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UFC Personal Trainer: The Ultimate Fitness System
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Graphics & Sound:
Some gamers, like myself, don't find a lot of time to exercise. For that reason, it's great that there are technologies such as the Wii Fit balance board, the PlayStation Move and the Xbox 360 Kinect to allow for games that get gamers up and moving around. However, when it comes to losing weight, building up overall strength or building endurance for the whole body, you need more than just games; you need something specifically aimed at providing a workout for the whole body. UFC Personal Trainer: The Ultimate Fitness System strives to be just that, with 30 and 60 day workout programs aimed at (your choice of) Cutting Weight, Building Strength or Building Endurance.
Fans of the UFC will be familiar with the wide variety of UFC fighters who appear in the game. There's Mark DellaGrotte, who will be your trainer for the Endurance Program, Greg Jackson, who is your trainer for the Weight Cutting Program and Javier Mendez, who is your trainer for the Building Strength Program. In addition, you can work with these three fighters in the "Hit the Mitts" routines, along with 16 other UFC fighters: Urijah Faber, Rashad Evans, Jon Jones, Cain Velasquez, Frank Mir, Shane Carwin, Antonio Nogueira, Forrest Griffin, Nate Marquardt, Demian Maia, Jon Fitch, Dan Hardy, Mike Swick, Kenny Florian, Sean Sherk and Diego Sanchez. All of these fighters' likenesses are digitally reproduced, for your sparring pleasure; just pick your favorite and Hit the Mitts.
One other familiar face graces UFC Personal Trainer; Rachelle Leah, who was the UFC's new Octagon Girl in 2004, the host of Spike TV's UFC All Access in 2006, the cover of Playboy in 2008 and host of Fox Sports' MMAthletics in 2010. And since computer graphics probably wouldn't do her justice, all of her hosting is done with video clips. Well, that and audio narration to keep you motivated when in the menus and such.
I know it's cliché to say that the music in the game is designed to get your blood pumping, but in this case, it's true. The music selections in the menus are upbeat and loop nicely, while some of the music in the exercises are very noticeably made to give good timing cues to help pace your workout... which is a good thing.
The presentation is nicely done, all the way around. It looks like you're in a gym, training with a UFC trainer, complete with other people exercising off in the background and the fact that you'll do different exercises in different areas of the gym. There's a nice "spotlight" effect that darkens the background on the periphery of the screen and helps you focus on the exercise at hand and a pretty cool jump-rope effect that overlays a CG rope in front of you when you make the appropriate movements while "jumping rope." |
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Gameplay:
UFC must be experts in mixing things up. The UFC is all about mixed martial arts and UFC Personal Trainer: The Ultimate Fitness System is all about a mix of different ways to get you moving.
While there are 30 and 60 day workout programs aimed at either Cutting Weight, Building Strength or Building Endurance, that's not the only options in the game. You can select a Quick Workout to just jump in and get exercising, but even if you don't have time for a full workout, there are included Activities that can take as little as one minute or less, so they have absolutely removed any possible excuses of not having enough time to work out.
After selecting the trainer of your choice, you can use one of their predefined workouts, and you're off. Or, if you want to focus on certain areas or specific exercises, you can create your own workouts and save them to use again and again.
"Hit the Mitts" is where you'll encounter the most UFC fighters in UFC Personal Trainer. You can jump in the octagon with any one of 19 different UFC fighters and practice increasingly intense routines with them.
Other Activities that don't take long to perform include hitting the Heavy Bag, the Speed Bag and performing Tire Flips, where you have to squat as if you were picking up a huge tractor tire, then lift upward and extend your arms as if you were flipping it over.
There are also multiplayer modes: "Side By Side," where you compete at the same time, "Hot Seat," where you take turns, switching off between rounds and "Xbox LIVE Challenge," where you can send challenges to friends or accept them and try to top your friends' scores. There are also Leaderboards that allow you to compare your scores with others.
One of the best things about UFC Personal Trainer, however, has got to be its slow, yet fairly constant reward system. As you complete exercises, your trainer will praise you if you've beaten your earlier time at that exercise. Completing workouts will unlock new punching bags and new activities. There are a whole lot of different achievements to be had, and some even have Avatar items associated with them. All of this positive reinforcement makes it easier to actually come back the next day and turn it on again and do your next workout. |
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Difficulty:
There are multiple ways to look at the "difficulty" of an exercise game, such as UFC Personal Trainer. There is the complexity and the difficulty of understanding what you're supposed to do, then there's the physical difficulty - or intensity - of the workout. I will be the first to say that the UFC Personal Trainer exercises can be intense. Different exercises target your upper body, lower body and/or your core, as well as a heavy dose of cardio - I found that the workouts do a great job of getting my heart rate up and keeping it there throughout the workout, then lowering it slowly and in a controlled fashion via the cooldown portion of the workout.
As for the instruction, most of the exercises are explained very well, are demonstrated first, then you attempt to do 3-4 of them to show that you understand how they are to be done... and then you do a set of them. Most of the exercises are easy to understand, but surprisingly exhausting to perform. Your trainer will cheer you onward, however, making it a bit easier to keep going.
I found that there were things I simply couldn't do. When I encountered something that my body simply said "no" to, I worked around it. During a warm-up, when I get to Mountain Climbers, I simply jogged in place or did some jumping jacks to keep my heart rate up. If there's a cool-down stretch I can't manage, I try to stretch the area slowly and carefully in a different way. For exercises that are part of a workout that I can't perform, I will pause the game and skip the exercise. This allows me to do something, even when I can't do everything. If you do the same, you'll find that as you increase your strength and endurance and lose weight, you may be able to perform these activities normally. If so, you can start doing them normally during your workouts. |
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Game Mechanics:
I love the idea of UFC Personal Trainer. I was excited at the idea of tailored workouts, even back with Yourself Fitness, which would create custom workouts for you, but was, for the most part, non-interactive. UFC Personal Trainer uses Kinect technology to take this further, allowing your Xbox 360 to create custom workouts for you, then watch how you perform them, count them off as you do your workout and even give tips on correcting your form.
There were a couple of times that something would mess up, but only on one occasion did it interrupt my workout in my 30-day Endurance Program. There were a couple of times that it froze on me and required a reboot, but not in a reproducible way, so it could be my system, or it could be something that they address in an upcoming update of the game or, for that matter, the 360.
Despite this rare issue, I found UFC Personal Trainer to be an awesome fitness system that provided a challenging workout and yet provides enough reward and encouragement to keep me coming back for more. I plan to continue using UFC Personal Trainer until E3 2012... we'll see how it prepares me for running around the LACC. Check back for updates on my progress. |
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-Geck0, GameVortex Communications AKA Robert Perkins |
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