Zumba WII Review – My Initial Thoughts
Two weeks after receiving Zumba on WII game in the mail I finally ripped off the cellophane wrap and played it for the first time. This review are my initial thoughts on the game, more will come later after I have had a week or more to get acquainted with it and move up a couple of levels.
Click here to read other reviews of Zumba Fitness for WII and save 20% off of list price
First of all, I do have to say that even though I am very critical of the game in this review, I still do recommend it. I have never tried the DVD’s, but I always have a difficult time with exercise videos because I can never get a sense if I’m doing something correctly. Even with the poor movement sensors for this game, it still kept me motivated enough to keep on pushing through.
I know I didn’t purchase this game for the navigation system, but I think it was horrible. I kept getting bumped back to a previous screen with the smallest flick of a button. This became very irritating as I was going through the tutorials because I had a difficult time figuring out where I was in the navigation system. I have to admit that I was being lazy and not pulling my WIImote out of the belt between the tutorials because it became a pain in the rear to pull it out every time I finished a 30 second tutorial.
Speaking of tutorials, they were not good at all. Having never been to a Zumba class in my life or trying the DVD’s I think they just went way too fast for my tastes. Once the game sensed that you were achieving the moves it went faster without marking through what was coming next. I think this is necessary because the extremely basic part of the move that you start off with is not the final step that you end up doing. This is a problem because of the poor accuracy when it comes to the game being able to detect what you are actually doing. If you just step away to get a drink of water, the game could think you have mastered the beginning step and move on without you, causing you to have to take the tutorial all over again.
I was also a little disappointed that this game does not have a way of generalizing how many calories you have burned. I realize everyone is different, but if you could enter your height and weight, I’m sure they could come up with a way of getting in the general vicinity of your calorie burn.
WII Zumba Motion Sensor
- In my eyes, it is not accurate. You could probably walk in place the entire time and receive a perfect score. Since I have no prior experience with Zumba, I can reassure you that it shouldn’t happen that way. In fact, after playing my first round, I received a score of 384 which put me at the Zumba Instructor level. I can reassure you, that’s not the case.
- The WIImote is placed in a belt that you wear around your waist to sense your hips moving, but there is no way the game can tell if you are moving your arms correctly.
Overall Zumba WII Fun Factor
While this game does have its faults, which I hope will be fixed in future versions, I did think this game was fun. So what if the controls aren’t perfect? So what if the score is jacked up because of the controller? It got my butt off the couch and got me moving and that’s what exergaming is all about. I also worked up a pretty good sweat while I was doing it too, which is a great thing.
I’ll post more in the upcoming weeks about the game and if it is keeping me motivated enough to keep using it, that’s the biggest battle many of us have when it comes to working out, sticking to it. Meanwhile, if you have played Zumba WII, feel free to post your comments below, I’m sure other readers would be very happy to hear from you.
Click here to read other reviews of Zumba Fitness for WII and save 20% off of list price
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Dance Dance Revolutions is for sale!!!
