Review: Project Shitbox - Day 5 - Shitbox Adventures & Your Shape: Fitness Evolved

Yes, I am referring to the Microsoft Kinect. I will refer to the Kinect as "Project Shitbox" in this review not in a derogatory manner, nor as a judgment on its quality or performance, but simply because I am a longtime CAG and laughed when Wombat adopted the name during a CAGCast as Project Natal (now known as Kinect) was still in its early stages of development (See CAGCast Episode #184, Minute 72:40 for this historic moment).

I am a 25-year old Aerospace Engineer who has been gaming since I was 6 (Currently, I play Halo: Reach and Starcraft II mostly). I'm currently working on a Master's Degree, working professionally full-time, and my free time is split between my girlfriend and friends, gaming, exercising, and watching The Walking Dead. In college, I took up Martial Arts and earned a red belt during my 3 years of Tae Kwon Do, and later a semester of Mushinoto Ryu Jujutsu. I played recreational flag football and baseball, and tried lifting weights on a regular basis, but even at my best I could never bench more than my own body weight (155 lbs. at the time, I'm 165 lbs now.)

During those years I also cultivated my skills in Skydiving (Student License), Scuba Diving (Open Water / Enhanced Air Nitrox), and indoor Rock Climbing with weights (I can climb with up to 60lbs attached to me). Rock Climbing with weights was easily the best workout I've ever had, and while I tried weights with running, it's really bad on your joints and I'm hoping using them in stationary exercises while playing Project Shitbox on a soft carpet might be more effective.

Age: 25
Weight: 165 lbs
Chest: 38.50"
Bicep: 12.50" (Flexed)
Waist: 36.25"
Hips: 37.75"
Thigh: 20.50"
Calf: 15.50" (Flexed)
# of Abs: 0

ID: Shitbox ID
SA: Shitbox Adventures
YS: Your Shape: Fitness Evolved

Setup of Project Shitbox was pretty simple. It took maybe 5-10 minutes to get acquainted with the system, set up the space, calibrate it, etc.. While I don't like the idea of having a video game supplying me a card (for calibration) that I feel like I need to lock away in a safe, it seems simple enough that printing it out might suffice. To clarify, I have a LOT of playing space (roughly 18' x 15'). To put this into Project Shitbox metrics, I could move beyond its "Best" play area space and still have 2 feet behind me. Project Shitbox can watch my every movement from head to foot and has space above and below each for jumps, roundhouse kicks, etc.

Shitbox Adventures was installed first. A collection of 5 mini-games, I tried out the "Breakout"-style game first. Right out of the box, Shitbox has you moving. This game, while not entirely accurate in the interpretation of body movements, does a decent job of requiring you to move, jump, and swat at the fast moving balls.

Current downsides appear to be an oversensitivity to movement, as any egregious movement near the ball to serve will launch it, which is annoying if I'm actually trying to wind my arm up for a serve, only to have the ball leave port before my arm gets there. Also, the game seems unable to detect if you turn completely around, back facing the sensor, as your avatar will flip out and rotate 180 degrees repeatedly as the system tries to find you.

However, I love that the game recognizes a good portion of your body as a playing surface. It can be hard to gauge body position related to the game avatar, but kicks, knees, and head-butts can all be used to play the game, and with decent effectiveness. I found myself stretching across the play area, kicking to my left as I reached out with my hand to the right.

Two-player mode also adds in on the fun, as my girlfriend and I worked together to score points and engage in a "Avatar Hug" (Shitbox can recognize this, it's not a unique animation, but cool anyway).

We also played the Raft Riding game together, and my initial impression with that is a bit of frustration. In this game, you and your partner (or solo) must lean and jump to collect coins as you ride a raging river, occasionally jumping to take a ramp or ledge to more bonus coins. With two people, this can be really frustrating, as while one person jumping makes the raft go up a bit, two simultaneously makes you go higher, and jumping out of sync makes the raft lurch up or down sometimes ineffectively.

I don't believe the maps were specifically made for two players however, as jumping in sync makes the raft go up and over the coins you are trying to reach, making it difficult not only when to jump, but how many people should jump. However, if you want to work the hell out of your calves, play this game.

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved I considered to be the most effective of the 3-4 fitness games in the launch lineup. Effectively endorsed by Men's & Women's Health, it features their exercise programs and what appears to be highly effective motion tracking software. The detection problems I experience in Shitbox Adventures were nowhere to be seen in Your Shape, the game can even detect full 360 rotation, and even where your shirt sleeves end or whether you're even wearing a shirt at all. (Fun Fact: It detects differences in skin or clothing color as well, and will detect your nipples.)

The initial health evaluation it gives takes roughly 20 minutes to complete, and even during this, I was starting to break a sweat and use muscles and joints that I haven't been using recently. I haven't even tried using weights yet, but I expect this to kill a few pounds at least. The initial trainer is kind of annoying, but I'll swap her out as I unlock more characters. The backgrounds are sufficient. They aren't the most amazing thing in the game, but more importantly, it won't distract you as you try to mimic the movements of your trainer. I didn't do much workout wise beyond this initial fitness test, but watching as my girlfriend repeated the same process for her.

The gym games session was actually pretty entertaining and a decent workout. I tried 3 of the 4 games, starting with the Box Breaking game on easy (you unlock harder difficulties as you play, a bit annoying to someone who wants to start everything on Legendary, but I'll get over it). This game as you swinging across your chest or kneeing across your hips to break highlighted boxes to score points. As I failed to notice in my first run, you MUST SWING ACROSS your body for it to work. Once I got the rhythm however, I was a machine. I eager starting breaking out a few attacks from martial arts class to see what the Shitbox could handle, and it kept up pretty well. Roundhouse kicks across the body will detect roughly 75-85% of the time, and throwing elbows works about 95% of the time.

Next was the Foot Stepping game, in which you must step in the direction of the highlighted floor tile, kind of like a slower DDR session. You'll find yourself lunging and working your lower body effectively, but not it isn't as fun as I would like.

Last for the evening was the Box Tower game, in which the Shitbox watches your hands to control a platform which boxes will fall on, and you must periodically dump into a highlighted bin to score points as it opens and closes. The more boxes stacked, the more their worth, but the harder they are to keep from toppling over. I found this game to be hard, not because it is difficult, but because it's hard to determine visually WTF to do. The game tries too hard to be subtle, and when I'm watching blocks fall, it's hard to see when my bin is open. By the end of my fitness "workout", I burned over 100 calories by the game's estimate and worked up quite a sweat.

Overall, I found the Shitbox to be pretty enjoyable and fitness effective for Day 1. We'll see if this trend continues, but so far both I and my girlfriend are happy I picked it up, as it's definitely one of the few 360 games we can play together effectively and have fun.

~HotShotX

Today's gonna be short as I spent the majority of the day continuing to move things into the new house and had little time to play with Shitbox. I took the time to establish the Shitbox ID, which will auto-login myself or my g/f when we enter Shitbox's field of vision while the console is on. Essentially, the system will recognize your physical features and differentiate you from others walking in front of it. You will need to do this 3 different times per person in order to log the varying levels of lighting you may have during the day, but I'd consider that to be reasonable.

I played the "Campaign Mode" of Shitbox Adventures today, and experimented a bit with Breakout some more. This might be in the manual (which I didn't read), but if you raise your hand before the ball spawns, the game will spawn the ball near that hand. You're essentially calling your shot, and the game is working with you, even if your hand isn't exactly in the center of the play area. It's the little things like these that make the experience yours, and it is appreciated.

I also gave the Reflex/Dodging game a try, where you duck, jump, and dodge out of the way of obstacles while you collect coins riding a minecart, and so far, I find this to be about as enjoyable as the the Raft Riding game. In fact, there isn't much difference between the two from what I've played so far.

Also, don't bother trying to "limbo" your way under obstacles during Reflex. Shitbox Adventures doesn't understand the concept of "bending over backwards".

~HotShotX

Today marked the first real investment in Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, as I moved beyond the orientation session into the real meat of the game. As I mentioned in Day 1, Your Shape asks you a few questions on what your fitness goals are, and then recommends options on how best to achieve them. My goals focused on slimming down, toning muscle, and improving cardio.

My session today got me working into a sweat in 10 minutes, and ultimately burned 150-200 calories over the entire 25-30 minutes I put into it. There wasn't much more to note on this than my initial impression on Day 1. Your Shape ran me through the exercises I tried during orientation, as well as slipped in a few new ones. No bells and whistles, no distractions, just straight-forward, effective exercise, which is what I want and expect.

My only complaint thus far with the Fitness portion of the game is that when you try out a new exercise for the first time, it will run the demonstration tutorial for that move twice, once for each side of the body (not necessarily back to back, as moves appear to be random, but you can expect to work both sides of the body during your overall session). It wastes about 25-30 seconds of time and breaks the rhythm you may have built up during your session, and I've yet to find a skip option.

From there, I went back to the Gym Games portion, and tried my hand at the Box Breaking game on medium difficulty. On medium, the game appears to give you less time to break each box before it disappears, requiring faster reflexes and more stamina, but nothing unique beyond that so far. However, it's still pretty effective in working your body, even if it doesn't burn as many calories as the Fitness portion of the game.

Next, I played the Hula Hooping game for the first time, and from my experience, you earn the most points by maintaining a steady hooping motion with your hips throughout the session. Normally, you'd want to start slow and build up speed to make the hoop go faster and faster, but it seems Shitbox only recognizes a single hooping speed to be valid, and deviating from that speed kills your rhythm. Tightening your abs while hooping gives you a great workout, and if you can ignore the aforementioned physics that this game appears to breaking, you'll score well.

Lastly, I decided to wind down with the Zen Tai Chi/Cardio Boxing sessions offered in the game. Each style has about 12 options: Three 30-40 minute sessions, and Nine 5-10 minute broken up portions of the original 30-40 minute sessions. You start with Part 1 of Session 1, and unlock more as you progress.

However, the ZTC/CB portion of the game is where Your Shape: Fitness Evolved begins to fail immensely for new players. Instead of the double-dose on tutorials you will experience in the main Fitness portion of the game, the ZTC/CB portion offers zero tutorials and immediately throws you under the bus as your trainer fires off moves in rapid succession. Why couldn't a middle ground be found on how many tutorials the game should have?!

Cardio Boxing features your trainer performing martial arts stances and attacks in medium-to-rapid succession. Even as a multi-year martial artist, I had trouble initially trying to figure out WTF was going on and trying to keep up, only to perform the wrong moves and score 0-50% on the session. After about 10 minutes of frustration, I began to perform moderately and maintain pace, but certainly spouted off a few curse words at the trainer for assuming I wrote this program with him and needed zero instruction.

Zen Tai Chi is essentially the cooldown session of Your Shape. Like most other facets of the game, you mimic your trainer's performance in a series of unwinding, de-stressing moves and stances. However, like Cardio Boxing, the game assumes you need zero instruction on what moves and stances will be used and accordingly, your score drops. Further complicating the session is the appearance of a Shitbox Stick Figure over your avatar, which depicts the positions of your arms and legs as you perform. A green limb indicates that you are in sync with your trainer, while white means you aren't.

This figure is a distraction, because at this point I'm not watching my trainer, and what she's doing, I'm watching myself and worrying about whether my figure is green! For those keeping score at home, worrying is counterproductive to de-stressing! It outright leads to stress!

On a side note, your trainer starts and ends each session with a chinese greeting and a bow to offer respect to the setting. As a martial artist, this isn't new to me, but it's awkward on this scenario. In martial arts, you bow and pay respects both to your master and the dojo. In Your Shape, my master isn't human, it's a manufactured AI, and I'm not training in a dojo, I'm training in my home. At no point in my life have I ever felt the urge to pay respects to an AI or my home.

Furthermore, a blond, clearly American woman greeting me in chinese before performing Tai Chi moves that she didn't bother to instruct me on before starting the session? That's not enlightening or de-stressing, that's pretentious.

Despite the frustration, I admit the Cardio Boxing & Zen Tai Chi sessions are effective. You get a good workout and continue to work muscles you don't normally use while working your cardio. If you can get past the initial BS of learning the moves while your instructors gives you a big fat zero on points, you will pick it up and find a great supplement to the game's primary Fitness sessions.

~HotShotX

No real activity on Day 4, as I spent the day working, shopping, and reading. Today was spent progressing a bit further in Shitbox Adventures, and trying out the two remaining minigames: 20,000 Leaks, and Space Pop.

20,000 Leaks places the player in an underwater glass box which comes under “attack” by fish, sharks, and other sea life, cracking the glass which causes the box to fill with water. The player earns points by covering these leaks with their hands, feet, and face. That’s it. That’s the game. Of all the minigames in Shitbox Adventures, this one is easily the least innovative and engaging. As such, this paragraph here will likely be the last you hear from me on the topic.

Space Pop, ironically enough, I find to be the most innovative of the Shitbox Adventure minigames. Space Pop places the player in a large space station module, within which bubbles appear for the player to pop by touching them. Unlike the other minigames, the player can move in all six directions, to the point that you will require your entire playing space to play. The player moves up and down by “flapping” their arms once, and moves forward, back, left, and right by doing the same physically.

Now, beyond the simplicity of the game, this is where the power of the Shitbox truly lies. As a longtime Halo fan and enjoyer of the FPS genre in general, I can easily imagine a Shitbox FPS game being made from this model. Or, even better, the controls of Halo: Reach being mapped to the Shitbox and emulated. Like Space Pop, a center-point in the Shitbox’s playing space would be established, moving forward of that point would move the player forward, and likewise for the cardinal directions. Player rotation, which Shitbox can already detect, would handle avatar rotation. Jumping in front of Shitbox would jump in game, and etc. etc. (I’ll try not to rant about this, as this is a review on Shitbox’s effectiveness to entertain and physical improvement, but I recognize the potential).

I spent the majority of my session working out again on Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, and over the course of the session, burnt off an additional 200+ calories. The continuation of my planned fitness program began to escalate in more difficult and complex workouts, which in turn worked my body harder and utilized more of the muscles that I don’t normally use in my daily activities. On the plus side, two to three days of workouts and I’ve yet to feel sore at any point during or after exercising on Your Shape, but I work up a sweat each time and get a good cardio workout.

~HotShotX