Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure

by Majesco

Product Features

• Core Exercise Modes: Fitness Adventure Mode and Fitness Training Mode
• Social Integration: Check out how you stack up against your friends' and Jillian's fans' performances in the online leaderboards.
• Stats and Fitness Calendar: Review your performance on completed workouts and preview or change upcoming scheduled workouts in your training plan.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0056BE0ZY
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches ; 3.2 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: November 8, 2011
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #854 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Jillian Michaels, red hot health and wellness icon, best-selling author and co-host of 'The Doctors' makes her debut on Kinect for Xbox 360! Get ready to use your entire body this time as players join Jillian on an interactive adventure, which of course will also be filled with Jillian's trademark intensity! Jillian Michaels' Fitness Adventure, the latest iteration of the Jillian Michaels franchise, takes your fitness routine beyond a basic workout and turns it into a real adventure through a mission-based journey set in a lush jungle temple environment. The high-energy and fully customizable motion-based experience offers a thrilling personal training experience that you can only expect from teaming up with Jillian to achieve your fitness goals.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

130 of 140 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good game, but only if playing conditions are absolutely perfect, November 17, 2011

By 

Nutwiisystem.Com (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure (Video Game)

I'll start off by saying that I'm a fan of Jillian Michaels. Her straightforward, non-nonsense style has helped millions of people through her videos and her work on The Biggest Loser.

I wish I could say I was a fan of the people who developed her video games. Back in 2009, Majesco released Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum for the Wii. Over 600,000 of us bought a copy. I'd say over 599,000 of us were disappointed. The game was clunky, had a terrible user interface, and committed the cardinal sin of motion games--it didn't detect motion. The 2010 and 2011 versions weren't much better.

Now that the Jillian brand is making a new start on the Xbox, I made a conscious effort to forget the past and approach this game with fresh eyes. The game does has some aspects that are terrific and even innovative. But I also saw some of the same old habits coming up.

The first thing I noticed when I started up the game is that you need room. A LOT of room. While other games like Kinect Sports and Dance Central can still work (if not optimally) when you're 7-8 feet from the TV, Jillian Michaels is completely unusable unless you have a minimum of 10 feet, plus a very clear view of the floor and plenty of room from side to side. I spent 20 minutes moving furniture around until I could get it to work to some degree. It would have been nice if they gave an option for people with limited space to skip certain exercises or do them on the "honor" system.

You're greeted by Jillian and you "wave" to begin. You're then taught how to navigate the menus. The use of the Kinect to navigate the menus is not one of the better implementations I've seen; they chose not to use a cursor, which meant some awkwardness in getting to some menu options. There were plenty of times when I was waving my arms around trying to get the system to even acknowledge that I wanted to select something. Thankfully, they give the option of using the Xbox controller to navigate, which I did happily.

In the next part, they "scan" you. This part is actually pretty cool--they take your video image and essentially turn you into an animated version of yourself, which will be used throughout the game instead of just a silhouette or a cartoon avatar. I first saw this technology with the game Kung Fu Live on the PS3 (coming soon to the Kinect as Kung Fu High Impact), and I loved it.

Next, you choose whether to play as a Guest or to sign in to your Xbox Live account. You start out by recording your personal details, including your sex, age, height, and weight. As soon as you enter your weight your BMI is calculated automatically.

You then get to the main menu, where you hear a jungle beat playing and a "Tomb Raider" look and feel. The menu options are simple: Fitness Training, Fitness Adventure, Stats, and Options.

Under Fitness Training, you have two options; Single Exercise and Circuits.

Single Exercises are the building blocks for the whole game. Under this menu option you can scroll to view each of the 67 individual exercises that you'll do during the game. Most of them are pretty familiar calisthenics moves such as crunches, push-ups, jumping jacks, lunges, squats, and so on. It also includes signature "Jillian" moves like "Hindu push ups" and "squat jacks". As you scroll through each exercise (which definitely requires the Xbox controller to maintain sanity), you'll see a small animation of Jillian doing the moves. When you select an exercise, you have the option of beginner (10 reps), intermediate (20 reps) or expert (30 rep) levels.

After that, you'll see a large animated image of Jillian in the middle of the screen, who will show you a quick 5-second demo (which in many cases is quite useless as one rep itself can take 3-4 seconds). Then you jump right into doing your reps. As you do the reps, you'll see your animated image on in the lower corner. I really like this, as it lets you compare your exact form and technique to Jillian's.

The Kinect will try to detect your moves; if it thinks you're doing them right you'll glow green, if it thinks you're not doing them right it'll glow red, and if it thinks you could be doing them better you'll glow yellow.

Sounds great, but practically speaking, I found that at least 25% of the time I was getting reds and yellows when I shouldn't have (with a LOT of moving of furniture, repositioning of the Kinect sensor, and natural lighting I was finally able to reduce this to 10%). There were cases where I'm sure I was doing the exercise correctly, but the system insisted I wasn't. And forget about any exercises that involved the floor, like crunches or push-ups--the Kinect would often completely fail on those, and in some cases completely lose track of me. Even after a lot of trial and error I couldn't get those to work consistently. To sum up the game's use of Kinect motion detection, when it worked it was fantastic, but when it didn't work it was terribly aggravating.

Workouts in this mode can last anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute, depending on the exercise and the number of reps you do. As such, this section of the game is not a "workout" per se, but more a way to learn each individual move. Another unintended use of this section is to try to figure out the idiosyncrasies of the system--if you're doing a move correctly for a particular exercise but the system insists you aren't, in this section you can try to figure out why through trial and error.

The second option, Circuit Training, basically takes a string of individual exercises and puts them in a routine. There are a number of pre-set routines, including:

Total Body Training Easy
Total Body Training Medium
Strength
Cardio Craze
Burner
Cardio Shred
Reflexes
Fat Burner
Best of
Power

In addition, there are empty slots where you can create your own routines by stringing together up to 12 different Individual Exercises at 10, 20, or 30 reps each.

For each circuit, you can preview the exercises in the circuit, do a warm-up (which basically consists of lower impact Individual Exercises like stretches), or jump right into the circuit. I do like how they split up warm-ups from the routine--many exercise games will force you to do the warm-ups every time. Although some of the warm-ups are a little suspect (my first warm-up was "jumping jacks", which I'm not sure most trainers would think is a great idea if I haven't even stretched yet).

I tried the "Best Of" circuit and was totally wiped out after 33 minutes, in a very good way. The exercises were definitely intense. But there were admittedly a few annoyances. First, the system wasn't picking up all my moves, and in some cases it lost track of my body altogether, forcing me to "wave" to get it to recognize me again. Second, there was absolutely no indication of how long the circuit was nor what percentage of it I had left to go--so by 2/3 of the way in I was cursing at Jillian telling her to stop already.

At the end of the circuit, you'll see a summary of the exercises you did, calories burned, time, and "accuracy". In another usability snafu, the font size is so tiny you need a magnifying glass to see it.

The other main section of the game is "Fitness Adventure". The obvious inspiration for this part of the game was Tomb Raider, where you have a first-person view of running along a path. The graphics are actually pretty good, with a lot of detail of the lush jungle setting.

To start your run through the jungle, you run in place, a nice touch. You can reach your hands up and to the sides to collect green "bonus medallions" which will reduce your overall time (accidentally collecting red medallions will increase your time). There wasn't any visual indicator that I successfully grabbed the medallions, but you'll hear an audio "bling" when you do.

As the game progresses, you'll hit different obstacles where you'll employ "Individual Exercises" to get through. For example, to pass a series of giant pipes that's lying on the road you need to do "Squat Jumps" to jump over the pipes. You'll see Jillian's animated image to the left and yours to the right of the bottom of the screen so you can match her moves.

Cute idea, but this is where the spotty motion detection really hurts. While spotty motion detection is an annoyance while doing the circuit exercises, here if the system cannot pick up your moves you're completely stuck. I suppose this helped me get more of a workout--I ended up doing about 10 squat thrusts before the system decided I'd done one it approved of. But of course, the game is a lot more fun when it works right (with enough trial and error I was able to pass most levels, but that took a lot more work on my part than it should have).

There are 58 levels to get through; when you select them you'll see the specific "Individual Exercises" that you perform in each of them. There's not really a story to follow or anything, it's basically the same as the circuit mode with each exercise tied to a different activity in the jungle.

I should say that your mileage may vary. I live in an apartment, so my limited lighting and space may have had an impact. (On the other hand, I am able to play other Kinect games perfectly). Bottom line, I'd recommend renting a copy or borrowing it from a friend first to make sure it works in your environment before forking over $30-40 for it.

To sum up, the game has some fantastic and easy-to-follow workouts that are among the most intense for any system. Fans of Jillian will appreciate her voice narration and her techniques. And there are certain features which are truly innovative, such as the way your animated image is displayed.

But in many ways, they carried... Read more ›

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Shockingly weak game.....poor controls!, December 4, 2011

By 

Tony on a Pony (Orange County, USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure (Video Game)

I really like Jillian Michaels and her brand however this game does not do her brand any justice.
The game idea is great. You can basically choose to either workout or do a virtual parkour, where you have to race against time and perform different exercises. Sounds awesome, doesn't it?
I also liked the whole Tomb Raider approach and since it is none violent I guess it's going to be cool for my little nephews to play with. Their marketing worked great on me.

Here come the buyer's remorse though:
Once you pop in the disc, you're in for a real slap in the face.....you will need to navigate through the menu to get the game started....oh boy, what a nightmare! At first I thought I bought a broken game and believe me that the same though occurred to me several times when I gave the game more tries. The menu controls and the motion-sensoring are so jacked up that you will often select the wrong option and you better get used to backing to the previous screen a bunch of more times. I have about five Kinect games on my shelf and this is by far the one with the most frustrating controls.
Once you manage to start a game you notice how bad the graphics are. For a gamer like me this was like going all retro and firing up my old Super-NES. This could have been an online marketplace game on xbox live, why waste packaging or a disc on this?!
The game itself plays okay and to my surprise the exercises are challenging and fun. However, some of the motions do not get picked up right, so it might be very possible that will get stuck at one or the other obstacle for longer than necessary. Forget about beating your best times for a trail, when you have to repeat the same motion over and over again because the sensor is not able to pick up your moves.
Oh, and if you happen to have a big dog that happens to walk past the kinect camera the game will not pick you up as a player anymore and you will have to restart the game. My other kinect games have always been able to pause and resume the game once the camera got blocked or could not pick things up the right way.
I hope they will come out with a major patch for this and get the dings out. I feel jibbed and I'm sure a lot of people feel like they paid for a broken game.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jillian delivers!, December 7, 2011

By 

sammy - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure (Video Game)

I have seen some people complaining they couldn't' work the controls. YOu have to calibrate the camera on your xbox. There is nothing wrong with the game. You need to learn how to use the x box. I have no problems with mine. As for this game, the exercise are fun. The game is visually stunning. I like the concept of grabbing the gems to bump your time. The great thing about this is you get a workout without even realizing you are exercising. Two thumbs up!