September 9, 2011

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is an American mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion company. In other words: it’s like wrestling but less fake (most UFC fighters would defeat those fake wrestlers in literally 5 seconds).

So, UFC Personal Trainer is not a game in which you can fight adversaries, but a game in which you can exercise physically, and where you can practice moves needed in martial arts, including both hand and leg techniques.

Facial recognition problems typical for such extremely bad games as “Fighters Uncaged” (this game is appallingly bad, don’t buy it!) is solved in this way -  you can chose gamer profile by using motion sensing user interface of Kinect:

There are 2 types of Kinect games generally: ones that are in-game rendering your avatar or part of your avatar body (like hands or legs) and those that just show you, as Kinect sees you, on a small platform:

If you are inside of this platform and Kinect sees you well enough then your body is shown (not shown above due to privacy reasons) in green, otherwise it is in red (you are too close or to far away from Kinect sensor) or not at all (and then you are asked to show up).

Among things offered there are workouts (general physical exercises not related necessarily to martial arts),

and martial arts -related activities.

“Hit the mitts” is one of the closest ones to martial arts experience.

One of the UFC fighters can be selected as your personal trainer! Personally I like the “Random” option as the Xbox randomly picks your trainer:

The trainer is telling you to do specific moves and Kinect recognizes how well you do.

In workouts, such as personal trainer supported “hit the mitts” exercises, in hitting punch bags and in other exercises, of course, you can cheat by not doing exercises properly. But you should keep in mind that you would cheat yourself too – as in this way you don’t exercise properly.

General remarks

We don’t have good martial arts games for Kinect. There is actually only one, Fighters Uncaged, that is extremely bad (pure junk, don’t buy it). It may take another year till proper martial arts games will be available. However, UFC Personal Trainer is a step in the right direction.

Conclusion

You can’t fight adversaries with UFC Personal Trainer for Kinect. But you can exercise your body with workouts and activities designed especially for martial arts, i.e. for fighting with legs and hands. If you are a fan of martial arts or you want to exercise or learn some fighting moves, this game is a must. It’s not ideal, but you are not being lied to as it says in the title “Trainer”, not “Fighter”

This game is worth every cent!

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