.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Visit Gold’s Gym on your Wii without ever leaving your living room
.AUTHOR Heather Wardell
.SUMMARY Our Heather Wardell is made of tough stuff, and she proves it by delivering a bare knuckle, gloves-off review of Ubisoft’s Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout. Find out of the game has a glass jaw or can go the distance.
.OTHER
My favorite Wii Fit exercise is the Rhythm Boxing workout. However, it started to seem a bit repetitive, and so I wanted something different that would still give me a solid workout. Ubisoft’s Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout looked like it might be just the thing.
Since the game is billed as "a more intense cardio workout than most Wii fitness games", you might expect it to be tough, and it is. However, it is almost entirely a boxing workout. There are additional exercises, like running and sit ups, but these are done exactly like the standard Wii Fit versions and I never use them. As I wanted a purely boxing workout, I am happy with the game, but some reviewers were disappointed by the focus on boxing. As I’ll show you, though, it is definitely a full-body workout.
.H1 The basics
When you begin, you’re asked to create a character to use. I find it odd that the game doesn’t use the Mii characters that have already been created on the Wii, but I think it’s because the graphics are slightly more to the anime side than the usual Wii graphics. They suit the game, though. Figure A shows a Gold’s Gym character hard at work on a set of squats. (picture courtesy of Ubisoft’s web site)
.FIGPAIR A The Gold’s Gym graphics are well done and make the game interesting.
While the game does use the Wii Balance Board, it’s only for a few of the exercises. It doesn’t allow you to weigh yourself; you instead need to enter your own weight. Since the game doesn’t require the Balance Board, I suppose this makes sense, but I think it would be better for the system to decide whether to weigh you or ask for your weight based on whether the Balance Board is present.
.TEASER Does this game have a glass jaw? Tap here and find out the real story.
Regardless, once the dread number has been entered and your character has been inflated to the necessary size, you can take your first boxing lesson. The game walks you through a few basic punches and then puts them into a combination for you.
.H1 Learn from my mistakes
On my first session, I was careful to keep myself to only fifteen minutes so I wouldn’t be sore the next day. I work out regularly and am training for several mid-distance running races in the fall, so I was sure this would be fine.
I should have gone with ten minutes, because I was solidly in pain the next few days even though I’d been doing the Rhythm Boxing. I did recover quickly, and after about six weeks with the game, I am now doing thirty-five minutes a session, but I strongly advise not doing too much at the beginning.
It’s difficult to stick to that, though, because the boxing is a lot of fun. I have special Wii boxing gloves and a wireless nunchuk, as shown in Figure B, but even before I got those it feels so real.
.FIGPAIR B Using boxing gloves makes the game even more fun.
There are two control schemes available: a remote in each hand, or a remote in the right hand and a nunchuk in the left. I have tried both methods and find the game to be pretty responsive. My hook and uppercut punches don’t register with perfect accuracy, but as I get tired I think I don’t place them quite as accurately, which is probably at least part of the problem.
Before I got my gloves and the wireless nunchuk, I preferred the two-remote control method, as the swinging cable of the nunchuk gave me a few good punches in the face as I got over-enthusiastic with my own punches. If you’re more coordinated than me (which is highly likely) you might be fine, but even without the cable issue I prefer the feel of the same kind of controller in each hand. My gloves don’t allow for that, and now that I have them I use the remote/nunchuk method. I like that the game gives you the choice, though, since not everyone has a nunchuk.
.H1 The workouts
While Cardio Workout has some frills, like allowing you to choose a different trainer or use the gold you earn in workouts to buy new outfits (including, eventually, a panda suit for female characters and a bear suit for males), if you’re expecting fancy graphics and stunning music, you’ll be disappointed. The whole focus here is on the workout. (Besides, once I realized the game offers "Eye of the Tiger", even in a computer-synthesized elevator music version, I haven’t tried another song in six weeks.)
The workouts are divided into smaller segments: a seven-minute warm up, for example, and then a fifteen-minute workout which is again broken in two to give you a chance to take a break in the interim. This structure cuts down on the "I’m boxing forever" feeling that the Wii Fit’s thirteen-minute advanced Rhythm Boxing always gave me.
There are basic lessons, to teach you each kind of punch, and then workouts at the beginner, intermediate, advanced, and special level. I tried one of the special workouts and it was considerably faster and contained longer combinations of punches, but was still definitely doable. After six weeks, I am still finding the beginner workouts leave me breathing hard and sweating by the end. I was hopeful that this would be a game I could work out with over the long term, and I’m sure it is.
As mentioned, the game does a good job of registering punches. Sometimes it doesn’t count one that I’m sure I landed, but sometimes I get credit for one that I know I messed up, so I think it balances out. You receive bonus gold for not missing a single punch, and I almost never manage that, but I am hardly ever lower than 98% accuracy, which I think is pretty good for fast punches with a wireless nunchuk.
Each workout follows the same pattern: do a variety of punches, switch sides and do the same punches on your left, switch back and learn a combination, switch again and do the same combo on the left side. The punches and combos are different in each workout, and some are quite challenging to remember. The game shows you which punch is coming up, although sometimes the voice-over actually calls for a different kind of punch. I don’t find I listen much to the trainer, though, as evidenced by the fact I only realized while working on this review that the voice-over is occasionally incorrect.
I do find the ducking and weaving aspects of boxing a little difficult to time, as it seems that the game wants me to be popping up when the punch arrives rather than ducking down, but I am getting the hang of it. The controllers need to move more than just what would happen if you held them and ducked down, as well.
Proving that I don’t learn from earlier experience, the first day I did the ducking and weaving sections (which require you to, obviously, duck down and dodge away from incoming punches) I did far too much. My running has given me pretty tough legs, but still I was again in pain for the next few days. My recommendation to you, one more time, is to take it slowly, especially if you’re new to exercise.
Your in-game trainer can put together a series of workouts for you or you can choose to do your own program. I prefer to do my own thing, as the trainer always wants to include exercises other than boxing and I really only want to box, but it is nice to have the option.
.H1 The beat down
The game seems to have been translated into English, and not entirely flawlessly. "Swing inswards" and "Rught uppercut" appear frequently. Some of the text that appears, while not as obviously wrong, is still oddly worded. As mentioned, some of the voice-overs are incorrect.
More seriously, there is no way to pause the game during a workout. The ‘Home’ and ‘Power’ buttons do nothing. Pressing the ‘1’ and ‘2’ buttons on the remote at the same time will end the workout, but the game doesn’t ask you to confirm that choice and I have read of people accidentally quitting the workout by pressing those buttons against their palm while boxing.
I have never been able to get the jump rope exercise to work. Theoretically, you hold a remote in each hand and turn them as if turning a rope, but no matter how fast or slow I turn my character trips over the rope almost immediately. From my research online, I’m not the only one with this problem. I also find the dodge exercise doesn’t always work when I don’t use the Balance Board; I’ll have my body and hands far to the right and my character leans to the left and gets hit in the face. And today, for the first time, the game unlocked the "training" mode for the exercises, so now I can actually practice the exercises I’ve only had as a challenge mode so far. Backwards from how most games do it.
While there are certainly some strange design decisions here, and the exercises aren’t as good as those on the Wii Fit, overall Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout is a solid exercise system. I’m sure I’ll be using it for a long time, and at a price of around thirty dollars, it’s a steal. I give it a solid four out of five rating.
.RATING 4
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Learn more about [[http://www.ubi.com/US/Games/Info.aspx?pId=7591|Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout]].
.END_SIDEBAR
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