Game: Gold’s Gym Dance Workout
Platform: Wii
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Land Ho!
ESRB: E
Genre: Dance fitness
Players: 1-2
What's Hot: Great variety in music and Latin dance styles, comprehensive dance lessons, fast paced, provides a solid workout
What's Not: Accuracy is wanting, particularly in the minigames
Review by: Danielle Riendeau
Fitness games have become so popular that they now boast their very own sub-genre: dance fitness games. Gold’s entry is a fun, well-balanced offering that combines slick dance moves with a plethora of mini-games and licensed music, making it a cut above most of what’s out there.
Upon booting up, you’ll create a profile and select a trainer for your virtual sessions. Like all good exercise games, you can customize your avatar and the game tracks an impressive array of stats – calories burned, time spent in workouts, etc., everything you’ll want to know if you’re trying to shed a few pounds.
From here, you can jump into the dance tutorials, dance workouts, or the various mini games. The wise dance newbie will go with the tutorials first, since all of the dancing you’ll be doing actually requires that you have the first clue how to do the moves.
Dancing lessons come in several flavors – reggaeton, salsa, samba, rumba, flamenco and merengue. So, if you don’t know your hip hop from your classic Latin, you’ll want to complete the tutorials a few times before moving onto the real stuff. I probably did about four passes through the reggaeton primer before my shoulder isolations were playing nice with my steps.