If your birth year begins with a 2, then this review is for you. At the risk of sounding like an old man shouting at clouds, I wish I had listened to my elders growing up. I didn’t. Mainly because ‘I knew better’. Spoiler alert, I didn’t, and now I’m paying the price. I was regularly told, “Don’t play football on concrete,” and I scoffed. “It’s probably best not to drink so much and pass out on the stairs.” Yeah, OK boomer. “You enjoy that curry and ice lolly breakfast combo, your metabolism won’t last,” pfft. As a teenager, I was invincible. Then my mid-20s hit, and my knees became as wobbly as melted chocolate. My back is two cracks away from being donated to science, and if I so much as look at an ice lolly, I gain 4 stone. Simply put, I’m not indestructible, and my body needs all the help it can get to function on the most basic levels. Being a self-described lazy gamer doesn’t help either, but that’s where Fitness Boxing with Hatsune Miku comes in.
To ensure my body hits the ripe old age of 123, I have begun to take care of myself. Regular walks have helped, but living in the UK with its 400 days of rain per year is a big disadvantage. Thankfully, over the years, there have been a handful of video games to get me up and moving. Games like Dance, Dance Revolution, We Dance, and most recently, Ring Fit on the Switch, have all got me moving in various ways. Like most workout games, they all eventually fell by the wayside, and the peripherals were left to gather dust under the stairs. When Askys Games reached out to review Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku, I jumped at the chance.
As the name suggests, Fitness Boxing is a franchise that focuses on boxing-style workouts. Developed by Imagineer, the games set about giving players an intense workout, with a pumping soundtrack. Fitness Boxing utilises the motion sensors in the Switch’s Joy-Con to track your movements and help sharpen your techniques, without the aid of any additional plastic add-ons. The latest entry wraps up all of the goodness from previous games and pairs it with the insanely popular e-Idol, Hatsune Miku (more on her later).
When you first boot up Fitness Boxing, you’re met with a bombardment of information. You can pick from a pair of enthusiastic trainers, Lin and Evan. Whichever personality you choose, they will then ask for all of your personal information, including height, weight, age and your credit score. Ok, maybe not that last one, but if you’ve played any fitness game before, you’ll know the more information that’s held on you, the more ‘accurately’ it can track your calorie loss. Whether or not it makes a difference is up for debate, but to make myself feel better about my digits, I’ll just go with it. With the formalities out of the way, our cheery trainer took me into the main game.
For the first lesson, you’re walked through the basics, two vertical bars stream down the TV, each with a vacant hole in the middle of them and much like Guitar Hero, when a coloured circle lines up with the hole, you act. This starts with simple stuff like a right jab or a left uppercut, but as you progress, you unlock more advanced stuff like blocking and weaving. I liked how the game eased me into boxing. I’m not exactly one for violence, so I was clueless on the moves to execute and having a gentle approach helped me understand how I could safely punch without injuring myself.
There were a few times when I couldn’t quite get the move down, and the game recognised this brilliantly. There were a handful of times where I was flailing the Joy Con about, trying to get a move down. The trainer calmly talked me through each action and suggested improvements. At no point did I ever feel like the controls were at fault. The game seemed to be incredibly accurate in terms of timing and recognising when I was doing something wrong.
To test this, I quickly began throwing half-hearted uppercuts, and soon I was told my posture was off and the right amount of force wasn’t being applied. If I continued to struggle, I’d be pointed towards the practice menu, where I’d be able to go over a move as many times as I’d like. I was surprised at the level of accuracy with the controls. It felt like I was at an actual gym session, with the computer somehow recognising where I was going wrong and how I could fix it.
As time went on, each punch felt less like playing DDR with my hands and more like an actual workout. The first few sessions highlighted just how out of shape I was. The sweat was pouring, and I often felt like I’d gone four rounds with Rocky Balboa. But the longer, and crucially, more frequently, I played Fitness Boxing, the better I started feeling in myself. At first, my arms would ache for a good few hours after putting down the Joy-Con. Now, I can work out and not end the session as a melted puddle of a man. I know the game isn’t going to turn me into the next Oleksandr Usyk, but I felt that Fitness Boxing did help improve some aspects of myself. I’m now able to get off the sofa with only a minimal groan and slight pop of the knees.
Heading back to the game itself, as I was busy trying to study the moves, Hatsune Miku would be on the screen, shadow boxing along in time with the music. The virtual songstress didn’t seem to be having the same age-related problems as me, replicating each motion perfectly, as well as chanting words of encouragement during each set. While Miku’s role in the game is strictly as a workout buddy, she’s not alone. As I played through the game, I quickly unlocked Miku’s bandmates and a wealth of different costumes for them to work out in. And I do mean quickly; grinding the coins needed to have everyone and their costumes only takes a couple of hours at most. The coins you earn throughout the game are designed to be spent elsewhere – the soundtrack.
For a game that’s called Fitness Boxing with Hatsune Miku, you’d expect a fair amount of the Vocaloid’s back catalogue, and it’s safe to say you won’t be disappointed. So long as you’re a fan of “Melt,” “Tell Your World,” and “Romeo & Cinderella”, you’ll be set for your workout. Overall, the game contains 30-odd tracks (with more coming as DLC), and even includes a new theme, “Let’s Mikusercise!!” to get you going. Despite my tastes being rooted in the deep, dark depths of metal, the crazy bounciness of the music brought something fun and surprisingly helped me to keep rhythm. While I’m not in a position to offer my critique on the songs picked for the game, the pumping J-Pop tunes helped drag me through each workout. Once you’re comfortable with the workouts, I would suggest cranking the music up to tune out the awful voice acting from the coaches.
Fitness Boxing with Hatsune Miku has one simple goal: to provide the player with a useful exercise set to a thumping anime soundtrack. The folks over at Imagineer certainly provide that in spades. Within half an hour of my first workout, I was dripping from head to toe. As my time with the game progressed, things got easier and I moved from simple jabs and uppercuts to complicated combinations of left-right-lefts. While the core exercises were fantastic, the game cut corners in a few areas. The menu and fitness coaches were dull and basic. The focus on Hatsune Miku limited the game’s scope, and the collectables were achieved in a few hours. If the crossover had been introduced as DLC for a previous game, this would have been a boon for the fitness genre.
Fitness Boxing with Hatsune Miku will only appeal to a small section of gamers; those who love boxing/fitness games with a slice of anime-trance music. If you fall into that category, then I wholeheartedly recommend this game. If Miku’s upbeat J-Pop vibe isn’t your thing, you’ll probably lose interest fast. But if you want some pumping beats and a good workout, then look no further.
Recommendation Score
In the interest of full disclosure, VGamingNews was provided with a copy of the game in order to conduct this review.
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