EA Sports enters the fitness genre, a surprisingly popular genre on the Nintendo Wii, with the all new EA Sports Active. Coming almost a year later than Wii Fit, like any other fitness game that’s come out since that continuing phenomenal seller, it will have to try and live up to Nintendo’s effort. Oddly enough, that isn’t all that easy to do, and while EA Sports Active certainly improves on a few of the weaknesses of Wii Fit, it also has a few weak points of it own. Still, this is another all-around solid workout for those of us who can’t afford a gym membership or a personal trainer but would like to have the benefits of both.

Upon starting EA Sports Active, you have to create your profile (no Miis working out here). The creation process is pretty simple. You only have a few options for the physical appearance, and oddly enough, quite a few for apparel such as hats, sunglasses, outfits and the like. You won’t be able to create a super accurate likeness of yourself with these options, but you can get a close approximation. After you create how you look, you enter some basic info such as age, height, weight and gender. Finally you pick the trainer you want to work with; male or female. Then it’s off to the main menu. You can do a 30 day challenge, a customized workout, look at your fitness profile, change some options, and other stuff. The game suggests you start with the daily journal, which keeps track of all your activities both on and off Active. That’s where I spent my first day with EA Sports Active.

Your first day of workouts features a wide variety of different activities. From lunges to squats to bicep curls to inline skating to running and more, it’s an intense thirty minute workout (I selected the hard difficulty for my workouts.) Each different workout begins with a very helpful instruction video to show what to do, and then you’re given a little picture in picture where you can see your trainer do the exercise with you as you follow along to make sure you’re keeping the correct form. The exercises will definitely make you sweat, although the controllers don’t always register your motions. I’d say they are about eighty to eighty-five percent accurate, which is pretty good, but nonetheless it can interrupt the flow of a workout when they don’t quite register what you’re doing.

Speaking of the controllers, you can use the Wii balance board for some of the exercises, or you can opt not to. Using the balance board doesn’t really alter the intensity of the workout any, but it does add some nice variety to the actions you do. EA Sports Active also comes with a resistance band for curls and other upper body exercises, and a nifty little pouch strap for your leg. You put the nunchuck in the pouch and then you use it for kicking while doing cardio boxing or while running. It’s a nice little addition as not every set of workout clothes has pockets which is required for some of Wii Fit’s exercises, and when the nunchuck is in the pouch, it does a good job of registering your actions. The resistance bands certainly aren’t the same as using free weights, but they add enough tension that I think they should help shape your arms and upper body, so they’re also another nice addition to the EA Sports Active bundle.

After you finish your first workout, you can continue to journal with a survey about your nutritional habits from the day, and how rested and stressed you feel. The game tracks all of this along with the calories you burned during the workout (how it calculates that, I’m not entirely sure), the amount of time you spent working out and how many exercises you’ve done. In your journal you can set what kind goals you want for the week or month in how many calories you want to burn, how long you want to workout that week, or how many exercises you want to do.

Some of the areas where EA Sports Active excels where Wii Fit doesn’t is the fact that you can customize your own exercise routine. You can pick from the various exercises present, choose the length and intensity of the workout, and then choose whether or not you want to do it with a friend. That’s right, if you want to exercise with someone, all you need is an extra accessories kit (an extra twenty bucks for another pouch belt and resistance band) and then you can workout with a friend and turn it into a friendly (or not so friendly) competition. Speaking of competition, EA Sports Active has a nice reward system that gives you trophies for completing various tasks. Any gamer knows that achievements or trophies are an excellent way to keep us motivated, so kudos to EA for including this in the fitness game. I’m already working on various dances for when I get certain trophies before my wife does.

However, there are a few weak areas with EA Sports Active. There aren’t any yoga activities, which doesn’t make or break the game, but compared to Wii Fit it is an area where it’s lacking. Also, although EA Sports Active will track your calories burned…somehow… it doesn’t keep track of your weight. There’s no weigh-in like there is for Wii Fit. I guess maybe I’m a little spoiled by that, but I find it’s one of the best (or most discouraging) ways to track progress with any sort of fitness game. Wii Fit is still the only one to have this option, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that there was so much controversy over Wii Fit’s use of BMI and how it measured weight when it first came out. In any event, I like it and I notice its absence in other workout games like EA Sports Active.

EA Sports Active has a lot going for it. It has a wide variety activities, it does a better job of having activities flow together (unlike Wii Fit), and it will help keep track of your nutritional habits and how many calories you burn…although I’m not entirely sure how it does that part. However, the lack of any sort of weigh-in makes it harder for me to feel like any sort of progress is going to be made, but perhaps that will change with the 30 Day Challenge. Also, there are no yoga or balance activities here, so this workout can’t completely replace Wii Fit. I’d say EA Sports Active is the perfect compliment to Wii Fit. It fill all the weak spots and gaps of Wii Fit, and vice-versa. Is this a workout that will get you results? Well, you’ll have to keep up with my daily blog during the 30 Day Challenge to find out.

But let’s get down to the nitty gritty here; is EA Sports Active worth the sixty dollar price ta?. Well, like Wii Fit it’s far cheaper than a gym membership, it’s just as convenient but doesn’t take up as much space as a home gym, and you get some tips and feedback from your own virtual trainer. However, it also won’t replace actually going out and doing stuff like sports and other activities. So yes, I’d say EA Sports Active is worth the price, especially for some of the nice extras that are included. If you don’t have any sort of exercise routine , this is a good way to start. If you do, this a good, easy, convenient compliment for whatever you’re doing. EA Sports Active achieves its goal of challenging you to exercise and making it fun at the same time; so give it a try.

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