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185 of 187 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
So much potential..... wasted, December 8, 2009
Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars
We purchased this game hoping for the ability to have a yoga disc that provided us with a new yoga session each day. What we got was not worthy of a single workout, let alone a daily routine.
I popped in the disc and it had me create a profile, ok, that's easy enough. I was presented with 3 game modes, story, training, or routine. I figured I would start with story mode and see how the game plays. We select our instructor, then we get a video from Anja Rubik saying why she loves yoga, then the game loads again. Finally we get into the yoga temple. For the first 5 minutes you follow your instructor around the building stopping to look at every statue and painting along the way, we finally get to a room that has a painting with a pose inside of it. I finally get to the room and it teaches me that pose. Basically, the story mode is going from room to room learning each pose one at a time with a couple minutes of break in between. Argh.
I went back to the main menu after a while and selected routine, it turns out we can select between 9 different routines with different target areas, heart, headache, etc. I choose one of them and the voice says 'follow my movements' and bends over. I bend over, at this point I can't see the screen, and sit there for a minute. I decide to start looking up every 5 seconds and eventually he moves and starts doing another pose, at about the third pose the voice says 'remember to hold your pose' or something along those lines. It just spits out a random sound byte every once in a while. I guess if you did this a bunch of times and had it memorized it would be good, but if you have to keep turning your head to see what you are supposed to be doing at any time you kind of lose all concentration on what you are supposed to be doing. There's no audio signals whatsoever during the routine.
To get the full experience I went to the training mode. This is basically just like story mode where you do one pose at a time but you actually get to choose your pose. That's at least better than the story mode.
In the end, I guess if you are a complete beginner to yoga, you could use this as an instructional video to see how to do poses, or you could just look up pictures on the internet and do that and end up with the same result. There's really no reward to doing poses in story mode as nothing really unlocks except more rooms to do one pose in.
The only thing Anja Rubik has to do with this game is the introduction video you see at the very beginning of the game. After that it's silence except for horrible voiceovers that describe a painting in detail but then narrate a routine with the words 'follow me'. This was a huge letdown for me in a game that had so much potential but in the end can't even be used for a workout. Try to stay away from this game and stick with wii fit or a yoga dvd.
Edit: It turns out if you keep playing story mode long enough, that while you're following your instructor (who walks soooooooo slow) around the temple, Anja will randomly pop up to describe something else about yoga when you're not expecting it, only to have the game load for another minute afterward. I don't want anyone saying "you didn't play the game" or whatever because of a small error in my post, so I figured I would add that correction.
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125 of 125 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Unbelievably Awful, December 9, 2009
Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars
I waited patiently for months for this software to be released. It finally arrived and now I just want to cry. Even if you faithfully tried to use the software, you wouldn't be able to do the proper breathing because you'd be laughing so hard (or sobbing in my case). What a disaster.
I bought the original Wii Balance Board specifically to get the yoga software, and while many people correctly complained that the yoga routines where clunky, it actually worked well enough for me. I loved having the feedback from the balance board as I did a pose and discovered that I wasn't balancing as well as I might as I watch the red dot move around, and that is a kind of feedback even a personal yoga instructor cannot give. I believe the Wii has fantastic potential for yoga and I was thrilled as I'd see my scores slowly improve along with my balance.
So after a while, I started looking for a more sophisticated version assuming that some developer would improve on the rudimentary original version. I saw this title and pre-ordered the software, waiting for months as it was delayed and delayed. I assumed that they were really developing something special. Wrong. My guess is they started a project that overwhelmed the developers and they finally gave up and decided to throw it out on the market as is and recoup what they could before they sunk more money into what they found to be a losing project. That would explain the delays.
The software takes almost no advantage of the balance board. The canned routines are nothing but weak animations with lousy voice recording and no feedback from the board. As I write this sitting at my computer, I'm letting a routine run while ignoring it and my "teacher" is saying things like "good job", or "you need a little more work on that one". It's bad enough to give fake positive encouragement, but to actually give FAKE CORRECTIVE advice? Give me a break! It's not even as good as a plain DVD. Why put something on the Wii without utilizing its abilities?
The training mode does occasionally use the board, but it is only to teach you a pose and even less useful for feedback. You are shown a footprint that shows how your foot is distributing your weight, but not in the fashion of the original. There is no working to keep the dot in the center of the yellow area, it is just mysterious colors with no guidance or audio feedback.
There is no reaction from the "teacher", no playback to see how you shifted your weight, no way to create your own routine using the board. Nothing. Even the original basic version catches you if you cheat and put your foot down. This one says nothing.
The poses are incomplete. The "tree pose" only has you do your right foot for example, not repeat with your left. Each pose has you select whether or not you have a balance board. Over and over. Unbelievable. Even the original clunky version wasn't that clumsy.
Don't waste your money, I want mine back. This is criminal. I feel swindled.
Update:
I gave up and returned this to Amazon. Even a partial refund is better than feeling so cheated and manipulated. (Which obviously is not the yoga serenity I was seeking. LOL) As others recommended, I have now purchased the Wii Fit Plus software upgrade for half the price of this ridiculous program. It is a big improvement over the original and solves most of the problems of the original by adding the ability to create custom routines that can be completed much more rapidly without touching the remote, allowing more time to do additional poses. They've even added a meditation game which is amusing. This will hold me until somebody somewhere develops a more robust yoga program.
What has been educational for me in this process is watching how the reviews are manipulated. As others have suggested, the 5 star reviews mysterious when read by anybody who's actually seen the game, and they reek of phony ads posted by one of those marketing companies to salvage a sinking ship. I posted one of the first reviews and the stream behind me was pretty much in 1 star agreement, then the bogus ads with no other review history, "verified Amazon purchase" or "real name" listing started appearing.
So, from here on I'll know to not just read reviews, but read the comments on the reviews and look for someone who really has purchased the product.
Again, this product is NOT something you want under your Christmas tree for anybody that you care about!
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51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as it looks . . ., December 9, 2009
Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars
From the description and the preview video, I had high hopes for this game -- beautiful music, pretty graphics, how could it go wrong? They did get the music right and the story mode is full of good information including mention of chakras. However, the graphics are terrible and you can't really explore on your own -- you have to just follow the guide around. I couldn't even figure out how to interact with anything.
The real problem, though, is when you actually go to do a pose. The balance board and remote are only used to check your form if you are in story or training mode. Then it really only seems to check to make sure your hand is steady and your weight is evenly distributed. Even this part is up to you as the game doesn't give you feedback.
The routine section is even more disappointing. The routines are supposed to help you with different things like a headache, a cold, etc., but they're more like random grab bags of unrelated poses with no warm up and barely any instruction. If the graphics were better, the lack of instruction wouldn't be as bad. However, even with an HD-TV, the instructor is a pixelated blob whose head you can barely make out let alone a complicated yoga pose.
I think some of the routines are even unsafe -- they include poses like crow that are very advanced but only give instructions like "bend forward, bend your knees, put your knees on your arms, yup that's it you should be good . . . " Unless you are a very experienced yogi, you are going to face plant on your living room floor when you try that.
Please, please save your money. Even wii fit yoga is better than this.
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