For those of you who tried Ultimatum 2010 (and who suffered through Ultimatum 2009), this game is a completely different beast. While those were more “pure” exercise games with Jillian taking you through a bunch of exercises, here they decided to wrap the exercises around a story. Specifically, you’re a secret agent that’s helping Jillian destroy the evil corporation FPF (which produces processed foods to poison the masses) and the evil corporation CureAll (which produces a chemically-based elixir that makes people who eat FPF’s food “feel better”). Even as far as video game stories go, this one is kind of weak, but I figured I’d give them a pass on it, since the focus is on the fitness.

You start out the game doing “training”, which is essentially a series of stretching exercises. Each is worth 50-100 “points”. You need to collect 500 points in order to start the “missions”. Problem is, there’s no visual indication of the number of points you’ve collected after you finish an exercise–you just see the “Start” button again and again. After a while I figured out to go back, where I saw the “Mission” button unlocked.

The exercises themselves are okay, but nothing earth-shattering. I did like how they incorporated the “360 camera angle rotation” from the 2010 version, so you can see exactly how your on-screen character is doing the exercise. Unfortunately, the annoyances far, far outweigh anything positive. It honestly felt like I spent more time calibrating the Wii Balance Board and the Wii MotionPlus than I did actually playing the game. One thing that 2009 and 2010 had in common was horrible motion control detection. This version is not much better. No matter how hard you try to follow the on-screen character’s motions, invariably the system can’t detect you properly on far too many of the exercises. And for reasons which I’ll describe below, this is unbearably frustrating in this game.

The graphics are lower quality than they were in the 2010 version, but that’s by design–the entire game is meant to evoke a “comic book” look and feel. You still get Jillian’s real voice, but you get a comic book version of her visually.

When you start your “missions”, you see that there are a total of nine to get through, with one “Ultimate Mission”. You get through each “mission” by performing about 20 minutes of various exercises. As you do the exercises, your on-screen character will play through the story. Each mission is unlocked as you complete the previous one. You can choose from different difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, and High Intensity. I chose High Intensity.

Mission 1 is “Recon Northern Environments”. That’s it. No description of where you are or what you’re supposed to do. You just find your character in an abandoned warehouse.

You need to start by doing 30 “swing kicks” (15 for each leg) using the balance board. Once this is done, you run in place with (or just shake) your Wii remote to make your on-screen character run. Your character then comes to a garage door, and you need to do jumping jacks to open the garage door.

All well and good so far. Problem is, when it came to the jumping jacks the system kept telling me I was doing them wrong (I’ve been doing them since I was 3, so I think I know what I’m doing). It became farce-like, with me frantically contorting my body trying to figure out what kind of jumping jack it wanted me to do, and Jillian constantly yelling at me the whole time saying I was either too fast or two slow.

Suddenly–the screen goes blank. Then, a screen with Jillian’s image shows up, telling me that I need to “go back to the gym”. Worst of all, I had to start the mission (including the 30 swing kicks, the Wii remote shaking, and the jumping jacks) again.

I tried at least three times before I finally made it through. Your character next opens a manhole cover and runs through some underground graffiti-filled tunnels. At first I thought, “this is cool” and that it did make running in place a lot of fun. But after a while you realize you spend minute after minute tediously running through the same halls over and over again.

You stop in the middle of the empty corridor and for no reason start doing boxing exercises. It would have made more sense if an attacker came out of the shadows and fought you. But no, your character just decides to start boxing. The game developers didn’t even bother to try to detect your motions on this one–Jillian will just yell out commands, and you’re on the “honor system” to follow them.

After what seems like an eternity of running, you climb up the ladder, through another manhole, and out onto an empty street. You have to press a series of buttons to jump over something in the street.

After a while you go on to “squat swings”. At this point you have to stop to calibrate the Wii MotionPlus. There’s no indication of what you have to do next. I tried waving the Wii remote to match what my onscreen character was doing, but no dice. After a few minutes of trying and Jillian yelling at me, you guessed it, I see a screen with Jillian scolding me, telling me to go back to the gym. Mission over, and I need to start all over again. Which means 10 minutes of wasted effort. I later found that there is a “help” screen, but it’s just a line drawing of Jillian in a “before” and “after” shot of what the exercise is supposed to look like. Jillian’s voice explains how to do the exercise, but it’s drowned out by blaring music.

After a few more times I got through this step. You then go down another manhole (I figured out by this time that “Recon Northern Environments” just means the mission is for your character to run aimlessly through the environment). You run through a bunch of other hallways for an eternity. You finally come out and see a little bit of new scenery. You run to one building to do lunge kicks, run to another building to do pushups, and then go underground to run through more hallways!

When I was just about done with this exercise in tedium, it came time to do crunches. I’ve been doing crunches for about as long as I’ve been doing jumping jacks, but the game kept telling me I was doing them “too slow” and then “too fast”. But I got through them.

You then run up another manhole into a park, where you do hip twists using the MotionPlus and “curtsy lunges” using the balance board. Then, you guessed it, back underground to run through more hallways. Finally, after about 17 minutes of exercising, it came time to do 20 “back kicks” using the Motion Plus. I read the help text and tried my best to do a back kick, but the game kept telling me I was doing it wrong. Then, all of a sudden, you guessed it. The screen goes blank, and Jillian tells me I’ve failed and have to start all over! 17 minutes of effort down the drain!

At this point I just felt like tossing the game out the window. I would sooner jump out the window than try to get through 10 missions, much less the first one. I don’t mind a tough game, but when you’re doing everything right in the game but the system fails to recognize it and then punishes you by making you start from scratch, that’s frustrating beyond description. And it’s worse when Jillian keeps yelling at you. I guess it would have been cute and motivational if the game worked. But because the failure is on the part of the game and not you, it just becomes maddening and annoying.

So while I applaud D3Publisher for recognizing the drawbacks of the old versions (they were just too boring) and trying to bring this game in new directions. Unfortunately, I just can’t recommend it due to the poor execution of the game. As with 2009 and 2010, die-hard Jillian fans may appreciate the fun of hearing Jillian’s voice as you make your way through different exercises. But for everyone else, you’re better off with titles like EA Sports Active 2, The Biggest Loser Challenge (which also features Jillian, in a much more polished game), or even Active Life: Explorer (which does drama and adventure much better than this).

Jillian Michaels has a strong brand and her no-holds barred style on The Biggest Loser have helped millions. Unfortunately, she seems to be getting horrible advice as far as video games go. For her sake, I hope if there’s a Jillian Michaels 2012, she surrounds herself with people who can give her much better advice than the people behind 2009, 2010, and 2011 did.
Rating:
2 of 5

The box for EA Sports Active 2 is more compact than its predecessor, yet contains a lot more. When I opened the box, I noticed a lot of goodies. There was a USB dongle, two new motion controllers, one green resistance band (still a giant rubber band) and two straps, the EA Sports Active 2 disc, four AAA batteries, and an instruction sheet.

When you start EA Sports Active 2, you hear the familiar old “do do dodododo do do” music. You’ll see a short video showing beautiful images of the “desert oasis” where you’ll be exercising (still drawn in the same old cartoony style), and teasers of new activities like “mountain biking” and “fitness trail running”. You’ll also be introduced to the most dramatic new feature: the new motion controllers that are included in the box.

Controllers

By far, the thing that frustrated me the most about the first EA Sports Active was its use of the Wii’s Nunchuk controller. Aside from being spotty in its accuracy, I would constantly get tangled in the wires. EA Sports did something very smart and did away with the nunchuk altoether. Instead, it included its own wireless controller which straps right on to your leg (it communicates with a wireless USB receiver you plug into the top of the Wii). So now, you have full range of motion. The system does an excellent job of tracking your leg movements.

EA Sports has also included a Built-in Heart Rate Monitor, which also communicates wirelessly with the game. So throughout your workout you can track your heart rate (displayed on top of the screen along with your calories burned). The Heart Rate Monitor also doubles as a controller that detects your arm motions for many exercises. For certain exercises you still need the Wii remote, and you can optionally use the Balance Board for a handful of exercises as well.

The resistance band is slightly less flimsy than the previous version. Strangely, there were no instructions whatsoever in the documentation of how to put it together, but if you follow the same instructions I gave with the original version, they will still work for these.

Getting Started

You start out by confirming that your Wii has the correct time and date. This will be especially important if you’ll be tracking your progress online (more on this later). The game will then look for previous profiles from EA Sports Active or EA Sports Active: More Workouts.

The next step is choosing a trainer: “Devon” (who is a strength and conditioning coach who will push you) or “Niki” (a fitness, nutrition and power yoga instruction who stresses “discipline, focus, and motivation”). I ended up choosing Devon.

You then enter personal information about yourself (if you imported a profile, it’ll use that data as the default). This includes your gender, age, height, and weight (which can be measured with the Balance Board). It’s very important to be accurate here, as this will be used to estimate things like your ideal heart rate, your calorie burn rate, and more.

You then customize your avatar, selecting body type, skin tone, hair type, outfit, shoes, socks, hat, and sunglasses. You can probably find some combination that’ll approximate what you look like (or if you don’t want to bother, you can just select “randomize”).

In the next step, you enter your name and whether you want to use the Wii Balance Board in certain exercises.

Your trainer starts by setting three weekly goals for you: number of workouts in a week, amount of time exercising, and amount of calories burned. As you get familiar with the game, you can start setting your own goals as well.

In the next step, you can set up your online account. You’ll need an Internet connection to your Wii for this one. You first need to read and accept the online terms and conditions. Then, you need to set up your “EA Online Account”. More on this below.

You then see another video with more details on what you need to do to get started: make sure you’re wearing good workout clothes and make sure you have plenty of room to work out. It’ll then introduce your new sensors and show you clearly how to put batteries in your motion controllers and how exactly to put them on your arm and leg. The heartrate sensor is placed directly on your arm just below your elbow so the front of the sensor faces away from you when your arm is to the side (like a wristwatch). The leg sensor is placed high on the front of your upper right thigh. You then push a button on both sensors to allow them to communicate with the Wii console.

You’re finally ready to get started. You can choose the workout you wish: a 9 Week Program for total fitness (you can choose light, medium or hard intensity) or an introductory 21-day Program of moderate intensity that focuses on cardio. I chose the 9 Week program. You can also enter track your progress in a journal, create or join a workout group, see your workouts, and read up on different fitness and nutritional advice.

Gameplay

I do like the innovation EA Sports put into the activities. There are over 70 to choose from, ranging from basic exercises like stretching and running in place, to more advanced activities. As in the original version, most sporting events basically consist of you doing repetitions of exercise movements that approximate the movement that your on-screen character does. Most exercises will use your arm and leg sensors and in some cases the Wii remote or the Balance Board to check to make sure you’re doing the exercises (there are some which are on the “honor system”, where no controller is used at all).

What I really like about EA Sports Active 2 is that they’ve incorporated some more interactivity and “video gaming elements” into some of the sporting activities. For example, in the skateboarding and mountain biking activities, you need to leap at just the right moment to avoid obstacles or perform jumps. In the Basketball event, a cursor will move over the basket, and you need to time your jump correctly to score.

When your workout is done, you’ll see in-depth graphs and data on all kinds of information from your workout, from the time you spent, to the calories burned, to your heartrate. The system will keep track of your progress each day so you’ll be able to compare today’s workout with all your previous ones.

The 9-week regimen isn’t just a random assortment of exercises each day, it was clearly put together by a real fitness expert. You choose four days of the week to exercise (leaving three days to rest). You work progressively on different fitness goals as each day and week goes by. Each day starts with warm-up stretches and ends with cool-down activities, and there’s a good variety of activities throughout to keep the workouts interesting.

Another great improvement is the ability to work out with (and compete against) someone else, if you purchase a second set of controllers. There’s something about competition that makes exercise go by so much faster.

One annoyance, as other reviewers have noted, is that because many of the exercises don’t use the Balance Board or the Wii remote, both will time out throughout the game, which interrupts the flow of the exercises. I understand that their intent is to save battery power, but at the very least it would have been good to have an option to prevent the controllers from shutting off (for example, those who use rechargeable batteries don’t care as much).

Your Online Account

I moved my description of the the Online Account to the bottom of this review because signup is probably the weakest and most convoluted part of the game right now, but to be fair, they do clearly say that it’s in “Beta”.

When I got to this part in the setup process, I was abruptly told “there is no EA Online account associated with this email address”–before I even had a chance to enter an email address! On the next screen, there was a place to enter an email address and password, but they didn’t seem to differentiate between “sign up” and “sign in”. So I tried an email address I thought I’d set up on EA Online before (for Grand Slam Tennis, I believe). Turns out I typed it wrong, but it set up a new account for me anyway, which I didn’t realize until after I’d done my first exercise. So now, I had two EA Online accounts that couldn’t be merged together.

Adding to the confusion, you’re next asked to enter a “Persona Name” which will be your online identity. They let me enter a name with hyphens using the keyboard, but when I tried to continue I was told “only letters and numbers are allowed” (why, pray tell, did they let me enter them in the first place). It would have been nice if they just took the name you entered a few steps earlier and checked to see if it was available. One good thing they do do is that if the Persona you entered is not available, they’ll give you alternate suggestions (basically the name you entered followed by a random number).

You then get an email to the Inbox on your PC with a link to http://www.easportsactive.com. When you come to the site, it just looks like an advertising site for the game. But when you sign in (on the top of the page which is easy to miss) with your email address and password, you’ll get brought to a personalized page where you can view graphs of your latest workouts; a calendar showing completed workouts, missed workouts, and when your next workout is; your goals; your milestones; a newsfeed; a place to review your progress (including graphs of your number of workouts, workout duration, calories burned, heartrate, and distance “run” over time); and a place to set up groups where you can invite up to 30 friends to exercise together (you’ll see aggregate data of everyone in the group).

The usability of the online portal does leave a little something to be desired. Only group names 10 character long or under are allowed (probably so it could fit on the Wii screen, but you gotta think they could have worked around this). When I tried to change my password it told me–I kid you not–that “This Password appears to be profane. Please try another entry to continue.” No, the password I chose was not “profane”!

So the best advice I can give to ensure a smooth signup process is to first think of any EA Sports game you might have played online on the Wii, PS3, or Xbox (e.g., Grand Slam Tennis, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, etc.) and to make sure you use your same username and password. If you’re sure you don’t have one yet, rather than attempting to register on the Wii, I would strongly recommend first going to http://www.easportsactive.com on your PC and clicking the “Register” button in the upper right-hand corner to sign up for your EA Online Account. Then, go back to the Wii and use that to sign in.

Conclusion

Slight annoyances with the controllers timing out and the poor usability of the online portal signup process notwithstanding, overall, I’d say that EA Sports has maintained their position as the king of the hill as far as Wii workout games go.

It comes at a price–there are definitely other good-quality workout games that aren’t $100. Then again, when you compare the $100 you pay for this game to the $1000s you’d otherwise pay for gym memberships, exercise equipment, and personal trainers, it’s definitely a great deal–and by getting family members involved or getting together with friends in workout group, you can encourage each other to work out. In fact, if you’re interested in joining a Nutwiisystem workout group, let me know and I’ll be happy to set one up (I’ll be using EA Sports Active 2 myself to attempt to shed at least 20 pounds :)).

This one is highly recommended, and EA Sports Active retains its position as #1 on the top of our best Wii Fitness Games list.Rating: 5 of 5