Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012

Listen up you 'on the fence ' wannabe fitness people! If you are like me, tired of living with 'Dunlap Disease' where your belly done lap over your belt, this will help. You have to make the decision to use it, but it will work! I am a 42 year old former Marine whose glory days are long past. This program is helping me get back in shape. It can help you too!Warning: if you have a smaller room, and use the Kinect with a magnifier, you may have issues with floor exercise or issues with exercises that require using your feet. (jump rope, sit ups, push ups etc.) You can still do them, the game just may not recognize your efforts.The warms up are good, but could use basic stretching. Routines are awesome and diverse. You can go from Cardio Boxing to Balli-Wood Dancing (yes, I tried it!), Yoga to jogging. Great diversity within the routines.You can set goals, based on your desired type of results you are looking for.Unfortunately, learning the the workouts does not account toward your progress ( a little counter productive IMO) However, once you learn the basics, the work outs are great!Make no mistake - this program will make you sweat!! Like everything, you get out of it what you put in, but over all the experience is great, and fun!I especially like the Tai Chi the Zen routine offers and the Cardio boxing as well. The Wall Breaker is a great warm up and sweat builder!Bottom line is, if this 42 yr old former Marine can get up off the couch and get back in shape, while sweating my butt, or gut, off... So can you!! Don't hesitate BUY IT!!

My family and I love this game. We've had it for about three months, and are still using it several times a week. The variety is wonderful, with everything from some pretty intense work-outs (especially some of the boot camp and cardio work-outs) to light fun games (stomp it, stack 'em up) and all kinds of things in between (cardio boxing, yoga, lots of new dances- African, hip hop, Latin, etc). My daughter has been much more motivated to exercise with this than with any of the other fitness games we have. She loves all the games where we can compete against each other, and she especially enjoys the Run the World and jump roping. She also thinks it is really cool that she can actually see herself as if she is looking in a mirror. That's a big improvement over avatars in the other games, or the humanoid blob in the previous version (although we liked that too). Another big improvement over the previous version is that there are more choices of longer routines. I still wish they had some that were 45 minutes or more, but there are several 20-25 minute choices in all different sections (cardio, Run the World all races for London and New York, boot camp, yoga, etc) and the menus are very smooth and easy to use, so you can put together a longer work-out without really having to pause very much. I find this one to be the most accurate, least buggy, and to have the most real variety with totally different kinds of activities, not just slightly different versions of similar activities. I have a very small living room and I never have trouble with Your Shape picking up movements accurately, so I would most strongly recommend this game for people with limited space, and for people who need fun and variety for motivation.

I have recently purchased the Kinect for fitness purposes and this "game" was an obvious choice for a workout/fitness regime. The reviews are pretty good and Ubisoft created the Assassin games, so I purchased with confidence. Please note that I have only had this game for a week. I will return with an update in a month or so.Here are some initial reactions to the product (mainly cons): The body scan is kinda cool but it wasn't clear if they were going to use the scan for simply creating an "avatar" or if they were going the data gathered to determine my current weight, height, etc. There was no explanation but as the latter never emerged, I assumed it was only for the former (an initial disappointment).In some of the other Kinect games I have played, there is an avatar that plays in your place, mirroring your actions but not in detail - while it can see your arms move it can't differentiate finger movement. This game is much better at determining your exact position and angle because they use you as an avatar. It is literally like a mirror image - not my favorite. On the same page, there are a lot of workouts or activities I'll do and it won't recognize that I completed them. The Tai Chi workout wouldn't recognize half of the movements I did because it would only recognize 2 or 3 out of the 4 limbs in position (the 4 one usually being the leg I was balancing on - how does that make sense?). The hip-hop exercise was pretty complicated and I had to stop because I was missing everything - and I am very coordinated.The hand that acts as the cursor is mainly blurred and is very sensitive. If you hold the cursor over something for a mere 2-3 seconds, it will select it. It was irritating initially but it seems as if the use of the cursor gets easier the longer you use it.While I thought the progress quiz was neat (based on your activity and some other factors, they will determine how much exercise you need to do per week) I was confused when it claimed to have a customized plan and I couldn't find it. This might be something I simply missed.Also, I did a number of different activities but I did not see anywhere where the amount of time I had been playing or exercising was. It was not displayed like the calories were and I could not find it anywhere else in the menu.Some Pros: I like how the amount of calories you burn is up on the screen at all times as a motivation and you can make it up to certain levels (looks like it is arranged in the same order/interval of how you go to the next belt in karate).The music associated with the activities is upbeat and fun. It manages to keep me motivated during the activity and I like how what you're doing matches the beat (that helps a lot in completing the activity accurately).The interface is aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate (minus the initial "getting used to" the cursor). The activities themselves are also pretty awesome. There are three main groups of activities separated by type and color: Yellow is for the Fitness Activities where you do things like punch blocks, jump rope, stack blocks, and "run around the world". Red/Pink is for Workouts for the typical focused muscle strengthening: abs, arms, glutes, back, legs, etc. The last one is Purple and that includes the fitness routines and dances. These are the following workouts that I have tried: Latin Dance, Tai Chi, and Hip Hop (see above for specifics). There was also Bollywood, African Dance, Boot Camp, and Yoga. Obviously, the muscle specific exercises like push ups aren't going to be as fun as some of the other ones but I was impressed by how the kinect/game was able to pick up my movements.Conclusion: I have only been using this game for a week but I have had a lot of fun. Considering that the purpose of this game is to make exercising fun while using the Kinect, I think that goal has been met. The different dances are fun but challenging and the music and backgrounds keep everything upbeat and exciting. While there is always room for improvement, this product is well worth the purchase. I look forward to seeing the next edition of Your Shape Fitness and adding it to my collection of Kinect games.