Any cook could tell you that throwing every spice in the pot will result in something nobody wants to eat. In the world of workout fads, though, this approach has proved quite popular. Take Zumba, the latest workout movement to sweep the nation, and our wallets. A combination of hip-hop dancing, samba, salsa, merengue, mambo, tango, cumbia, flamenco, chachacha, reggaeton, belly dancing, martial arts, Bollywood moves and something called soca, it manages to be less interesting than any of those things on their own — but a lot more lucrative.
2010’s video game “Zumba Fitness” brought the trend out of gym classes and into our living rooms, and was a surprise hit. Selling 4.51 million units, it came out of nowhere to destroy much of its workout-game competition. Its sequel, fresh out of the gates, is already following in the tradition of its predecessor: flying off the shelves despite being more expensive than superior products.
Forget the fact that the workout itself often makes very little sense, flitting nonsensically between expert-level moves and what amounts to pacing the floor. What sets “Zumba Fitness 2” apart is the packed-in Zumba Belt, a sort of holster for your Wii Remote that wraps around your hips. This is good in that it frees up your hands — no more having to pretend the Wii’s motion-sensing controllers are maracas — but bad in that the game really has no idea what you’re doing. Sometimes it won’t register movement when you’re working your hips like crazy, and other times you can be hardly moving and the game thinks you’re doing great. With “Zumba Fitness 2,” it turns out hips do lie.
| ‘Zumba Fitness 2’ |
| » System: Wii |
| » Price: $39.99 |
| » Rating: 2 out of 5 stars |
In this way, the game’s whole purpose as a game — its ability to offer feedback like no DVD could — quickly becomes its biggest frustration. You can always just ignore the game’s scoring system, reducing it to a workout DVD. And, hey, as such, it’s not the end of the world. It has a lot of variety, and some recognizable tunes. But wouldn’t you rather forgo songs by Pitbull, and save $30?
“Zumba Fitness 2” isn’t a total insult, like Jillian Michaels’ Wii outings. But, like its predecessor, it does nothing to unseat Wii’s reigning champ when it comes to value in workout games: the $20 “Gold’s Gym Dance Workout.”
