So I know my fair share about genuine exercise and health, and what it takes to be and look healthy. Anyone who knows me is aware that my husband is a strength and conditioning coach. I did a little homework on it (and you can too). Zumba Fitness Rush is available in stores on February 13th for the XBox Kinect.God has impressed upon my heart to write about this fairly new workout that has captured the attention of more than 20,000 instructors in 35 countries (according to Wikipedia), which has thousands of men, women, and including children signing up everywhere for the classes. So don't overlook the game when out choosing between restaurant reservations and that trip to the drugstore for chocolates. And guys, there might be no better way to Kinect with your Valentine this year. The Zumba curious or current Zumba fans will eat it up. Anyone remotely familiar with the Zumba fitness dancing craze or the XBox Kinect motion sensor can recognize the potential of a game that does it right, and Zumba Fitness Rush delivers. The songs are far more listenable and are chosen not to highlight popular artists but for their danceability. For most of the game's modes - I gave the producers a hard time about how the game won't record burned calories if you have to bail halfway through a class.įor me, the game felt like Dance Central without without the club scene mentality and also without the wackier moves. In this respect, a one-disc game offers an impressive number of classes at 20-minute, half-hour and hour-long increments, providing programs of varying difficulties that can be continuously danced through without having to navigate menus.Ĭalorie counters track your progress. I can see how an XBox game would trump a multi-DVD workout set. According to her, the key to a good Zumba class is getting "tricked" into exercise by dancing to a variety of ever-changing routines.
Zumba Fitness Rush is like a sports title in this respect, trading stadiums and famous pro athletes for real life venues and celebrity trainers.Īmanda was the most intrigued by the number of workout "classes" the new game was offering, increasing the total from 30 on Wii to 45 on Kinect. The stages are populated by real-world Zumba instructors (a few were at the event, it was a little freaky to play with them watching), and the locations are places where actual dance classes have been held. Essentially, the game will train you into a Zumba dancing machine.įor a Zumba geek like my wife, the game provides an unexpected amount of detail. Kinect does a far better job scoring, based on full-body movement, than Wii does, so you're more likely to pull off your moves correctly. There's a tutorial mode to teach the ropes with step-by-step instructions.
Zumba Fitness Rush could be the ideal game for those looking to learn how to dance, Zumba style. I'm just as annoyed when games force freestyle dance challenges into every song.
I've never looked great in the photos that Kinect takes - they always seem to squish my body - and it's depressing to have a snapshot taken of you when you're playing alone. These annoyances plague so many other games on the system and lost their novelty very fast with me. I was very happy to find that the game had done away with Kinect conventions like constantly taking your photo or freestyle dance segments. In Zumba Fitness Rush, the tempo and length of the music inform the difficulty of the workout, meaning the slower-paced "easy" songs are not shoehorned into difficult mode by adding complicated moves that don't fit the rhythm. Each song has only one level of difficulty, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The songs and moves were lifted directly out of a Zumba class and the soundtrack included all of the staples from the Wii version of the game, with plenty of additional tracks.
They pop up sparingly, and the game is more aesthetically pleasing for it.
Because Zumba Fitness Rush's dance moves are sustained for longer than in other games, indicators for upcoming moves are not constantly in one's face. Don't expect to interpret the lyrics with your body or do the robot instead, you'll get an aerobic workout with flares of salsa and reggaeton.
While I found some of the moves repetitive compared to other dance games, Amanda appreciated that the game focused less on quickly throwing complicated dance steps one's way and more on moving to the rhythm of the music.
From what we saw, the game's transition to Kinect has done a fine job of providing motion-tracking that scores accurately based on a full body range of movement and timing. The Wii incarnation of the game workS by strapping a Wiimote to the hip, which did little to score players correctly for things like arm movement. To be fair, she had been waiting for it to come out since playing the Wii version and was excited to begin with. We danced to a few songs at a first-look event, and Amanda came away absolutely loving the game.