XboxFitness.org

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 🙂