EA Sports Active (Wii) Review

It’s time to get fit with EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer, a home fitness program on the Wii and the first title under the new EA Sports Active line. Packaged with extra peripherals to help you work up a sweat, Personal Trainer provides the tools necessary to create a regular workout schedule with professional advice on workouts and exercise routines including a program from Oprah’s personal trainer Bob Greene. Personal Trainer is a fitness program out and out, and while exercise routines are generally guised behind outdoor activities with a decent quality of presentation and funky music there’s no hiding the simple fact that this really is no video game.

Personal Trainer takes fitness seriously, but still tries to have some fun at the same time. Initially setting up a Fitness Profile stresses the importance of correctly entering details such as age, height, and weight as well as choosing the clothing, accessories, and overall appearance for an on-screen character. Once completed the main menu allows easy instant access for any exercise for you and a friend. The preset and custom workouts offer a lot of customisation for easy quick workouts but Personal Fitness has much more focus on setting out a course of action and properly planning on a regular workout routine with the included 30 Day Challenge.

This is where the virtual Journal comes in handy, with day-by-day workout plans and surveys that monitor more than just the physical work you do. There’s a calendar to track progress in the 30 day challenge as well as a log of achievement based medals to earn, but Personal Trainer wants to make sure you eat right and stay fit outside as well, with daily surveys about your dietary intake and lifestyle habits outside and indoors.

Personal Trainer can get quite personal about things and it shows a dedication to its entire point, which is getting down and getting fit. When it comes to working out, there are quite a few exercises available that focus on a range of body areas specifically targeting regions such as upper or lower body and cardio development that ensure the job is really being done. Exercises can range from repeatedly serving tennis balls to skating downhill, boxing against a training bag or even Cardio Dancing. There’s many events that spice things up and some of them can be quite active, with Jump Squats requiring a certain amount of floor space and room stability. The activities aren’t too exciting, most of them usually consisting of the most mundane aspect, such as pitching a softball… and doing it over and over and over again until you’re that little bit more fit. The Wii Fit balance board is supported to enhance some of the games, but not necessary to get a full work out.

The included peripherals help somewhat with the exercise process, with a leg strap pouch to holster the nunchuk controller against your leg so that Personal Trainer can tell when your whole body is moving, or at least one half of it. The “Resistance Band”, or large red rubber band, does anything but resist being incredibly weak until snapping and demanding a replacement from EA who are currently frequently handing them out. The pouch for the Nunchuk actually feels quite tight, putting more strain on the analogue stick then I’d like to see with a tendency to slide down the outside of my pant leg making the running segments somewhat difficult. In such situations it’d be much easier to just so slightly nudge either controller which generally provokes a positive reaction but this would be defeating the entire point of the process.

Personal Trainer has incredibly sensitive controls that can easily fool the game when used inappropriately. There’s absolutely no point to this though, as unless you’re performing the exercises properly there’ll be no working out involved so it’s up to you to ensure you get the most out of each exercise. This is still pretty easy with the amount of tutorials and instructions available, each activity has its own video instructions with an instructor to ready you up beforehand. The in-game screen has lots of ways to ensure you’re working out right, with markers and timers useful for holding reps and stretches just long enough so despite the peripheral setup struggling to achieve its real goal it’s still easy to get a proper workout.

So if a workout is what you’re looking for, EA Sports Active Personal Trainer can help with an array of routines and programs designed to get the best of your time. It’s a very approachable program that can be catered to suit an individual’s needs and goes a bit beyond simple exercises but the control scheme leaves a lot up to the player to ensure that they’re getting the most out of what’s there. If you’ve got the motivation then Personal Trainer is a great compact home solution for working out.

Graphics 7.0

Nothing spectacular but the environments can vary with customizable characters giving something colourful to watch.

Gameplay 8.0

The activities are unexciting but still serve their purpose.

Sound 8.0

Surprisingly enjoyable to bop along to with a playlist of tracks to pick from.

Tilt 7.0

The peripherals add a little cost with no real value. Still beats buying gym equipment and saves storage space too.

Value 8.0

How poorly I kept up with the routines proves how effective this really is.