Friday, June 10, 2011

Zumba Fitness for Xbox Kinect

I reviewed Zumba Fitness Kinect Xbox 360 on Amazon earlier today. I'm not sure they'll publish it because of language...


My wife loves dance and really wanted to love this game. And she does love it, the 1 in 3 times she can get it started. The problem is that their startup sequence is so badly broken that it often takes her more time to begin than to play.
* The enroll screen simply does not recognize any gestures. It can tell that players have entered or left the play space, but it advises "wave to enroll", and will just not recognize a wave. This is frustratingly horrible. It can 5 to 20 minutes until you make the nuanced gesture that it is looking for.
* Then, even though KinectId has recognized her, the game forgets that when it starts. So, after enrolling, you are always unknown again, and you have to go through another menu to tell it what the XBox already knows.

But let's say we get past these hurdles. Then you have to pick what to play. Majesco has a little slider and pane system for choosing your game variation, but it can barely detect and track hand motions. So you can add another 2 or 3 minutes to just select Class/20 Minute Workout.

In the software industry, we have a technical term for this kind of buggy, untested software - "steaming pile of shit". Zumba Fitness aptly earned that title.