Zumba Fitness

If you’ve accidentally stumbled into a gym recently there is a very good chance that you would have spotted a group of sweaty people, mostly of the fairer sex, bumping and grinding along happily in what they call a Zumba class. Never heard of it? Neither had I. But the word on the street is that Zumba is all the rage in alternative fitness these days; a blend of Latin dancing and aerobic exercise that gets the body moving in all kinds of undignified ways. It’s been taking the fitness world by storm, spawning countless workout DVDs, a line of clothing, and a string of Zumba training facilities dotting the globe. Now, to take this Latin-infused dance party to the next phase of world domination, we have Zumba Fitness for Xbox 360 Kinect, a workout game that is bound to have gamers red faced in no time...

Red faced, indeed - it’s quite amazing just how exhausting half an hour of hip wiggling, hand clapping, foot stomping latin dancing can be. Following the colourful on-screen Zumba instructors moves through a series of dance routines may start off simply enough - one step, two step, feet together, clap! - but soon the party is off the hook and things get pretty intense, pretty quickly. As a means of getting fit, I can see how a Zumba class could be effective if taken seriously. The lively island beats, covering a decent spectrum of latin music from Calypso to Salsa, do a wonderful job of getting you into the party mood, with the aim being to make you forget that you are actually busy exercising in the first place. Do your best to follow your instructor properly, and the sweat will flow before you know it.

Sadly it’s not just the intensity of the workout that will leave Zumba Fitness users red in the face. Firstly, it can be down right embarrassing, especially for those with the natural rhythm and feel for the beat of a drunk tortoise in a wheelchair. Only those with a blatant disregard for their dignity need apply - unless you are a seasoned Latin dancer, in which case you probably won’t need a workout game like this in the first place. For the rest of us, an average Zumba session will leave you bewildered, dazed and annoyed as you repeatedly fail to accurately reproduce the fast-moving dance routines happening in joyous technicolor on your screen.

The colourful presentation does go some way to smooth over some of the embarrassment, with bright hues bursting from every crevice along with the zesty beat. In the heat of the dance, your overly cheerful instructor yells out positive reinforcement to keep you motivated as you try to match her moves. This brings us to the second aspect of Zumba Fitness that will have your blood boiling for all the wrong reasons: the distinct lack of cohesion between your moves and your success rate in the game. Anyone who doesn’t spend their Friday nights smoking Cuban cigars, eating nachos, and tearing up the dance floor at the local latin-themed dance bar will find these routines rather challenging, yet it’s nigh on impossible to fail a Zumba session.

It makes sense that they want to keep the workout moving without too much focus on skill - the goal is to get fit after all, not to learn to be the next Latino sensation - but the Kinect body tracking on display here seems terribly inaccurate. Just how inaccurate? Well, at one point I had to stop halfway through a session to get a glass of water, and as I wondered out of range my instructor yelled out enthusiastically “Excellent leg work! You’re doing great!”. That should give you some idea. Floundering around like a demented seal often has the same results - it’s all very much a hit and miss affair. It works both ways, too - times when you feel you are mimicking your instructor’s moves perfectly, she will be glowing a bright and dangerous shade of red, indicating you are making a total mess of things. It’s frustratingly imprecise, so much so that many will feel it’s just not worth the effort. This haphazard approach to movement tracking seems like a wasteful use of Kinect’s tools, tools which we have seen used in some very impressive ways since the system’s launch.

To try to inject some more of the party atmosphere that the Zumba workout experience relies heavily on in reality, Zumba Fitness includes a number of multiplayer modes for play both online and locally. The competitive Zumba Attack mode has players taking turns to complete a routine, trying to maximize their scores with multipliers for successful sequences, but since the motion tracking is so flawed it makes dance-offs like this feel a little pointless. To try to recreate the vibe of a real Zumba class, you could try the online modes which allow groups of dancers to work through the same routine, with in-game headset chat to help motivate one another, but it just doesn’t have the same energy that you would get in a proper class environment. The Zumba Party mode does a better job of that, but you’d still be better off heading out to a gym for your Latin fitness fix. Also keep in mind that for a workout like this requires even more space than usual for a Kinect game - a small arena-sized area should be fine.

Spend enough time with the online modes, co-op dance-offs and the gargantuan Zumbathon challenge, and you will work up a sweat, but as a game Zumba Fitness is ultimately a disappointment. In fact, the best way to really squeeze some enjoyment out of Zumba Fitness is to stop thinking of it as a game at all, and rather as a (barely) interactive workout video. It’s bright and lively, and if you put some effort into learning the different routines and admirable variety of dance styles then there is a good workout waiting to be uncovered here. But, as much as I enjoyed the bubbly music and neat presentation, the weak implementation of motion control and the subsequent overall frustrating nature of the dance experience makes Zumba Fitness only worthwhile for those already fluent in the rhythmic art of Zumba. Considering the scale of the Zumba phenomenon, this title is bound to be successful, but there are already a number of fitness-based titles out there for Kinect, and most of them do a better job of it.

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