For those wishing to strut their stuff in the privacy of their home, the recent release of Dance Central on the Xbox 360 raised the bar. How does Zumba respond? By awkwardly wriggling under it. This isn't a bad game, but it adds nothing new to the over-saturated dance genre.
Zumba is – apparently – the latest fitness trend sweeping the nation, to quote a press release or 50. It's a combination of pretty much any Latin music or dance step you care to mention, from mambo to reggaeton via hip-hop. In the Wii version, after a brief profile set up (aka entering your name) you'll immediately be able to take tutorials or dive straight into a 20-minute workout.
There, on the screen, is a silhouetted figure of a dancer, performing moves. You simply copy them in time. If you hit the beat, the figure glows green. If you are wildly out of step, it goes yellow. If you have the dancing ability of David Brent, look forward to an ominously glowing red.
And that's pretty much it. There are no verbal descriptions of the moves, so you just have to watch with an eagle eye and hope you are getting it right. The graphics are basic. There are multiplayer modes, should you be confident or lunatic enough to want to do it en masse – although as with all kinetic games, you'll need plenty of space.
As you progress through the game and the workouts, you unlock extra treats. Though as rewards go, the dubious pleasure of moving your workout from a thinly sketched (and apparently empty) nightclub to a skyscraper rooftop hardly seems motivation enough. And you don't even fall off the skyscraper if you go wildly out of step. I know, I tried.
As with so many fitness games, you get out what you put in. In this case, if you put in the madly flailing arms and gyrating hips of a drunken dad at a disco, you may well get a heartbeat that's elevated enough to improve your fitness. However if you are even vaguely self-conscious (and it's amazing how self-conscious it's possible to be, alone in your own home) then you are unlikely to derive any real aerobic gains from this.
And that's the problem – it's hardly a serious fitness tool, and it's not really a game. The movement tracking – done via the remote slotting into your waist belt – is forgiving in the extreme. Move in any vaguely timely manner and it'll shout "that's great!" at you, despite the fact that you were actually doing a pathetic shoe shuffle rather than a convincing calypso.
Strictly a game for Zumba enthusiasts and drunken parties.
• Game reviewed on Wii
