Review by: Danielle Riendeau

Marrying all sorts of Wii-centric ideas (family fun, fitness and minigame collections), Active Life: Extreme Challenge is attempting to boldly go where no “real” fitness game has gone before: into the playroom. Greeting gamers on the case are two adorably kitted moffets with cartoon skateboards/inline skates, ready to welcome you to the cutest little extreme sports tournament in the world. Rawk!

In fairness, the game essentially represents a great idea – it’s a fitness title meant to appeal to kids, with a colorful, cel-shaded “street” aesthetic, plenty of fun minigames and lots of jumping around. It comes with a big old Dance Dance Revolution-esque mat controller to facilitate said jumping (and pounding), and the activities are diverse and fun, with plenty of variation.

The minigames are arranged into modes, including Extreme Tournament, where you select a difficulty (beginner all the way up to master) and take on short sets of games; Challenge Mode, which puts several specific (and seemingly rather random) challenges to more advanced players; and Free Play, where you can just attack the sports at will. Beating the stages in tournament mode unlocks the higher difficulties, and a fairly robust two-player mode is also available – though sharing the mat while jumping around may be an invitation to disaster.

As for the activities, we have a decent little selection of extreme sports. There’s street luge, inline skating, wakeboarding, rock climbing, BMX biking, base jumping and so on – all suitably extreme things that most kids aren’t allowed to do in real life. Nearly everything is controlled via the mat, and all of the games require enough jumping, stomping and pounding to get junior’s heart rate up well above sugar rush levels. It’s a good sweat for adults as well, provided that you jump and stomp with your heart in it (warning: you will look stupid).

Unfortunately, two crippling flaws drag the whole party down. The controls are annoyingly spotty, making unintentional mess-ups a common occurrence. This in itself might be okay, if it weren’t for the insanely unforgiving gameplay. On several minigames (double dutch, I’m looking at you!) it only takes one tiny misfire to fail, prompting the infuriating retry screen. Given the sloppy controls, this happens far more often than it should in any game, let alone one geared towards kids. If it made me scream at the TV, I can only imagine what responses it may prompt in slightly more rambunctious players.