'Evolved' shapes up well

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012
For: Xbox 360 (Kinect required)
From: Ubisoft
Billy O'Keefe  

That hissing sound you hear? That's your resolution to get in shape slowly seeping out of the room as the excitement of 2012's first week gives way to life as usual.

Gym memberships are expensive, finding time to go to the gym is a hassle, making a plan is hard, sticking to it harder.

Thank goodness for, of all things, video games - and particularly this one. After a year of good-but-not-great fitness games releasing for Microsoft's Kinect, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 gets pretty much everything right.

The polish is apparent, too. In addition to not being a complete pain to navigate using Kinect (voice control would have been nice, but it proves unnecessary), Evolved's main menu very cleanly lays out a staggering array of workout programmes, games, virtual classes and other tools.

Inside each menu lies a large array of programmes organised by intensity and the goals they help fulfil. The offerings - targeted strength training, yoga and dance classes, training programmes for specific sports and numerous others - are comprehensive and the presentation is intuitive.

Evolved's My Zone section allows the game to build workout plans for you based on your needs and availability, but they aren't binding: A game-wide tracker gauges your progress against your goals regardless of which programmes you engage.

Also, most programmes are short, making it easy to diversify your workout. A trainer demonstrates each exercise as he or she calls them out, and while the game's grading of your form isn't always accurate, it's close enough to keep you minding your form without becoming frustrated.

Kinect calibration is quick and automatic, and Evolved works well regardless of lighting and whether you have a surplus of room or just enough.

Evolved provides multiple difficulty settings and a scoring system for each of these and its other games, but it offers the same courtesy to its traditional workouts as well.

The tendency to misread your form will dock your scores unfairly now and then, but past that inconvenience, the constant presence of scores to beat and other meters of progress, along with in-game badges and Xbox 360 achievements, allows Evolved to continually dish rewards beyond the simple promise of fitter days ahead.

Should you not wish to do it alone, "Evolved" also includes in-game tools - and a companion website, yourshapecenter.com - that let you stack your progress against that of your friends and the world at large.

The games also support four-player multiplayer, though only offline.

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