Review: The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout

Now whip it – into shape – shape it up

Kinect really does work and so does this game. However, there are a couple of problems with kinect itself and this particular game. You need a lot of room space to play kinect. The ideal amount would be 10 x 10 space. The perfect placement for kinect might also take some trial and error. I have my kinect sensor placed about 3 feet off of the ground and The Biggest Loser requires you to do floor exercises. I had a hard time getting kinect to track me while I was on all fours. Maybe not a deal buster, but it was frustrating during the challenge games.

The Biggest Loser also has a horrible menu system. I hope this is game specific menu fail, if not, every kinect game is going to be a pain to navigate. It will take you a good 20 minutes to figure out what is going on, which is unacceptable. I felt blind for those first 20 minutes.

You start the game out by doing a training lesson with a virtual trainer to see how fit you are. It will then recommend the difficulty you should proceed at. The difficulty ranges from light, moderate, challenging, hard, or intense. You can also setup your exercise program to target specific areas of your body. Arms and chest, core, butt, legs, or full body. After you do that, you will go into this full body scan mode. It basically gets your measurements which you can tune afterwards if something is off. Supposedly you can go back and get your body scanned again. That way it can tell if your body shape has improved.

It has over 120 exercises to choose from and only five actual “games.” It is more of an exercise program than a game. You do get graded on how well you execute the routines. Most importantly, The Biggest Loser will teach you how to perfect the techniques of each exercise.

Back to the “games” which are called challenges. This is where you compete against the other Biggest Loser contestants. To complete the challenges you have to do certain exercises depending on the difficulty selected. For instance, one challenge you have to get a cannon up a hill and fire it off. While playing on intense, I had to do sumo jumping jacks to get the cannon to the top of the hill. Once at the top, you have to do speed bag punches to fire the cannon off. Fastest time wins the round, followed by an elimination, (bottom four of eight ) and each game consists of 3 rounds. After one challenge of doing countless sumo jumping jacks and punching as fast as you can for about 3 minutes straight, good luck doing anything else. This game will help you get into shape if you stick with a program tailored to your needs, that I know.

If you are in shape or skinny it is hard to win The Biggest Loser competition. It is probably better if you fib on your weight and make it higher if you are slimmer. During weight-ins, you can lie about how much weight you lost during the week.

It does have multiplayer modes which I did not get a chance to try. So in theory you can get a workout partner over live and do routines together. The online could be a paradise for single men or the unfaithful.

It also uses the kinect voice recognition feature sparingly. The virtual trainer will ask you questions in the middle of a routine. Like, “getting tired” or “do you need a break.” That works like a charm.

Achievements:
The game will take at least 24 hours to complete since it has an achievement for that amount of time spent exercising. The burn 25,000 calories achievement will be the toughest I believe. It will make you shed pounds…..seriously. As for the 12 weeks achievement, you can set it up for 2 routines a week for quickness. You can also go offline and change the date in your system settings to advance time. Not really an easy game for precious gamerscore. Although, you will get the benefit of health if you choose to take it on. Good luck playing another kinect game after playing this for 45 minutes or more.

Conclusion: 
If you are looking to lose weight, give this game a look. If you are looking for a fun game, skip it. It really does give you good guidance to meet your fitness goals, not to mention, having tons of exercises to choose from. I can 100% guarantee it will get you into shape if used properly. It was hard to put a score on this game. Very good exercise program, but actual gaming was not tied in so well.

Score: 6.2 Decent

Summary:

The Good:
Will challenge you physically
If you stick with a schedule, you will lose a ton of weight.
Work out routines for everyone. Young or old. Fat or skinny.


The Bad:
Not a fun game….it is not really a game.
The menu system is hard to navigate. I did not want to even bother making my character look proper. It would take too long.
Problems tracking you while on the ground

You can cheat the game during weekly weight in


Review: The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout

Now whip it – into shape – shape it up

Kinect really does work and so does this game. However, there are a couple of problems with kinect itself and this particular game. You need a lot of room space to play kinect. The ideal amount would be 10 x 10 space. The perfect placement for kinect might also take some trial and error. I have my kinect sensor placed about 3 feet off of the ground and The Biggest Loser requires you to do floor exercises. I had a hard time getting kinect to track me while I was on all fours. Maybe not a deal buster, but it was frustrating during the challenge games.

The Biggest Loser also has a horrible menu system. I hope this is game specific menu fail, if not, every kinect game is going to be a pain to navigate. It will take you a good 20 minutes to figure out what is going on, which is unacceptable. I felt blind for those first 20 minutes.

You start the game out by doing a training lesson with a virtual trainer to see how fit you are. It will then recommend the difficulty you should proceed at. The difficulty ranges from light, moderate, challenging, hard, or intense. You can also setup your exercise program to target specific areas of your body. Arms and chest, core, butt, legs, or full body. After you do that, you will go into this full body scan mode. It basically gets your measurements which you can tune afterwards if something is off. Supposedly you can go back and get your body scanned again. That way it can tell if your body shape has improved.

It has over 120 exercises to choose from and only five actual “games.” It is more of an exercise program than a game. You do get graded on how well you execute the routines. Most importantly, The Biggest Loser will teach you how to perfect the techniques of each exercise.

Back to the “games” which are called challenges. This is where you compete against the other Biggest Loser contestants. To complete the challenges you have to do certain exercises depending on the difficulty selected. For instance, one challenge you have to get a cannon up a hill and fire it off. While playing on intense, I had to do sumo jumping jacks to get the cannon to the top of the hill. Once at the top, you have to do speed bag punches to fire the cannon off. Fastest time wins the round, followed by an elimination, (bottom four of eight ) and each game consists of 3 rounds. After one challenge of doing countless sumo jumping jacks and punching as fast as you can for about 3 minutes straight, good luck doing anything else. This game will help you get into shape if you stick with a program tailored to your needs, that I know.

If you are in shape or skinny it is hard to win The Biggest Loser competition. It is probably better if you fib on your weight and make it higher if you are slimmer. During weight-ins, you can lie about how much weight you lost during the week.

It does have multiplayer modes which I did not get a chance to try. So in theory you can get a workout partner over live and do routines together. The online could be a paradise for single men or the unfaithful.

It also uses the kinect voice recognition feature sparingly. The virtual trainer will ask you questions in the middle of a routine. Like, “getting tired” or “do you need a break.” That works like a charm.

Achievements:
The game will take at least 24 hours to complete since it has an achievement for that amount of time spent exercising. The burn 25,000 calories achievement will be the toughest I believe. It will make you shed pounds…..seriously. As for the 12 weeks achievement, you can set it up for 2 routines a week for quickness. You can also go offline and change the date in your system settings to advance time. Not really an easy game for precious gamerscore. Although, you will get the benefit of health if you choose to take it on. Good luck playing another kinect game after playing this for 45 minutes or more.

Conclusion: 
If you are looking to lose weight, give this game a look. If you are looking for a fun game, skip it. It really does give you good guidance to meet your fitness goals, not to mention, having tons of exercises to choose from. I can 100% guarantee it will get you into shape if used properly. It was hard to put a score on this game. Very good exercise program, but actual gaming was not tied in so well.

Score: 6.2 Decent

Summary:

The Good:
Will challenge you physically
If you stick with a schedule, you will lose a ton of weight.
Work out routines for everyone. Young or old. Fat or skinny.


The Bad:
Not a fun game….it is not really a game.
The menu system is hard to navigate. I did not want to even bother making my character look proper. It would take too long.
Problems tracking you while on the ground

You can cheat the game during weekly weight in


A Day In The Life: Kinect

A day long running blog. Refresh for latest updates.

10:54PM — Looks like Battle Star is on instant watch. 🙂
10:48PM — I was going to check out some netflix movies but live seems to be down. Hanging out with Cindy. Retiring for the night.

10:36PM — Correction. The dork that use to play xbox all day. Who is now  just a tired little baby nodding off at all hours.

10:30PM — Crisis averted! Found some Honey Smoked turkey Breast meat. Rand al thor’s mothers is better. Not the dude from the dork books but the dork that plays xbox all day.

10:10PM — Cleaned up. Ate some broccoli and an orange. Looking for more food , may need to take a trip to the walmart.

9:14PM — I guess it is time to get cleaned up and eat something.

 

 8:47PM — If I giveaway 4,000 Microsoft points to the best leapfrog photo would people be interested in participating?
8:41PM — Almost done with exercising. I know this was supposed to be all about kinect. I guess it would have been different if it was new to me. When I got it in the mail a few months ago, I ripped it opened and played for hours. Kinect sports is fun,  has a lot to offer. Bowling is fun. Long jump was hilarious, I almost killed myself trying so hard to beat my previous jumps. Soccer and volleyball were both a lot of fun as well.

7:47PM — Working out and doing a 007: Blood Stone review.

7:34PM — Backyard Football will not be as quick as the first. Still shouldn’t be that bad. EA sports MMA seems pretty good, I need to check out more to get a better idea. A lot of online achievements in that.

 7:25PM — (5) for (60gs) in backyard football: Rookie Rush. I think leapfrog is good for the day. Going to lift real weights. My upper body isn’t sore, it’s my lower body.

7:00PM — Just need a few more achievements for the day to keep the little leapfrog going. The new backyard football is what I will play.

6:58PM — Just tried out the kinect video chat. Pretty cool how it follows you around. Now you can spazz the F out without having to adjust your camera.

6:56PM — I wonder how jealous my cat will be if I play Kinectimals.

 6:13Pm — (2) for (10gs) in The Biggest Loser.

5:45PM — The two biggest losers, playing The Biggest Loser. A Kodak moment.

5:22PM — Ate some cottage cheese. YAY! I will actually play some kinect today. Smrnov and I will be work out buddies on The Biggest Loser. The horror. I told him I will just be sitting there like a beached whale.

 4:43PM — Also installed  Cabelas NA.. I don’t feel like playing much. 4 hours plus of The Biggest Loser over the past 2 days wore me out. Probably going to finish off this piece for games radar then play something.

3:56PM —  (1) for (15gs) in EA sports MMA. Installed backyard sports Football: Rookie Rush which took a whole 50 seconds.

 3:30PM — (4) for (60gs) in EA sports MMA.

2:53PM — Had a roast beast sandwich and a banana.

2:36PM — (3) for (45gs) In EA sports MMA

 

2:22PM — HOT Tip for megamind to cure the freeze glitch that happens at the end of levels.
DubNut86 says “Hey mate, still having problems with Megamind? My friends playing off a USB drive and is on the 4th level with no problems at all. Just thought i’d let you know and hopefully save you playing 40 levels!”
You could probably use a Memory card also. Just don’t use your HDD to save to. Thanks Dub!

2:18PM — (3) for (45gs) in EA sports MMA. Got a hot tip for Megamind coming up.

2:10PM — Too much hugging in UFC and MMA. Just saying.

1:52PM —

4:34AM — Miss Mittens is taking the reins while I sleep. I wonder if she can steer this thing.
3:45AM — Almost done with this review. I am going to have to do shorter reviews in the future. I will never be able to review everything.
3:03AM — (3) for (130gs) in Megamind. Looks like it glitched out on me because the level will not end. 🙁

2:35AM — (5) for (180gs) In Megamind.

2:06AM — Going to play a tiny bit of Megamind just to check it out.

 1:57AM — Fixing up this review, blah. Tired. Why is KG messing with my boy, Charlie V? KG is a punk.

1:42AM — Lakers 5-0. They are good this year. Like really, really good.
12:40AM — Kinect sports has a variety of games to keep you and your friends entertained. Soccer will give you a work out, bowling will allow you to relax, and boxing will allow you to take out your aggression.

12:38AM — The Kinect games I have tried are Adventures, Joy Ride, Kinect sports, and The Biggest Loser. Kinect Sports is my favorite of the four.

12:29AM– Trying to figure out how to type while I sleep here in a bit. Back to the Lakers game, then I will finish off that Biggest Loser review. Big long, super fun, day planned.

12:17AM — Caddius said… “The fear is spending $150 on a useless piece of equipment, again.”    I know what you mean, man. Maybe I like it more because it was free, who knows. But I went in thinking it would be rubbish and laggy. It probably won’t work well at all with shooters or anything action packed. But the developers that bring in the great ideas will hit a home run. It’s a great piece of technology. I still kind of wonder how it all works.. Tracks your whole body, head to toe. Very impressive stuff.

12:12AM — Another cool Kinect feature is the voice recognition. It works really well whether you are on the dashboard or watching a movie. To activate recognition all you have to say is, “xbox” then give it a command. I find myself running around the living room yelling “xbox! Make me a sandwich!” Never works though. 🙁

12:11AM — Watching the Lakers right now and trying to finish up my review of The Biggest Loser. The demise of Kobe Bryant was greatly exaggerated.

 12:00AM — Yes, Kinect is good. Yes, it does work. I was able to beta test the thing for the last couple of months. The only big downfall is the space requirements. You will need a fairly large area of about 10x 10 to get the best results. I also believe that it will be huge, massive, and colossal. A lot of people want it to fail, I just don’t think that will happen. Microsoft is tapping an entirely new market. Not sure what so many people are scared of.