Around a middle of January, I though, “The sun will be out soon, time to get into shape and lose the Christmas gut”. I attempted to go running, and ended up getting 2 colds in a row (probably down to the running in snow), so decided to start working out inside.
I’ve seen multiple “Get Fit” type games for the Wii, and decided to give them a try. I initally started with “Wii Fit Plus“, which to be honest I didn’t feel like I was getting a decent workout, it seemed really good for slower excersies, but after an hour and a half of running through every activity I could, I still hadn’t worked up a sweat.
The next one I tried was “The Biggest Loser“, which to be honest was a little too much, especially when over the Christmas period I’d done nothing but sit on my butt, play on the games consoles, drink beer, and eat loads. It was a very good work out, and one I’ll probably work up to, but as a “sofa to get fit”, it was a little too much.
I then tried EA Sports Active, and I was quite impressed. In the box you don’t only get the Wii game, but you get a leg strap for you nunchuck, and a training band. I tried it for a couple of days, just picking random workouts, and it seemed to work very well. You get an option of Low, Medium or High intensity workout for each session, a choice of genre of soundtracks, and with or without Wii Balance Board support.
Towards the end of January I decided this was the one, and started the 30 day training program, and this morning was my last seasion.
So how was it you may ask ?….Well suprising good !
I ran through the 30 day program of Medium intensity, with the Electronica soundtrack, set my goals, created my avatar, and away I went. Basically the 30 day program consists of 2 days on, 1 day off. Each workout can take from 20 minutes to 35 minutes on medium, and it seems if you select the high intensity this adds around 10 minutes as it just increases the number of reps.
The excersises run from, running/walking on the spot, to more upper body such as upright row with tricep kickback. The workouts seem to try and keep each days workout unique, and seems to exerise different muscles
Before each workout, it gave you a list of the planned exercises it had for you, an estimated time and calories burnt. During the workout you have a running counter in the top left of the screen, informing you of current calories burnt. Each workout seems to burn off an adverage of 160 calories, which for a 20 minutes workout isn’t bad at all.
During all the workouts, you have you created avatar mirroring your movements to show you what you should be doing, and highlights anything your not doing correctly. You also have the trainer on screen, again pointing out anything you may be doing wrong.
Overall thoughts
As I needed something to get my butt off the sofa, this worked really well, because the exersised were mixed up enough, and it attempted to intergrate games into this, the result was, it felt more like playing a game than doing a workout. I think EA have tried to make this fun by adding a few “game type” workouts, eg Baseball, Basketball, Inline Skating, Boxing, Tennis and Volleyball. These however for me were the worst part of the workouts, I didn’t feel the Wii was quick enough to match my movements. An example of this was the Volleyball, basically it would say “Lunge Left” or “Lunge Right”, and then for you to do the Volleyball actions, this however seems to be a little slow, and by the time that it had recogined that I had stepped off the Balance Board to the Left, it then didn’t register my Volleyball movements in times and suggested I missed the ball. The same annoyance was with the tennis, whereby if I moved the Wiimote even slightly, it would take a swing, which would lead to me missing the ball.
A couple of other things, using the Wii to work out is a great idea, however I nearly got tangled up a few time in the cable between the nunchuck and the Wiimote, making some of the excersises quite annoying, however I fixed this by buying a wireless nunchuck, which was such an improvement. I also felt with the bands I wasn’t getting enough resistance, I did attempt to make them shorter, however they just ended up snapping on me. I then attempted to use some pre-made Reebok bands which did work, however the large sponge handles made it quite hard to hold these , the controller and nunchuck. In the end I bought just a resistance band in the Reebok Fitness Travel Gym Set with no handles, then tied this to the EA Sports Active supplied handles and this worked a treat. Finally, the excersised seemed to concentrate on upperbody, lowerbody, and only very few core exersises, which was fine, however I would have prefered a little more core.
Final thoughts
If I can forgive the fact that there was limited core exersises, the sometimes oversensitive motion control and the bands sent weren’t resistant enough for me, this is a decent workout, and over the 30 day program I’ve become pretty tones and lost 13lbs which really isn’t too bad. My next mission is to go for the EA Sports Active : More Workouts, as this is meant to improve the sensitivity issues as well as consentrating a little more on the core.
I like most of you, use twitter, facebook and occasionally pop on to myspace to see how many bands want to be my friends.
Anyway, on the 4th of October, through total fluke read through a twitter conversation, and noticed a load of twitter entries from @squ1r3ll, with updates on his gaming status….linking to a site called raptr.com.
Being a bit of a gamer I’ve tried for months to get my gamertags, achievement, out to my friends and virtual friends, but the only way I’ve found to do this is manually.
I tried a number of facebook apps, and had varied success, they would either change my status to “Darren is playing…..” after a couple of hours of gaming, or just not bother at all. The achievements would post to my feed, however this was a manual process, I belevie the app is called “Xbox 360 Live GamerCard”.
Anyway, raptr.com, what is it…well let me tell you, it’s fantastic, and what I’ve been looking for, for ages. You sign up (using Facebook connect if you like) and add your gamer profiles, eg Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, Warcraft, etc etc, what it then does is monitors and reports on your gaming activities, eg which game your playing, on which platform, and records how long, and any achievement you may get.
Xbox live is monitored through the feed that Microsoft so kindly provide, and updates almost in real time (can be a 5/10 min delay), PSN tracking is currently broken due to Sony putting a restriction on their data. Everything else is tracked by the client.
The client is a custom messenger type client that can also run your msn, gtalk, aim, yahoo, xfire and icq, however this is the key to tracking the stats on your PC/Mac. On initial install it will scan your hard drive for games, and add them to your collection (both on the client, and on the website), any new games installed it will pick them up and also add to your collection.
When your ready to play a game, just start as normal and this will change your messenger stats to “Darren is playing xxxxxxx”, as it does with your online raptr status too, and logs the time played. When finished, it calculates the time you were playing and adds this to your tally on the website.
With the site you also get the option of a couple of signatures with varied information, all updating in real time, varying from currently playing to, the last/most played with you longest played 6 games.
Once you start to build up your friends, it will give you a ranking out of your current friend on a particular game (bases on the number of achievements you have), you can also compare achievements on a game with upto 3 friends at a time.
Finally one very cool feature of Raptr, is that when you get an achievement, it will tell you what percentage of Raptr users who have that game, have gained that achievement, giving you an idea of how hard it was.
The only downside with Raptr, is that it is unable to check your PSN stats, now this is through no fault of their own, it just seems Sony is being a little protective about their data. You can update your playing time, but this is manual, hopefully some day in the future, they will allow this.
From googling the PSN issue, I stumbled on a number of other social networking for gamer sites, GamerDNA, Playfire and Giantbomb.
I haven’t used any of the sites as much as I’ve used Raptr, however they all seem to be kinda tracking my stats.
GamerDNA, does seem to track PSN stats, and pull through the trophies, but there seems to be around a 2 day delay
Playfire, Love the layout, but again doesn’t pull through the PSN stats/trophies, doesn’t track time, and also about a day behind.
GiantBomb, I only signed up for this last night, but it’s already tracking my Steam, Warcraft and XBL, but again, no PSN.
All in all, it’s good to more and more of these sites popping up, I remember the day when gaming was deemed as geeky, however seems every man and his dog is doing it now, and it’s now socially accepted.
Personal recommendation, give Raptr.com a try, it just works and if you do, feel free to add me as a friend
The Eye of Judgement, well what can I say…. I saw what I thought was a bargain, which has turn out to be quite an expensive hobby.
I was in the High Cross in Leicester the other Sunday morning, and popped into PowerPlay while waiting for the Apple store to open. I notice sat on a shelf on it’s own a game called “The Eye of Judgement”. The box didn’t have a price on it, however it came with the Playstation eye in the box too, me and C agreed that we wouldn’t pay anymore than £40 for the game, as the camera was £23 on it’s own. We took it to the counter, and the guy said “it’s not on the system”, let me find a price for you, then I can add it, then you can buy it. We agreed to let him do all this while we popped to the apple store.
Upon our return the poor lad seemed to be having the worse day of his life, apparently he’d been on holiday for a week, and this was his first day back, however while he’d been away, they’d upgraded the EPOS system, and it was running dog slow, and half the products were missing. He asked us kindly if we’d give him another 10 mins to sort the system out and he could finally give us the price.
We wondered of, (can’t remember where as I had a small 6 day hangover from the Tallinn stag do) and returned around 10 mins later, they guy had finally got the game on the system, and it was £30, bargain !, While I was there I picked up a copy of Ghostbusters for the PS3 (blog to come)
The thinking behind the game was as follows…..if the game is crap, it’s only cost us £7, as the camera is £23…however we didn’t really need a camera, as the one we got in “Your In the Movies” on the Xbox360, and this worked just fine of the PS3.
Anyway, we finally got home and unboxed. You get the Playstation Eye, a stand for holding it on, the mat, a pack of the 30 starter cards, and a bonus 8 pack of card.
The game itself rocks !, The best way I can describe it, is the 3D Chess type game you see R2D2 and Chewbacca playing in Star Wars, but using your TV to project the creatures.
Now personally I’ve never used trading cards or got involved in the whole trading card world, and to be honest didn’t think this was one of those types of games (I know, I should have done my research…but it did seem like a bargain)
The game basically plays, but you get 2 mana each turn, each card has a specific mana value, as well as health, and damage points. Each card is either Earth, Water, Wood , Fire or Biolith, you place each card on the map, and get positive and negative reactions based on the placement.
Quick YouTube Vid
Now the game is fun, and defiantly worth the £30 we spent on it, but to be honest, after a couple of hours of playing, we started to get used to the cards, and quite frankly a little board of the same cards. I had a quick google for somewhere to buy them from, and everywhere was sold out…so ebay it was !
Found a guy selling a full set 1×3,2 and 3…so the bidding war started, and ended on Friday night….£46 later, I had all 3 sets ! Woot !…this did however drive the price of the game up a little…well to £76 !
Luckily for me, they ebay guy was lightening fast with the delivery and I had all the cards on Monday. Got home, downloaded the update for the cards….which took over 3 hours, and we were finally ready to play with the new decks…..wrong !…to use the set 2 and 3, I had to buy the DLC (Downloadable Content) to unlock these…Grrrr !…and that was another £11.99 from the Playstation store.
Finally after downloading we were able to play, and it was fun fun fun….well until it started to get dark outside…..wtf you may be asking, what the hell as the light outside got to do with a game your playing inside….well I’ll tell you. As I guess it is with most people, my lighting in my front room is pretty dim, as this is the room I watch all my movie, and play most of my games. Even with the main light on, it’s light enough, but obviously not light enough for the Playstation Eye to pick the details on the cards. So there we were, £88 down, a handful of brand new shiny cards, but not enough light in the room for the eye to recognize them…Booo !
All in all, it is a very fun game, and if you buy it for nothing else but the playstation eye, it’s defiantly worth the £7 for the game..and if you live anywhere near me, I’ve got loads of duplicate cards you can have
into shape and lose the Christmas gut”. I attempted to go running, and ended up getting 2 colds in a row (probably down to the running in snow), so decided to start working out inside.
and if you do, feel free to add me as a friend
out to be quite an expensive hobby.