance Central is more a game for serious and semi-serious dancers who want to get dance moves precisely right, while Just Dance is more a game for casual dancers to get together and have fun at family gatherings and parties. Both are very good, both are excellent ways to get a great aerobic workout.

I’m giving Just Dance 4 a 4.5 out of 5. The poor execution of menu navigation using the Kinect and the overall sloppiness of the online features was enough to dock half a star from it, but on the other hand, I did like how they improved the Xbox version over the PS3 and Wii versions by adding video and social sharing features. Overall, it’s a great Xbox Fitness game that will make a great addition to your collection.

Gangnam Style by Korean rapper PSY is a, by all accounts, a phenomenon. On YouTube, as of this writing the official music video has 1 billion, one hundred ninety three million, three hundred forty thousand, four hundred and ninety-four view. And counting. The video is approaching 7 million “likes”. The video is so popular that even YouTube designed a special icon just for this song.

My friend Jack (who’s always on top of these things) actually tipped me off to this song when it still had only a couple hundred thousand views on YouTube. I rewarded him a few months later by making him, as my best man, walk into our wedding reception to the music. By then, the whole crowd recognized the song and were clapping along.

On my recent honeymoon to Taiwan, I met my wife’s uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces for the first time. She had a 8 year old cousin who didn’t speak English, and my Chinese is really bad. But the second he started doing the Gangnam Style “horsey” dance, I joined in and we bonded instantly.

Similarly, the other night we were at a friend’s house for a dinner party. Their 3 year old daughter started jumping up and down when they played the song. It’s a song that seems to know no boundaries.

Unlike previous one-hit wonders like the Macarena and Who Let the Dogs Out, for some reason Gangnam Style has captured the imagination of the world. Chalk it up to a catchy tune, an easy-to-learn dance, the power of social media, and a song (and performer) that manages to be so ridiculous that it’s somehow cool. No less than British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama have admitted to dancing to it. And UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon even called it a “force for world peace”.

No, I don’t pretend to understand the phenomenon

PSY himself probably knows that he is never, ever going to top this, so he’s doing the right thing and cashing in while he can. He’s done live performances on every continent, and even danced with MC Hammer (speaking of one-hit wonders) on New Year’s Eve.

I also noticed that Gangnam Style is available as downloadable content for Dance Central 3 (on the Xbox) and Just Dance 4 (on all platforms, but I ended up buying it for the Wii/Wii U version). The Dance Central 3 DLC costs 240 Microsoft Points (about $5) while the Wii download costs 300 Wii Points (about $3.00). Walmart is an excellent place to stock up on points if you don’t have them. They sell a 2000 Wii Points Card for only $19.96, as well as a 1600 Point Xbox LIVE code for $19.96.

As someone who’s played all the dance games known to man over the years, a lot of people ask me which is the best dance game franchise: Dance Central or Just Dance. If you read the marketing material for each, you’ll see that both of them try to take the prize. Microsoft touts the fact that they’re the most popular dance game for the Xbox, while Ubisoft rightfully points out that if you add up all the games from the entire Just Dance franchise, not only do you have the world’s most popular dance game, but one of the most popular game franchises in history.

So which do I think is “better”? Rather than answering the question right away, here’s a video of Gangnam Style for Dance Central 3 (on Medium difficulty) vs. on Just Dance 4.

In many ways, comparing Gangnam Style on both games and platforms really highlights the differences between them.

In Dance Central 3, notice how there’s a lot more full body movement and the choreography is more “professional”, to the point where you can take it onto a dance floor. For sheer exercise, this one is pretty hard to beat. I was panting and my heartbeat was elevated just after one dance. And unlike on the Wii or the PS3, you can’t really “cheat”, as the Kinect is detecting your whole body’s movements. Another advantage of the Dance Central 3 version is that you have four choices of difficulty levels, from beginner to expert, and each level of choreography is unique and stands on its own.

In Just Dance 4, notice how the choreography focuses less on elaborate dance steps and more on just silliness and fun. This makes Just Dance 4 the better game to play if you have dancers of all levels, from kids to adults. Even better, with the Wii you can dance with up to four players at the same time, and you can spread apart without hitting each other (something that’s harder to do on the Kinect).

In the case of this song, both dance games were “true” to the silly style of PSY’s music video. Either one will let you practice the signature moves that 1.2 billion people have watched, although again the edge seems to go to Dance Central 3 in terms of being more “true” to the artist’s style.

And so the burning question: why game is better: Dance Central 3 or Just Dance 4? In many ways, I found that my experiences just reinforced what I wrote back in 2011 about Dance Central 2 vs. Just Dance 3 (and I’ll weasel out of an answer the same way today that I did then). Microsoft takes the prize of the best motion control, while Just Dance 4 continues to be the most fun. So if your goal is to learn how to dance, Dance Central 3 is the way to go, while if your goal is to have a party game that everyone in the room can step up and participate in instantly, Just Dance 4 can’t be beat. Both will give you a decent workout if you put all your whole energy into dancing.

Long story short, you really can’t go wrong with either. So it really comes down to what style you feel most comfortable with. As for me, I like to take both off the shelf from time to time. What do you think?

Week #2 of Dance Central’s Fitness Challenge is an interesting one. I guess in honor of it being 2013, they’ve named it “The Unlucky 13 Challenge”. Their instructions are to pick a song from the entire Dance Central library, including DC, DC2, DC3, and all downloadable content), and create a playlist that features the same song 13 times! This actually works great for fitness, as a song that’s about 3 minutes long will give you about 39 of playing time. Even better, by playing it over and over so many times you eventually become pretty good at it. Well, I know what song I wanted to do for the Unlucky 13 Challenge right away: PSY’s “Gangnam Style”.

It’s funny, but in the last three months, “Gangnam Style” seems to have found its way into every part of my life. We played it as a gag at my wedding reception. When I visited my wife’s extended family in Taiwan, I didn’t speak much Chinese but I bonded with her 8-year old cousin who knew the steps down pat. At a friend’s wedding in Indonesia, some wedding guests were impressing everyone by doing all the steps perfectly. Of course, everyone saw PSY’s performance on Times Square. And just a few days ago at a friend’s house in New York, their 2-year old daughter was jumping up and down to it. The secretary general of the UN even called it a “force for world peace”. On YouTube, as of this writing it has 1.1 billion views. That’s billion with a B.

Like the rest of the world, I’m not sure why it’s so darned popular, but I also can’t seem to take my eyes off of it. It just seems to have that combination of being ridiculously catchy, ridiculously silly, and ridiculous, and from a dance point of view it’s easy to learn but looks impressive when mastered. Who knows how these crazes start, and who knows how long it’ll last, but  we might as well enjoy it while we can.

So, I downloaded Gangnam Style for 240 Xbox Live Points (if you’re low on Xbox Live Points, you can get more from Amazon), and the video above is that of my wife and me dancing to it the first time.  I was literally panting by the end of one dance…I can’t imagine myself going through 12 more, but I’ll give it my best shot!

So, in order to play the Dance Central 3 challenges, I need to do what I’ve been putting off doing and import all the songs from Dance Central and Dance Central 2. As I said in a previous post, I really like the fact that Harmonix lets you do this; I only wish Ubisoft would follow in its footsteps and let you do the same thing with Just Dance.

The steps are really simple. Here’s how it’s done.

1) First, find your original Dance Central and Dance Central 2 game boxes. Inside both games you’ll find the manual. Flip to the back page and you should see a 16-character code (for Dance Central) or a 25-character code (for Dance Central 2) listed over the words “Hang on to this code to keep on dancin’”.

2) Start up Dance Central 3. The first time you start the game you should get this message:

Don’t leave your songs behind! If you own Dance Central or Dance Central 2, you can import songs from those games into Dance Central 3. Do you want to important songs from previous titles?

Your choices are OKAY, NO, and LATER.

You can do it now, or if you choose to do it later, you’ll go to the Main Menu and select Buy More Songs, and then Song Import Offers.

3) Under Song Import Offers, you can choose Dance Central Import, Dance Central 2 Import, or Enter Other Code. Choose the game whose songs you want to import.

For Dance Central

4) You’ll be brought to a screen where it asks you to “Please enter your code to redeem your Dance Central content”. Enter your 16-character code.

5) You’ll then see a screen where you’ll be asked to confirm your purchase. 400 Microsoft Points will be deducted from your balance (about $5). If you don’t have a points balance, you can always buy a card from Amazon to replenish your balance.

Don’t be thrown off by the Dance Central 2 logos–they obviously designed this process for importing to DC2 but didn’t bother to update it for people going from DC1 > DC3. Incidentally, if you’re already imported from Dance Central to Dance Central 2, all your DC and DC2 songs will get imported when you import from DC2, so you don’t need to import from DC again.

6) The 202.70 MB download will proceed. It’ll take about 5-10 minutes depending on your connection.

For Dance Central 2

4) You’ll be brought to a screen where it says “Enter the 25-character code from your prepaid card.”

5) A screen will say “This code entitles you to download Dance Central 2 POP Key.” Your default storage device (in my case the Hard Drive) is selected. Select Download Now.

6) This first download will complete very quickly and you’ll end up on this screen. Press B to go back.

7) When you exit out, you’ll be brought to a screen where you’ll be told to download the Dance Central 2 Import Pack (739.4 MB). Again, it’ll cost you 400 Microsoft Points.

8) This download will take a good 10 minutes or more. Remember, it’s not just importing the songs, but also all the choreography, graphics, and so on.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t crazy about the fact that I had to pay an additional $10 to import songs that were discs that I’d already paid well over $100 for. But whatever must be must be. The good news is, since I spent 800 points during the New Year New You promotion, I should be getting 100 points back (well, I hope they count this as an “add on”, although given all the quibbling I had to do just to get them to fix their language, who knows? We’ll find out in late February).

The end result? In Dance Central 3 you’ll have a super long list of songs.

All the songs are categorized by the levels defined in Dance Central 3 (Warmup, Simple, Moderate, Tough, Legit, Hardcore, and Off the Hook), and little letters that say “DC” or “DC2″ to the left of the song will identify if it’s from Dance Central or Dance Central 2 respectively. Unfortunately, your high score from the previous game is not carried over, so you’ll have to establish your high scores again from scratch.

What’s nice is that these songs can be used in playlists, something I’d especially welcome in Fitness Mode. All told, I had a whopping 123 songs to choose from after the process was complete.

So that’s how you import DC and DC2 songs into DC3. Now, back to exercising!

Well, the good folks at Harmonix are getting into the act of helping us with our New Year’s weight loss resolutions. They’re introducing “Fitness Challenge Fridays”. The first challenge was issued this past Friday, January 4 and it looks like they’ll be posting a new “challenge” every week.

Unlike the Microsoft promotion, there are no “prizes” for taking part in this Challenge. On the other hand, it looks like Harmonix has done a little homework (as opposed to linking to a search results page with the word “fitness” ) and has hand-selected songs from the original Dance Central, Dance Central 2, and Dance Central 3 that focus on a different goal each week.

For week 1 (January 4 to January 10) the focus is on lower body workout and strengthening of the legs.The songs they’ve selected for you to choose from focus have a lot of squat-like movements for working out the largest muscle groups in your body; your quads, glutes, hamstrings, and calves. By getting some intense activity to these muscles (and getting the soreness out of the way quick), it’ll set up you for additional workouts in the coming weeks.

Here’s a list of the songs that they’ve identified. Even beyond this challenge, you can refer back to this list if you’re looking to set up a custom workout program of your own any time in the year.

Dance Central Songs for Lower Body Workout

• Bass Down Low (DC3)
• Calabria 2008 (DC3)
• Da’ Butt (DC3)
• DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love (DC2)
• Gangnam Style (DLC)
• Get Busy (DLC)
• Get Low (DC3)
• Get Ur Freak On (DC2)
• Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) (DLC)
• Lap Dance (DLC)
• Massive Attack (DC2)
• Moves Like Jagger (DC3
• Now That We Found Love (DC3)
• OMG (DC3)
• Only Girl (In The World) (DLC)
• Party Rock Anthem (DLC)
• Round & Round (DLC)
• Run (I’m A Natural Disaster) (DC2)
• Scenario (DLC)
• Sexy and I Know It (DC3)
• Sexy Chick (DC2)
• Take Over Control (DC3)
• Teach Me How To Dougie (DC3)
• Twisted (DLC)
• We No Speak Americano (DLC)
• You’re A Jerk (DC2)

One thing I really appreciate that Harmonix has done that I wish Ubisoft would let you do for Just Dance 4 is to export songs from older versions of Dance Central and import them into the newest one. It will cost you 400 Microsoft Points for each disc, but at the end of the day that $5 or so will let you play all the songs and keep all your stats in one place, a much better proposition than having to re-purchase every individual song. Granted, since most of us already paid over $50 for the disc you’d think they’d let us do it for free, but I guess they have to get money out of it somehow. The good news is, you’ll only get charged once: if you’ve already paid to transfer songs from DC to DC2, you won’t be charged to move those same songs to DC3. Time permitting, I’ll document the exact process for transferring songs in another post.

Once you have the songs in DC3, you can create a playlist. The “challenge” is for you to create a playlist of 10 songs (10 of the 26 songs are downloadable content that cost 240 points a pop, of course…why not hold us by our ankles and shake the loose change out? ) and then play each playlist all the way through during the week, preferably on Medium or Hard setting where the moves are a lot more demonstrative and the pace much quicker.

Once you’ve completed the “challenge”, you’re encouraged to post to Facebook, the forums, or Twitter. I’ll probably be posting mine on Twitter, assuming I can keep up Here’s the playlist I’ll be setting up:

• Bass Down Low (DC3)
• Da’ Butt (DC3)
• DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love (DC2)
• Gangnam Style (DLC)
• Get Low (DC3)
• Get Ur Freak On (DC2)
• Moves Like Jagger (DC3)
• Run (I’m A Natural Disaster) (DC2)
• Sexy and I Know It (DC3)
• Teach Me How To Dougie (DC3)

Here’s a little added bonus–by doing the Dance Central Fitness Challenge and buying DLC, you’ll be “earning” hours towards the 20 hours of the Xbox Live New Year New You promotion.

UPDATE 1/8/13 10:58 AM – Hooray (sort of). The squeaky wheels gets the grease (sort of). After bugging Microsoft and ePrize (the folks who maintain Xbox Live Rewards), they finally came to some clarity. Their landing page for the promotion has been updated to display the official list of games that are eligible for the “play for 20 hours, get 100 points” promotion AS WELL AS the “buy 800 points in add-ons, get 100 points” promotion. The games are:

• Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012
• Zumba Fitness
• Your Shape Fitness Evolved
• Zumba Fitness: Rush
• Zumba Fitness: Core
• Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure
• UFC Personal Trainer
• EA Sports Active 2
• My Self Defense Coach
• Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout
• Nickelodeon Dance
• Michael Phelps: Push the Limit
• miCoach
• Kinect Sports
• Kinect Sports: Season Two
• Nike+Kinect Training
• Rapala for Kinect
• Dance Central 1
• Dance Central 2
• Dance Central 3
• The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout

Thankfully, they finally updated their FAQS to point to this page instead of a ridiculous search result to Xbox Marketplace games with “fitness” in the listing. If you’ve played Brain Challenge or Power Rangers for 20 hours already, I feel your pain. But if you’ve been hesitant to start playing any of the games on this list, play away. Of course we’ve lost 168 hours of potential playing time already in January, but there are plenty more

Now I’m off to celebrate by downloading some Gangnam Style. Speaking of which, Dance Central 3 has announced a similar program of using Dance Central songs to help with your New Year’s resolutions…no “prizes” except for a thinner waist in their case, but it looks promising and a lot more buttoned up than this promotion. I’ll highlight that on my next post.

I think Microsoft and ePrize should pay me for doing what their product managers, copywriters, Web designers, QA team, and executives all couldn’t. Who’s with me?

UPDATE 1/6/2013 1:30 PM- So, the Twitter conversation has evidently come to an end. The Xbox Live crew is still insisting that their site is completely updated. Unfortunately, if any of their staff there did even 10 seconds of looking into it, they’d realize that:

1) They’re saying that the list of games listed on their landing page represents the list of Eligible Games you can play for 20 hours to get your 100 points. Okay, if that’s the case, maybe they should change the paragraph heading to say “Eligible Games” instead of “Eligible Game Add-ons”

20 They’re saying that the list of eligible game add-ons is here. What they fail to realize is that this is just a keyword search for any game on their site that contains the word “fitness” and doesn’t include what should be eligible titles such as Dance Central 3 or Kinect Sports.

Honestly, at this point I’m thinking it’s probably not worth spending too much time; if they don’t care enough about this promotion to provide us with accurate information, maybe you and I shouldn’t either. Just play your Kinect games as much as you can, and if you get the 100 points, that’s great, if you don’t, no big loss.

UPDATE 1/4/2013 7:00 AM – So, I’ve been having a little back-and-forth with the Xbox Rewards Twitter folks for the last few days. To their credit, they’re pretty responsive. But unfortunately, they have yet to come up with a suitable solution. They sent me a “fixed” link of add-ons that doesn’t even match their landing page. As for the FAQ for eligible games to meet the 20 hours, they “fixed” the link in their FAQ by pointing to the landing page–which still doesn’t contain any information.

Hopefully in the coming days they’ll put together a real list, but it’s not looking good. As 4 days in January have passed already, about 96 hours of potential playing time has been lost. At this point, I’m beginning to wonder whether the $1.25 worth of points is really worth it

UPDATE 1/2/2013 2:00 PM – Well, it seems that the folks who man the Twitter account of Xbox Live Rewards are sticking by their guns and saying that the 16 games below are the ones you need to play 20 or more hours of. This means you get credit for playing “Brain Challenge” but not for “Dance Central 3″.

I’m still holding out hope that someone at Microsoft will come to their senses and realize that the list below is not a complete one, but until then the official word is in. More updates as I see them.

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So, it seems that Microsoft is getting into the action (literally) of incentivizing you to work out to start 2013 right. They’ve just announced a program where you can earn up to 200 Microsoft Points for working out with your Xbox this January. Here’s the scoop:

1) You can get 100 Microsoft Points for playing 20 hours or more of any combination of Kinect Fitness games. Here’s a supposed list.

- Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012
- Zumba Fitness
- Your Shape Fitness Evolved
- Zumba Fitness: Rush
- Zumba Fitness Core
- Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure
- UFC Personal Trainer
- EA Sports Active 2
- Self Defense Training Camp
- Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout
- Nickelodeon Dance
- Michael Phelps: Push the Limit
- miCoach
- Power Rangers Super Samurai
- Brain Challenge

I say “supposed” because I pulled this official list of supported games from their FAQ page (look under “Offers & Promotions”), but I’m guessing that this is not a complete list; whoever coded this link just lazily did a search results page for the word “Fitness” on Xbox Marketplace, which doesn’t even pull up titles like The Biggest Loser and Kinect Sports nor other games on our list of best Kinect fitness games, but does inexplicably pull up “Brain Challenge” (presumably because their description contains the phrase “mental fitness”).

Still, until they update the FAQ page you’re probably better off sticking to the titles on this list to make sure you get your points. I’ve reached out to Microsoft to ask them if they can update their FAQ and provide me with a “real” list, and I’ll update this page accordingly if and when they respond.

In order to earn your 100 points, you need to make sure of the following:

1. You’re signed up for both Xbox LIVE and Xbox LIVE Rewards (http://rewards.xbox.com/) and using the same Gametag for both.
2. You’re signed in to this account when you’re playing the games and finish all your play before 1/31/13 at midnight UTC (that’s 8:00 PM Eastern time, 5:00 PM Pacific time).
3. You play the games from the aforementioned list

2) To earn an additional 100 Microsoft Points, purchase 800 Microsoft Points worth of add-ons for the following fitness games:

• Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012
• Zumba Fitness
• Your Shape Fitness Evolved
• Zumba Fitness: Rush
• Zumba Fitness: Core
• Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure
• UFC Personal Trainer
• EA Sports Active 2
• My Self Defense Coach
• Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout
• Nickelodeon Dance
• Michael Phelps: Push the Limit
• miCoach
• Kinect Sports
• Kinect Sports: Season Two
• Nike+Kinect Training
• Rapala for Kinect
• Dance Central 1
• Dance Central 2
• Dance Central 3
• The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout

This list is from the official announcement of this promotion. Again, the list referenced in their FAQ doesn’t even match this list. But in this case I’d feel comfortable using the list on their promotion page. I know for one, I’ll be living PSY’s pockets even more with a download of Gangnam Style

Points will post to your Xbox Live account before February 27, 2013. Unfortunately, the points won’t show up as pending until the end, so you won’t be able to tell if you really earned them until you see the points in your account. I wish Microsoft could really button up their sloppy handling of promotions like these, but until they do take copious screenshots and work out longer than 20 hours to make sure you hit the mark.

More news as it develops. In the meantime, happy exercising!

A few retailers have some great deals going on with the best Kinect Fitness games out there, great if you just got a brand new Xbox 360 and want to work off some of the weight you’ve been gaining since Thanksgiving (and yes, I fall under that category).

Nike+ Kinect Training, ranked #1 on our list of best Kinect fitness games, is on sale for $10 off at Amazon at $39.99 vs. the normal $49.99.

Alternatively, Best Buy also has Nike+ Kinect Training for $39.99. Best Buy also has a great deal where if you buy a
Nike+ – SportWatch GPS Powered By TomTom with Sensor – Black/Yellow, you can get save $50 if you buy it with the Kinect game. Just click on the “Special Offers” link under either product.

Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 is on sale for Amazon at $19.99. This currently ranks as #6 on our list of best Kinect fitness games. If you see a higher price, click on the Amazon link on the bottom right of the page where it says “More Buying Options” to get the $19.99 price.

It seems that Kinect developers are either unable or unwilling to take chances. Most Kinect games seem to follow the same basic patterns—you dance, you pose in a certain position, you run in place, you pretend to turn an imaginary steering wheel, and so on.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first heard of Majesco’s NBA Baller Beats. But after playing it, I can honestly say it is one of the best Kinect games to date. The developers took big chances on this one, and they really paid off.

The best way to describe NBA Baller Beats is that it’s like Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero, but using a basketball. You basically do basketball drills to a beat. This may sound ridiculous, even sacrilegious to some, but I found it to be a wonderfully compelling game that can appeal to both kids who are just starting out with basketball, as well as experienced ball handlers who want to hone their skills.

Majesco has done a lot to make the point that this is a game that hard-core basketball players can enjoy. It comes bundled with an official full-size Spalding NBA Game Ball Series Outdoor ball (worth about $20 in itself). This isn’t a toy—this is an official NBA size and weight ball that you can take out to the court. In fact, the ball was so real that I couldn’t use it in my third-floor apartment without the neighbors downstairs thinking there was an earthquake (in order to write this review, I ended up replacing the basketball with a playground ball which didn’t work quite as well but did give me a good feel for the game).

When you start playing Baller Beats, the system will make sure you have enough space to play. The ball needs to be a minimum of 6 feet from your Kinect Sensor, and the camera must have a clear view of the entire play space window, i.e., a clear view from your head to your feet. Once you’ve met these conditions, hold your hand over the Start button to begin.

The main menu has five options: How to Play, Locker Room, Versus, Options, and Play Now.

How to Play contains an interactive tutorials that will introduce you to the basics of the game. Just like in DDR or Guitar Hero, you’ll see a vertical “runway” of lines scrolling downward. Some of the lines will have basketball icons, and when these icons hit the center of the screen, you literally dribble your basketball to get a point. If the icon’s to the left of the line, you dribble with your left hand; if it’s to the right you dribble with your right. The more accurate the dribble, the more points you get.

In addition, from time to time in the scrolling lines there’ll also be icons of basketball moves, such as crossover dribbles, passes, and pump fakes. These will also be displayed to the bottom right of the screen so you always know what move is coming up (reminiscent of Just Dance or Dance Central). The better you perform these, the higher your score will be.

While this sounds a little complicated, after a while you’ll practice the patterns and the icons and won’t need to think too much about them. The music helps as well, as every bounce and special move is done to the beat of the music.

By the way, I should mention that you might notice that the ball in my video is bouncing all over the place. That’s because I live in a third story apartment, and there is NO way I am able to play the game using the real basketball that’s included in the game, or for that matter any kind of basketball. So I ended up replacing the basketball with a playground ball. I imagine there will be a lot of nasty comments on YouTube about how terrible I am, but I’ll challenge any of those naysayers in advance to try to dribble a four square ball!
Once you’ve “graduated” from the tutorial you can go to “Move School” where you’ll practice more advanced moves. The advanced moves get surprisingly advanced and are legitimately great ball handling skills for any aspiring basketball player to learn.

I’d suggest going through all the tutorials before starting the game, as you’ll need to get used to handling the ball while looking up at the screen and not the ball, which itself isn’t a bad skill to master (you don’t see Kobe and LeBron staring at their hands while dribbling).
When you click “Play Now” you start out by picking a venue: NBA Court, Theme Park, Rooftop, or Beach (or you can let the system choose one randomly). You then choose a skill level: Rookie, Pro, or Baller. Rookie is suitable for kids and people new to basketball, while Pro is legitimately a setting where a great ball handler can really show off some skills.

Next, you see the track list. The songs are all licensed tracks by some of the hottest hip-hop, pop, and electronic music stars. The tracks are:

Amazing (Kanye West feat. Young Jeezy)
One (Yeasayer)
Music Makes Me Feel So Good (Static Revenger)
Canon (Justice)
Let It (edit Remix) (MachineDrum feat Melo. X)
Roll Up (Wiz Khalifa)
Party Rock Anthem (LMFAO)
Disparate Youth (Santigold)
Tightrope (Janelle Monae)
Night By Night (Chromeo)
C’mon (Catch Em By Surprise) Tiesto vs. Diplo ft. Busta Rhymes
Championship Fever (Najee)
Blue Sky (Common)
It’s Okay (Cee Lo Green)
Slam (Onyx)
So Good (B.o.B)
Bust a Move (Young MC)
Chillin (Wale feat. Lady Gaga)
Surf Hell (Little Barrie)
Satellite (Rise Against)
New Fang (Them Crooked Vultures)
It’s Tricky (Run DMC)
Antibiotics (Calling All Cars)
Get Your Freak On (Missy Elliot)
Don’t Sweat the Technique (Erik B and Rakim)
Bangarang (Skrillex)
Obstacle 1 (Interpol)
Access Hollywood (Consequence)
Stylo (Gorillaz feat. Bobby Womack and Mos Def)
Another One Bites the Dust (Queen)

Each song is classified by difficulty and each runs about 2-3 minutes long.

Once you select a song, you’ll see a countdown from 3 to 1, and then you’ll start your drill. You’ll see an icon of yourself in the upper right-hand corner so you can see your stance and technique (it’s very cool how they put your body in grey, but the ball is a color video image of the actual ball you’re using).

I was pleasantly surprised at how accurate the Kinect tracking was. As you get to more advanced techniques such as crossovers between the legs, behind-the-back passes, pump fakes, and pull dribbles, the system will detect nuances such as whether you’re properly moving the ball behind your back or between your legs. The motion control isn’t perfect, but it’s awfully good. You really do need to perform the drills perfectly to get a perfect score.

I was also pleasantly surprised at how good a workout this was. After a few songs my heart rate was actually up. This is one of those rare games where you “get a workout without realizing you’re working out”.

As you earn points, you can go to the “NBA Store” under “Locker Room” to “buy” extras such as different balls, player posters, runway textures, full music tracks, and player cards. It’s good incentive to get you to come back and play more, but in all honesty the game is so fun that you won’t you’ll come back for the enjoyment of it. The Locker Room menu also allows you to turn on and off snapshots that can take your picture while you’re in action.

There’s also a multiplayer mode called “Versus” where up to 8 players can compete against each other. Players don’t play simultaneously; they take turns to see who can score the highest on a given song.

What I find brilliant about NBA Baller Beats is that it’s the perfect game for a very underserved demographic in motion gaming: boys, teen guys, and young men. Sure, guys can enjoy games like Dance Central or Just Dance, but that’s mostly when there’s family—or girls—in the room. This is finally a game that a group of young men can get together, enjoy, and even improve their ball handling techniques. (In the interest of equal time, and being a fan of women’s college basketball, I’ll add that women can certainly enjoy and excel in it as well).
This game is not suitable for certain people. I think kids who are too young may grow frustrated quickly at the precision that’s needed to succeed in this game. Also, if you live on an upper floor of a house or apartment, this game might not be for you unless you take out a whole lot of homeowner’s insurance. One option might be to substitute a soccer ball or a playground ball for a basketball, but the experience just isn’t quite the same.

Bottom line, I really, really liked this game. I especially liked the fact that Majesco took a chance at trying something new, and it really paid off. In many ways, I see this as one of the first “next generation” Kinect games that go beyond the rudimentary “hey, isn’t the Kinect cool” type of gameplay we’ve seen over and over again, and really start to explore more natural and practical applications for the Kinect. I hope to see more of this “out of the box” kind of development in the future.

If you don’t have one yet, here’s a great deal on a new Kinect at eBay. The deal is for a brand new Kinect sensor at only $99, including Kinect Adventures, Gunstringer, and Fruit Ninja Kinect. If you have an Xbox and have been on the fence about getting a sensor, this is probably the best deal you’ll find that doesn’t involve purchasing it in a bundle. But hurry, it looks like this will sell out soon!

Dancing works pretty much the same as previous versions of the game. You have one Zumba instructor whom you’ll mirror the moves of, reinforced by other dancers in the background doing the same moves. Some of the songs are easier to dance to than others at first, but because of the nature of Zumba the steps are repeated a couple times throughout each song, so if you play enough times eventually you’ll memorize and perfect them. Animated visual cues will come on the screen to let you know to get ready for the next series of steps. You’ll also see a little silouette of your body in the lower left hand corner that you can match against the instructor. The one thing I thought was missing was some kind of status bar to tell you how much of the song was left.

I’ve heard some people complain that the dancing can be repetitive, but I think those people fail to understand the point of Zumba: repetition of certain “classic” dance steps is a key characteristic of Zumba, as it helps make the class accessible to both beginners and advanced alike, plus it helps people start burning calories quicker. In other words, it’s an exercise program first and a dance program second. If you’re looking for more elaborate choreography, I’d stick with a dance game like Dance Central or Just Dance.

I was very, very impressed by the motion detection in this game. When you hit the target move, you’ll be rewarded by seeing one of three bars light up (either Nice, Hot, or ZUMBA!), and if you keep up a string of consecutive accurate moves you’ll see things start to flash.  For the most part I found the accuracy to be excellent, even down to detecting which arm and leg you’re moving (something the Wii, for example, could never do). Just as important, the game didn’t give false positives either. When I tried most songs for the first time I usually scored about a 50%, which was enough for 3 of 5 stars. But as I repeated the songs and started to memorize the moves, I found my score and my accuracy going higher. One other little detail they’ve added is that if you really mess up on a song, the instructor at the end of the song will let you know with a shrug or a little head shake, unlike previous versions where the instructor would jump up and down excitedly no matter how you did.

Something else I liked was that even though my Kinect setup is compact (I only have 6-7 feet between me and the Kinect Sensor), I could still play the game without rearranging my whole living room as other games like Nike+ Kinect make me do. Even though my arms and legs are partially cut off in the video image, the game still does a pretty good job of tracking me.

At the end of each dance you’ll see your level, your score, the calories you burned, and the percentage of moves you got right. You’ll also see a rating from 1 to 5 stars.  You’ll have the option of taking your picture (thankfully it doesn’t randomly take pictures of you without your consent), as well as sharing your progress on Facebook.

Full Class lets you take virtual Zumba classes, which are basically single songs strung together. You can choose Short Classes (about 19-25 minutes), Mid-Length Class (about 44-48 minutes), or Full-Length Classes (about 57-62 minutes). You can also put together Custom Classes choosing your own duration and song lists. One major improvement they’ve made is the inclusion of low intensity songs that can help you properly warm up and stretch before exercises as well as cool down afterwards.

Learn The Steps is Zumba Fitness Core’s tutorial section. You can learn four basic steps for Salsa (Sidestep, Forward and Back, Travel, Backstep), Merengue (March, Two Step, Six Count, Zumba Shuffle), Samba (Basic Samba, Samba Lunge, Samba Travel, Box Step), Bollywood (Bhangra Cross-Stomp, Bhangra Bounce, Pony Step, Rocking Step), Reggaeton (Stomp, Knee Lift, Sestroza, Bounce), and Cumbia (Two Step, Forward and Back, Sleepy Leg, Sugar Cane). After you select a style and a step, you need to match Beto dancing that step in slow motion. As with Dance Central his arms or legs will glow red if you’re completely missing the target. Once you get the steps right you can try it in real time. The nice thing about perfecting the moves in the tutorial is that a lot of these basic steps are used throughout the songs.

Progress Tracker is a much improved section of the game that helps you see the progress you’re making and helps keep you motivated to come back over and over. Statistics lets you see graphs of your score, time played, accuracy, and calories burned by day, week, or month. If you play often, it’s really satisfying to go back and see the history of all your exercise. Achievements lets you collect Xbox achievements for accomplishing certain goals, such as completing a tutorial to burning 2500 calories to achieving 80% technique in three songs. A new option called Goals lets you set your own goals by time played, calories burned, and number of routines danced in a certain number of days; once you set a goal you can also share it with your friends on Xbox Live and track everyone’s progress under “Community Goals”. Bonus Content lets you view content (i.e. bonus videos) you unlock in the course of playing the game. Leaderboards lets you compare your scores to the high scores of other players on Xbox Live (hint: you or I are not coming close).

The Zumba World section lets you purchase downloadable content, read Zumba News, or find a local Zumba Class.

The game is not without little imperfections, of course. Selecting menu items using the cursor can be a little clunky, and voice commands for me were hit or miss. I don’t necessarily blame Majesco for this, as this seems to be common among many Kinect games. Also, if I’m going to be real nitpicky, it was possible to “fake” the motion detection in certain cases, but overall I’d still say this is far and away better than any previous versions. And to get really, really nitpicky, I find the naming convention of these games to be very confusion: I’m not sure why they don’t call it “Zumba 2 and 3″ versus “Zumba Rush and Core”.

Another big disappointment of this game is that it’s not supported by Kinect PlayFit as of this writing. I’m not sure if this is the fault of Majesco or Microsoft, but ultimately it’s in both of their interests to make this work eventually.

Overall, I was extremely impressed by what Majesco did with Zumba Fitness Core. They could have easily phoned it in and basically released the same game as Zumba Fitness Rush and still made boatloads of money. Instead, they effectively moved the platform forward with better graphics, more instructors, more songs, and more features to help incentivize you to come back to the game again and again. I also like the fact that with Community Goals and Leaderboards they’re dipping their toes into some of the more communal and social aspects of Zumba, which after all one of the biggest appeals of Zumba. Hopefully as technology improves they can continue to refine this. Perhaps some day we’ll be able to have real Zumba group classes right on our Kinect, with real people dancing in the background instead of just computerized images

Harley Pasternak is a personal fitness trainer to the Stars. If you’ve ever watched Lady Gaga, Jessica Simpson, Hillary Duff, Kanye West, Katy Perry, Megan Fox, or Robert Pattison, you’re familiar with Harley Pasternak’s work. He’s the personal trainer for all of those celebrities. He created something called the “5-Factor Fitness program” for his celebrity clients that includes eating simple meals that used 5 ingredients 5 times a day, and doing workout routines in 5-minute sets. It was perfect for his clients who often didn’t have time to fit healthy diets or length workout routines when they were on tour or on location. His method was so well-received that in 2005 he published his book, 5-Factor Fitness: The Diet and Fitness Secret of Hollywood’s A-List, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout for Kinect is the video game version of his diet and exercise program for the Xbox 360. The game’s premise is that just as Harley Pasternak is a personal trainer to the stars, through the magic of video games he can now be your personal trainer too.  And the game pulls it off pretty convincingly.

When you start the game you’re greeted with a catchy beat as the game loads, followed by the voice of Harley Pasternak welcoming you to his Hollywood Workout. As with many games, you start by selecting an Xbox profile. Sadly, this title is not supported by Kinect Playfit, so the calories you burn will not count in the Playfit app.

You start by inputting your weight. You’re then asked if you’re “using a Harley Bar”. At first I thought this was some kind of strange new energy food that Harley was hocking–turns out it’s not quite so elaborate as that. It’s basically hand weight in the form of a big stick that you hold while exercising. I notice the only place that sold these were QVC and HSN, and they seem to be out of stock at both places right now. If you find a long metal pipe around the house, I think it’ll do about the same thing.

You’re then brought to the main menu. I’m never sure if it’s me or not, but I found the Kinect tracking to be off a bit. Sometimes I’d have to wave and wave before seeing a cursor come on the screen, if it comes up at all. I did get the option to use my Xbox controller, but in certain cases that didn’t quite work either. There were one or two instances where it got so bad that I had to reset the box and restart the game.

You can choose from the following:

1) Complete Programs. There are basically three “Complete Programs” you can choose that correspond to beginner, intermediate, or advanced. They come in 5 or 10 week lengths. Your choices are:

1. Light Body Toning (5 week or 10 week). Ease your way into the Hollywood Workout with this program. Don’t worry, you’ll still achieve some great body shaping and toning!
2. Getting Red Carpet Ready (5 week or 10 week). Get that body red carpet ready with this program. This intermediate program includes the exercises contained in the previous program, plus a few more.
3. A-List Celebrity Workout (5 week or 10 week). My most intense program! This program adds even more exercises and engages your entire body for maximum activity. Hollywood, look out!

2) Single Workouts. These are 25-minute workouts you can start right way, which have warm up exercises, cool down exercises, and typically 3 individual workout routines in the middle that each last, you guessed it, 5 minutes each. Your choices are:

1. Surf ‘n Sand – Like to surf or paddleboard? Get that body ready to ride the waves with this workout that includes Reverse Flys, Lunges, and the Superman.
2. Super Hero – What does it take to prime your body for a life of fighting crime? Find out with this workout that includes Hammer Curls, Jump Squats, and the Superman.
3. Diva in Training – You’ll be able to dance the night away after mastering this workout that includes Chest Flys, Skater Lunges, and Side Bends.
4. Swimsuit Season – Never wear your favorite swimsuit anymore? Let’s change that with this workout that includes Lateral Raises, Hamstring Curls, and Side Bends.
5. Sports Athlete – Get a leg up on the competition with this workout that includes Push Ups, Skater Lunges, and Bicycle Crunches.
6. Lose That Baby Weight – Get back to that body you had before the kids with this workout that includs Tricep Kick Backs, Deadlifts, and Seated Twists.
7. Beach Body – Don’t be afraid to show off that beach body with this workout that includes Lying Tricep Extensions, Squats, and Crunches.
8. Strut The Runway – Get ready to wear your favorite skinny clothes again with this workout that includes Shoulder Presses, Hamstring Curls, Crunches.
9. Action Movie Star – Do you own movie stunts with this workout that includes Hammer Curls, Jump Squats, and Double Crunches.
10. Upper Body Burner – Strengthen that torso with this workout that includes Shoulder Presses, Lying Tricep Extensions, and Chest Flys.
11. Sexy Legs – You’ll love showing off your legs after doing this workout that includes Lunges, Deadlifts, and Squats.
12. Ab Toner – Feel that burn in your core! This ab-strengthening workout includes Bicycle Crunches, Double Crunches, and Seated Twists.

3) Fitness Tracker – This part of the game has five options.

1. Workout Journal tracks workout days, time spent, calories burned, “Harley Points” earned, weight loss, and average reps per session averaged over days, weeks, and months. This is a great feature if you’ll be using this game exclusively for working out. But sadly, this game is not supported by Kinect PlayFit, so all your hard work will not be included in those totals.
2. Second, you can adjust your weight at any time by going to Personal Data.
3. Photos displays photos that you can take throughout your workout. If you’re on a weight loss regimen, this is a pretty good way to track your progress.
4. Exercises shows a list of every individual exercise, how many reps you average, and how many total reps you’ve done in the history of playing the game.
5. Finally, Achievements are the typical kind of “badges” you see in games like this where you can collect rewards for hitting certain milestones, from performing 200 minutes of cardio to walking a mile to completing 15,000 reps.

4) Videos lets you see Harley provide nutrition tips, lifestyle advice, and workout tips by video. These are the same videos you’ll see throughout the game.

5) Multiplayer – this option supposedly lets you create challenges against other players. When I selected it, it said “This gamer profile is unable to play on Xbox LIVE. Please check your Family Settings or obtain an Xbox LIVE Gold Membership”. Since I don’t have an Xbox LIVE Gold Membership, I’m guessing this part of the game doesn’t apply to me.

I decided to try out a “Complete Program”, selecting my goal as “A-List Celebrity Workout”. After a video introduction by Harley, you’re then sent to a screen where you see an animated version of Harley. Behind him are two ladies in workout garb who’ll be doing all the exercises with you. The animation is not bad in that you can see a pretty good representation of the proper form for each exercise.

One thing I noticed were shameless plugs for New Balance and SmartWater, both disguised as “tips”; the first being that you should wear proper training shoes prior to any workout, and the latter being that you should keep yourself hydrated, both with his logos. I suppose this may have been a way the publisher kept the price low (it’s $29.99 as of this writing), but there was definitely something off-putting about there being ads in the game.

You start with warm-up exercises and then proceed to the aerobic and calisthenic exercises. There’s little  you haven’t seen before in other exercise videos and games, you have jumping jacks, squat jumps, ice skaters, and so on. There are only 30 unique exercises through the game, but put together properly they are very effective. Here’s a full list of individual exercises:

• Bicycle Crunches
• Crunches
• Deadlifts
• Double Crunches
• Hammer Curls
• Hamstring Curls
• Jump Squats
• Lateral Raises
• Lunges
• Chest Flys
• Lying Tricep
• Push Ups
• Reverse Flys
• Seated Twists
• Shoulder Presses
• Side Bends
• Skater Lunges
• Squats
• Superman
• Tricep Kick Backs
• Ice Skaters
• Jog
• Jumping Jacks
• Trunk Crosses
• Jump Rope
• Mountain Climbers
• Punches
• Side Shuffles

One thing I found a little odd at first but which I grew to like is that Harley doesn’t just do the exercises with you–he’ll talk (and talk, and talk) throughout the routine and at some points he’ll get up and walk around. At first it threw me off, as I was focusing on him while doing my reps. But as I thought about it, this way it felt more realistic, as if I were in a ”real training session” with Harley. After all, in a real training class your trainer rarely gets on the floor and does all the exercises with you as you’re doing it.

While he’s walking around and talking he’s verbally providing very precise details of why you’re doing the exercise, what the proper form is, what’s happening to your body, what you’re feeling, and other helpful information similar to what a real personal trainer might tell you during exercises. In this sense, it was one of the more realistic “personal training sessions” I’ve experienced in a video game.

Granted, as with all videos and exercises it does get repetitive. And the game doesn’t quite have the “elements of fun” that I think a great video game exercise program should have. Instead, it’s a fairly dry and routine set of reps.

The motion control on the game is passable. There are arrows that cue you for doing each rep, but I found that almost any movement would trigger a response from the game. There’s a little silhouette of yourself in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, but it’s kind of a stretch (no pun intended) to try to compare your form with the form of the ladies in the background.

Overall, I’d give this game 3 stars out of 5. It’s really nothing special, but then again it does a pretty good job of capturing Harley Pasternak’s exercise philosophy and regimen in a video game. If you’re already a Harley fan, own his books, follow his diet, and enjoy his appearances on morning talk shows, I’d say this is a worthwhile purchase, especially at the low price of $30. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a game that balances fun and exercise, I’d go to far superior games such as Nike+ Kinect or Adidas MiCoach.

The world of fitness video games has come a long way. The original Xbox and PS2 had a game called Yourself!Fitness which was essentially a glorified exercise video. That game was ported to the Wii and renamed “My Fitness Coach”. Around that time, Wii Fit was released by Nintendo that started a revolution in video fitness names that even spawned the new phrase “exergaming”.

EA Sports brought exergaming to the next level with the release of EA Sports Active 2, which it released first to the Wii and then to the PS3 and Xbox 360. It brought a lot of innovation, from professionally designed exercise routines to an effective multi-week regimen. Unfortunately, EA all but gave up on this product, leaving the door wide open for someone to take over the mantle of best video game exercise program.

As readers of the blog know, I tend to divide fitness video games into two categories: “fun” motion games like Kinect Star Wars and Kung Fu Live where you get a workout just in the course of playing a game, and “pure” exercise games that are designed from the ground-up to be workout games. In the world of “pure” fitness games, so far there have been two contenders for being the best on the Kinect: Your Shape: Fitness Evolved and Adidas MiCoach.

I’m happy to say that from what I’ve seen do far, Nike+ Kinect Training powers its way to the top of the list of all Kinect Fitness games. It has the most accurate motion detection and interface of all the workout games I’ve seen to date, has a truly innovative fitness test, and puts together workout routines that really feel personalized for you.

While the Adidas game had appearances by animated versions of very recognizable athletes such as Dwight Howard and Eric Berry, with Nike you have animated versions of Alex Molden or Marie Pervis, both best known as Nike certified trainers (although Molden did spend 9 years in the NFL). I found that fact that these are actual trainers lends a bit more credibility to the training, as opposed to other games which hire big name athletes or pop stars to drive sales. When they talk you through things like proper form and posture during your exercises, it’s clear they really know what they’re talking about .

The concept of the game is quite simple. You start out by selecting your goal (such as Get Strong to increase your power and build explosiveness, Get Toned to develop lean muscle and muscle definition, or Get Lean to maximize calorie and fat burn). Then, you go through a fitness assessment, after which you’ll get a customized circuit training routine to do over the next four weeks. In other video games I tried, the assessment is really just smoke and mirrors–however you do on your “fitness test” those games will give you the exact same workout routine and call it a “personalized one”. With Nike+ Kinect, the workouts I was given really feel customized to my exact goals.

The Fitness Challenge basically runs you through a series of exercises, using the Kinect to measure both how well your form is and how many reps of each exercise you’re doing. You’ll see a video image of your animated trainer and a silhouette of yourself next to him or her. One thing to keep in mind is that you need a minimum of 8 feet in front of your Kinect sensor with a clear view of the floor, and you’ll also need a good 8-10 feet from left to right for certain exercises where you’ll be jumping from side to side.

Each exercise is similar in that you’ll see your trainer to the left of the screen, and you’ll see a silhouette of your body to the right. Your silhouette will be orange at first but will glow blue when you’re using the correct form. The Kinect is extremely precise and did a great job of gauging whether I was doing the exercises right each time.

The first part of the assessment tests your lower body and upper body mobility by having you strike a few poses (first lying down and raising each leg, and then standing up and stretching with your arms behind your back).

The next part of the assessment has you doing a variety of exercises, from a hop and stick (this is the one that requires a ton of space from left to right), a squat jump. What’s really cool about this is that not only does the system judge your performance, it’ll also give you detailed data that you can try to beat each time you do the exercise; for example, the squat jump will tell you your vertical leap in inches.

There’s a cool exercise that tests your speed, reaction and agility, where you have to hop and jump to various targets on the ground. You’re also tested on squats, push-ups, and high knee sprints. Again, I loved how you could set a benchmark and then try to beat it with each rep you do. A bar on the bottom of the screen will show you how good your form is; the more it fills up the better you’re doing. I also loved how the system displayed things like time and reps; it’s stylistically integrated into the background of the scenery in a way that’s easy to read and has a certain “coolness” factor.

Motion sensing was excellent, something I always try to test with these kinds of games. I tried to throw it off several times, but it seemed to do a great job of keeping up with me.

After your evaluation you’re given something called a “unique fuel print” an interesting metric that tracks your “Fitness Score” on one side and your “Athleticism” on the other side. During the test you basically establish a benchmark and then every four week you’re given the same test to see how much you’ve improved. I started with both numbers in the 30s, which I knew meant I had a LOT of room for improvement.

You’re also set up with a custom 4-week workout that focuses on your goals as well as things from your fitness evaluation that need improvement. There’s a cool visual representation that shows the system picking the right exercises for you.

The game, not surprisingly, is pretty well integrated into the whole Nike+ system. If you have a Nike+ FuelBand the game will connect with that. The game tells you how many “NikeFuel” points you earn after each workout.

One thing I also love about the game is that it’s supported by Kinect PlayFit, so calories burned will be counted along with all your other PlayFit-compatible games.

The one thing I wish this title had was more “fun” activities where you could get exercise by simulating real sports. This is something that other titles such as Your Shape: Fitness Evolved and EA Sports Active 2 both have that provide some nice variety and diversion to keep the workouts from getting too monotonous. Nike+ Training is more like a virtual experience at a gym, so if you have a tough time getting motivated to go to the gym every day, chances are you might have a tough time keeping up with regular workouts with this game. That said, the game does  ”basic training and exercise” better than any game before it, and makes a great addition to your Kinect workout game collection.

Microsoft has a great deal going on at the moment where if you spend 1600 Microsoft Points from a select list of games, they’ll credit you with 240 extra points. If you’ve wanted to get add-ons for your Kinect Fitness games, now would be a pretty good time.

Heres a list add-ons for some of the fitness games we’ve featured on this blog that you can mix and match to get to 1600:

Heres a complete list of all eligible titles.

You’ll get the points within 96 hours (4 days) of purchasing with a total of 1600 points.

There are a couple of options in Adidas miCoach for Kinect which I’d categorize into “hardcore”, “casual fitness” and “fun”.

The hardcore part of the game is called “Training Plans”. When you start out, you choose the sport you want to be trained in. You can choose basketball, tennis, soccer, football, running. There’s also a “getting started” option that gets you acclimated to the system, as well as general fitness for men and women.

Once you choose a training program you’ll be paired up with a professional in that sport, each of whom is a superstar in his or her respective sport.

Tennis: Ana Ivanovic, Andrea Petkovic, and Fernando Verdasco
Football: CJ Spiller, Eric Berry, Jozy Altidore, Von Miller
Soccer: Gareth Bale, Jose Mourinho, Kaka
Basketball: Josh Smith, Dwight Howard, Jrue Holiday
Track: Tyson Gay, Jessica Ennis

Computerized versions of the athletes will be your instructors throughout the training program. In some cases they look uncannily realistic, and in other cases they look, well, like computerized version. All of their voices are real.

Each training plan focuses on a different strength or conditioning goal, generally on building strength, increasing speed, or maintaining a level of fitness throughout the season. In turn, each of these goals has options within them. Once you choose a goal and an option under the goal, you’ll get set up with a workout program. A typical program will consists of 4 sessions a week over a period of about 3 weeks. The sessions are not easy–they average about 40 to 90 minutes each.

The sessions themselves are basically the athletes taking you through sets of strength and conditioning exercises such as lunges, squats, push-ups, etc. They’re specially designed to focus in on the sport and goals you chose. What’s very cool is not only will the athlete talk you through the exercises, at certain points he or she will give you some information on why this exercise is important for your sport. After completing a certain number of exercises with each athlete, you can also unlock “master class” videos where they’ll share additional insider tips.

I’d say training plans are for athletes of any level who want to start training the right way, but who may not have the time or the funds to hire a professional strength and conditioning coach.

The “fun” part of the game is called “Training Games”. For me, this was absolutely the best part of the game. They are basically simulations of real sports. In the basketball simulation, you’re shooting baskets. You bend down to pick up a ball, aim, and shoot with the same motion you’d use to shoot a real basketball. The simulation feels uncannily real. As with real basketball, it takes a little trial and error to get your aim and your motion right, but once you do there is not a game that comes closer to virtual reality than this one (your on-screen position on the court will even move as you move your body). Other Kinect developers should take note.

You also have a soccer simulation. This is where the Kinect version has an advantage over the PS3 version. In the PS3 version you’re a goalie blocking shots. With the Kinect version, you’re a scorer kicking a ball into the goal, either by kicking a volley or doing a chest trap and then kicking the ball. Again, while precision took a bit of getting used to, this felt more like real soccer than any other video game before it. Although as you can see in the video I did encounter a bug where the game wouldn’t end no matter how much I flailed my arms.

Finally, there’s a tennis simulation. You get forehands, backhands, and smashes and have to knock down a stack of blocks on the other court a la a weird 3D version of “Pong”. While the Kinect isn’t precise enough to let you finesse shots, it’s close enough an experience to real tennis to be very enjoyable, and of course it has you moving around.

The “casual fitness” portion of the game is called “Conditioning”. This is sort of a combination of “Training Plans” and “Training Games”, where you’ll do a much smaller number of reps, take a rest period, and then end it off with a Training Game. This is the thing to use if you just want to do a quick 20-30 minute workout every night.

The all-important question with games like this is–how precise are the motion controls? I found them to be pretty good, but not perfect.

This is definitely an game the Kinect is perfectly suited for. The motion control was near flawless when I was doing upright exercises (and unlike the PS3, I could hold weights in both hands without having to fiddle with a controller). Motion detection did get spotty when I had to get down on the floor (even when the Kinect had a full view of me on the floor). Happily, if the system realizes it’s not tracking you properly, it’ll give you a “pass” on that particular exercise.

One major annoyance is that a few times my Kinect Sensor would lower itself without warning and force me to re-calibrate it. I’m not sure if this is a problem with the game or just something with my own Kinect, so I won’t dock them any points on this review…yet. But if other Amazon reviewers notice this, definitely mention it so 505 Games will fix it.

There are a couple thing that you should know about this game before considering a purchase:

1) You WILL need to purchase additional equipment. Specifically, you’ll need an exercise stability ball and hand weights to do some of the exercises (the . While you can play the game without these (by skipping the exercises that use them), you won’t get the full benefit of the game without it. The system also supports ANT+ heart rate monitors; if you have one of these your heart rate will displayed on the screen.

2) The game focuses on strength and conditioning, NOT cardio. The reason for this is that the game was built to complement MiCoach.com, which provides both cardio workouts and strength & conditioning workouts. This Kinect game was designed to replace the latter.

3) MiCoach integration is seamless in some areas and terrible in others. On the positive side, once I linked my Xbox to my MiCoach.com account (a simple process), I could see the Training Plan I selected appear on my MiCoach.com profile. On the negative side, the integration is very, very spotty. When I changed my calendar on the Web site, the changes never got reflected on the Xbox. And the descriptions of the workouts on the Web site didn’t match the actual workouts I did on the Xbox. Overall, integration with the Web was a great idea but one very poorly executed by the developers. Hopefully over time they’ll fix this with patches.

4) This is a minor point, but the menu navigation, like in so many other Kinect games, was just horrible. It’s nearly impossible to select a menu item. I’m not sure why this is so hard for so many Kinect developers. The good news is, the game does support voice commands, which I ended up using.

5) You do need a good 7-9 feet of space in front of your Kinect sensor, about 7-10 feet from side to side, and about 1-2 feet above you.

6) Sadly, the game is not supported by Kinect PlayFit.

As for whether you should get this game, I’ll give the same advice I did with the PS3 version. It’s a must-have if a) You are already a member of MiCoach and use that site a lot to track workouts, b) You already own equipment such as a stability ball and hand weights, c) You want to experience the virtual reality sports game (which IMO alone are worth the price of the title), or d) you are a budding athlete at any level who would appreciate the more “professional” caliber advice you get from this game. On the other hand, if you’re looking for casual exercise and want to be selective about which fitness games you buy, I’d hold out and wait to see what Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2013 or Nike+ Kinect have to offer in a few months.

Not sure how long this will last, but our #1 rated Xbox Fitness game, Kung Fu High Impact, is on sale at Amazon for around $15.89 with free Super Saver Shipping (update: it’s now down to $13.99 for some sellers with free shipping)

There’s no telling how long this will last, so grab it while you can! As I wrote in my review of thing game, it does an amazing job capturing your movements, because it’s your actual video image interacting with the action on the screen. At this low price, it’s definitely worth trying out!

Do you own an iPad? Here’s some cool news.

A few months ago Microsoft released the XBOX Live app for iPhone and Android devices. Recently, they’ve updated the app for the iPad. The app is available on the iTunes store. To use it, download and install the app on your iPad. You’ll also need to go into your Xbox to Settings > System > Console Settings > Xbox Companion and change the setting to “Available”

What can you do with the app? You can participate in polls, keep up-to-date with your Xbox LIVE friends, browse through your list of games, and of course, shop for new games.

If you play videos through your Xbox, your iPad becomes a remote where you can play, pause, fast forward, and rewind.

Here’s something I love–you can launch games and apps right from your iPad. One of the very, very annoying things I hate about the Xbox LIVE screen on the console is that it takes way too long to find anything. The usability on Xbox LIVE is just horrendous. Whether I try to find Kinect Fun Labs or Kinect PlayFit, it usually takes me minutes and minutes of navigating around the annoying ads and nonsensical navigational options before I finally get to what I want.

With my iPad, I can connect right to my Xbox and see the last six games or apps I’ve used. Tap on it, and it launches on the console. Pretty cool stuff.

They still have bugs to work out. For example, if I own a game on disc and select quickplay, it’ll ask me to download the demo instead of asking me to put my disc into the unit. Still, it’s pretty cool to see this kind of interaction.

It’ll be interesting to see whether Microsoft expands this integration to include gameplay. Doing so would really take some of the wind out of the sails of the upcoming Wii U with its touchscreen controller.