| Eyetoy: Kinetic review |
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Videogame consoles are good for you. We all know that, but try explaining to your loved ones why you are taking the week off work during a new console launch. “Addiction”, “lazy arse” and “serial killer trainer” normally crop up amongst some other choice phrases. So it’s admirable of Nike and Sony to give us Eyetoy Kinetic, a sure-fire way of PROOVING gaming is good for you. It even includes a yoga session.
The idea behind Kinetic is perfect. Provide an interactive version of the useless exercise videos that come out every New Year – no one ever sticks with them because there is no way of knowing if you are doing it right or if you are progressing. Kinetic gets round this because it knows what you are up to. By guiding you through each exercise using visual clues to ensure your body is in the right position and then sensing how well you do, your performance can be tracked, both in terms of adherence to exercise goals and in terms of improvement over the previous sessions. Everyone likes beating their highest score, so there’s also an incentive to keep at it.
There are 4 main types of exercise available. Cardio, Combat, Strength and Mind/Body. The cardio is typically 10 minutes of movements that require you to move around a lot and are cleverly designed to push you into the maximum amount of jumping around within the tight frame the Eyetoy covers. To expand this frame, Kinetic comes with a wide angle lens to slip over the front of the Eyetoy. To get you to move around, for example, discs might appear all over the screen and you have to tap them before they disappear. The placement of the discs has been well thought out to consider the difficulty level chosen and the level reached in each session. It promotes fluid, rhythmical movements that use as much of the body as possible to get you out of breath quickly. The types of cardio available are quite different in the amount they tire you out though, so some of them may get ignored depending on your fitness level. After 20 minutes on the harder ones you will be gasping for breath. The music to accompany the sessions is pretty good and where necessary, works in time with the on screen action.
Conversely, combat sessions are short quick-fire affairs for maximum burst, using the arms and legs repeatedly to punch and kick objects to achieve a variety of goals. For example, balls might jump up on either side and then be punched, elbowed, kicked and head butted towards the sides of the screen where they break through blocks. The Eyetoy figures out how much effort you are putting into throwing a punch and you therefore level up more quickly if you really give it your all.
Not all the exercise types included require the camera. Strength sessions along with the Yoga, Tai Chi and Meditation from the Control (Mind and Body) Zone just need you to copy what the on-screen fitness guru does. The only feedback available is by comparing the camera feed of yourself with what the avatar is doing. The range of strength exercises provided is very good considering none of them involve external weights.
The rest of the Control zone is more about improving balance and doing movements you wouldn’t normally do in a slow and controlled manner. Great for core stability (stomach, back, chest) and more approachable for unfit people than the cardio and combat zones.
This is all great when it works, but the camera isn’t clever enough to distinguish the exerciser from background items, like joins between wall, floor and ceiling, with even shadows on the wall from lamps potentially confusing the bouncing objects. It is very sensitive and perhaps a new version would do well to snapshot the background before you jump in so it can detect just your movement. You will need to be around 2.5m from the camera, with about 1.25m travel to your left or right. If there are any bookcases or shelves in the background, some of the camera games are a non-starter. Ideally, the background wall should be one colour and have shadows minimised with lamps pointing at it. Finally, if you have pink/white skin and a light background, the camera might have issues spotting your arms/hands – this can be rectified by wearing dark weights gloves. If you can’t provide this setup, then Kinetic isn’t recommended. When it works, it’s very good, but when it doesn’t, the frustration significant.
The content of the exercise sessions is mostly well researched and demonstrated. The movements you are channelled into doing are useful from a fitness perspective and if you get it wrong, an easy-to-follow shadow demonstrates in real time to help you out. To its credit, it recommends a warm up before and a stretch down after exercising, but the content of the warm up isn’t well thought through. It hasn’t really raised the heart rate by the time it has you doing squats and lunges, which are easy to get wrong, leading to injury and that’s if you can even do them properly. A lot of people just cannot perform a squat or lunge. It would be better to come up with your own traditional warm up incorporating marching on the spot and side steps until the heart rate gets going a bit. Similarly, although the cardio sections level-up until you reach your limit, sometimes it doesn't ramp up quickly enough. Having said this, it's what you make of it, so you can easily make it harder for yourself by dropping lower and bouncing higher rather than just achieving zone objectives.
Whilst the idea behind Eyetoy Kinetic is brilliant, the execution is flawed, with the technology requiring detailed setup that many people may not be able to achieve. When it works, it really does give a useful and varied exercise routine in the confines of a few metres. It will provide an interesting cross-training opportunity that can be returned to as often as you want. We are looking forward to a new version where the flaws have been overcome.
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System: Sony PlayStation 2
Genre: Arcade
Developer: London Studio
Publisher: Sony
Players: 1
Version: European
Reviewed: Mar 2006
Writer: Charles Rodmell
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Pros:
- Exercise!
- Variety of session types
- Performance ratings
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Cons:
- Very tricky setup
- Flawed warm-up
- Difficult to find your own pace
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Eyetoy: Kinetic Video: 2.0MB
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