Is it like Kinect Party with a fitness focus?
I began playing Ubisoft’s Shape Up thinking it would be something like Kinect Party with some fitness trappings. Those moments are present but don’t occur nearly as often as they need to. Some of the activities like the block punching, melon smashing, the ab space shooter and the piano key mini-games are fun but that’s kind of where it ends. Several activities that needed to track my legs just didn’t work and I consistently saw the low light warning during loading screen, which confused me because the room was incredibly well lit.
Shape Up local multiplayer works well when the activity being played works. I played a bunch of it with my kids. They had fun just seeing themselves on screen while I was too busy thinking about accuracy. Knowing only one person on my friends list with the game meant that the challenge feature couldn’t be used to its full potential. Sending challenges to your friends or sharing results and pics on Facebook are all possible. Shape Up even has in-game masters/challengers that you can do weekly competitions with. All these modes and workout routines are nice inclusions but if you don’t think the game can see what you’re doing, what’s the point? With some serious patching Shape Up could be one of the few really fun Kinect games for the Xbox One. But in its current form it’s just not there yet.
Recommendation: No – the parts that do are work don’t work consistently enough to recommend it at anywhere close to full price…right now
Full Disclosure: The Xbox One version of this game was provided to GameEnthus by the developer.
Genre: motion game, fitness game
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform(s): Xbox One
Price: $59.99
Links                                                                                                                                                                                                                              http://shapeup.ubi.com/en-us/                                                                                                                                                                 http://GameEnthus.com
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/gameenthus-podcast
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gameenthus-podcast-video-games/id286435007?mt=2
Scale:
Worth a buy – paying full price for fans of the series or genre makes sense – often includes a caveat
Worth a buy on sale – not quite full price worthy but close, – often includes a caveat
No – borrow/rent it if you must play it
Please no – Don’t waste any time and/or money on it