Exergaming Yourself to a New You!

I apologise I have issues smiling for cameras. Just ask my dad.

So, this is me. I started exercising properly, again, about one month ago. I'm still considerably overweight for my 5 foot frame, sitting at 14st5 right now, but since starting my routine I've gained some muscle and my clothes are fitting much better which is good for 4 weeks work and I've lost around 4lbs. I've recently realised that 2.2lbs is 1kg and therefore 1 bag of potatoes so every time you get sad about losing a pound you should go to your local supermarket and hold 1kg of potatoes and feel really good about yourself. Failing that, lose 10kg and pick up the larger bag and realise just how much you've been weighing yourself down.
 The only way I ever lose weight is through games. I did it once before, long ago before college, using Wii Fit. This involved 1 hour of exercise a day that boiled down to 3 sessions of 5 minute step aerobics, 1 10 minute hula hooping session, maybe the boxing if I felt like it and 20-30 minutes of free running. Over a 2 month period this knocked off 1.5 stone.

For those of us who have experienced UK college or university workloads will understand how much weight you can pile on through a semester, let alone the full year. So the 13st whatever weight I got down to came back with aplomb and now I have to start again. This time I thought I would document it so I can keep up momentum as well as covering the games I'm using to do it.

There are 3 right now.

Wii Fit U.      Ubisoft Your Shape Fitness Evolved (UYSFE)   and   Zumba (Wii U)

Hopefully what I  tell you about each game now (including routines) will help myself and anyone else struggling to pick a programme or put routines together.

I will start with Zumba World Party since it's probably the most straightforward.
Do you see that image above? Do you see how pretty it is? Zumba uses a blend of beautiful backgrounds from around the world with attractive people exercising in front of them. These are people dancing at a variety of levels, if you can't copy the person in the center then by all means look at the back ones once they have appeared (By doing well you get more people on screen)
Zumba World party is the easiest, not because of the level of exercise, but because of how the workouts are divided up. You can choose between 20/40/60 dependent on what time you have available and you can choose between easy, medium and hard routines. I would say that the hard routines are only marginally harder but the sole reason I don't use this game as my main source of exercise is because at 14st it could possibly finish you off. If you have good leg muscles and a decent level of stamina dive straight in and get this. It comes with a hip strap but I really do wish they had it on the UK eshop, like the american one, because most people have their hip caddy from the original version.
There isn't much to say about  the workouts themselves. It uses lively music and involves a lot of dance integrated exercises that keep your body moving. If you like zumba in the class you'll love it at home too.

Beware of Russia:  This doesn't happen to everyone but I have found ever time I hit the russian dance level something goes wrong and it crashes. It either does it at the end of his routine, which is disheartening, or the other day when I accidentally paused the game from my hip. Do not touch anything if this track appears in the routine. It could well be my wii U or it could well be Ubisoft (as a lot of us already know).

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a game called Personal fitness trainer by Ubisoft that you could run on PC. Then it became My Fitness Coach on the wii. You can tell they are the same by the main instructor Maya (which I have to admit I quite like and it's nice to see they haven't abandoned her) and now it has been absorbed into the Your Shape Fitness evolved mould. 

There are a range of exercises: 

Yoga

Fighting

Dance

Zen (relaxation)

Cardio

The most interesting thing about these is that they are all doable. Even the sit ups. Unlike the predecessors to this game it will never ask you to do press ups in the main routine. I've never come across them. All exercises are achievable and more importantly all the exercises work different body parts and you will sweat and feel it even if you only do 15 minutes. My personal preference is to set the game to 2 days a week programme of weight loss and then for the rest of the week you can choose random workouts. I heavily suggest that if you buy this game (which can be picked up for £3-7 here) you unlock all the harder workouts from the shop. This way you can select longer routines that work all the different body parts and get you sweating in no time. My only problem is that I ran out of things to unlock.

I heavily suggest you use the yoga as none of it is impossible like some of the wii u options.
Stamina building will try and kill you but it does work and is very good for you.
Dance I'd say pass on, they aren't fun enough nor feel like they are working enough areas to be beneficial.
Fighting is also useful as well as the range of warm up routines.

If you really hate choosing to begin with, try the program option for 4 days a week and you'll get an idea of which exercises you like. I have gained enough stamina from this game to be able to perform zumba again.

Your shape fitness evolved is not a perfect game, it never will be unless ubisoft put the effort in to make longer workouts that are beneficial because after the 15-30 minutes are up you'll probably find yourself so tired you want to turn off for the day. Like Zumba they should give you time choices. Nobody has realised yet that consumers hate choice regarding actual exercises, especially if something in the routine looks hard but may help them so take the choice away and they may actually try to do the exercise.

Wii Fit U is the latest incarnation of the Wii Fit brand. It's added a few games on top of the original, such as the traditional Japanese sport of water cannons you can see above. They've also added harder modes to the step aerobics that you should seriously avoid like the plague. Why they thought blocking out the moves to make you think about it would be better, I have no idea. In my case it almost killed me as I constantly went to fall off the wii balance board because I was hesitant. 

I can promise that I have lost weight with the original wii U before and I managed to lose 1.5 stone. 9kg? (2.2lb per kg) and I did it using this workout:

3x step aerobics plus basic (this is the harder mode from wii plus)

10 minute hula hoops (normal, not plus, this adds arm twirling)

10 minutes of boxing.

20 minutes or more of free running.

If you do that for one hour per day the weight really comes off you and so far I've found it really hard to go back to wanting to. Wii fit doesn't make it easier to create routines I would actually like and some of the routines it offers make me wonder why it matched the exercises together. It's especially annoying when it says "that's a lot, don't hurt yourself" I wish that it was fun and challenging but if you get into a rhythm it really does work. 

Other people have suggested: 

Wii fit plus:

Sun Salutation

Downward facing dog

Cobra chair

Spine extension

Rowing squats

Grounded V 

Jack knives

Lunge

Rowing Squat

Rowing Squat

Arm and leg lift

Parralel stretch

Rowing Squat

Workout Arms and Core-

Basic Run- Long

Super hula hoop- 3 min

Single arm stand

Push up and side plank

Torso twist

Rowing squat

Plank, or plank challenge

Downward facing dog

Half moon

Advanced step

Tricep extension

Sun Salutation

Workout: Legs

Basic run- Island lap

Standing knee

Lunge

Single leg extensions

Sideways leg lift

Dance

Chair

Triangle

Sideways leg lift

Sun Salutation

Workout: Core body

Basic run
Super hula hoop 6 minutes
Sun salutation
Plank Challenge
Torso Twists
Jackknife
Arm and Leg Lift
Bridge
Spinal Twist
Shoulder stand
Half moon
Finish with crunches.

Routine-

10 Minutes of rhythmic boxing
5-10 cycling
5-10 flying chicken
5-10 basic run plus
5-10 step routine
5 min super hula
and 5 of obstacle course.

The biggest addition to the game is the wii fit pedometre which you don't really need but at £20 it's useful and you can get it in the wii fit bundle too.

It measures how many steps you take and also your altitude and lets you input them into the game. It's not completely accurate but it's nice to know when you are doing a little bit more. 

The routines, aside from my own, have been gathered from:

Here , here and here

If you like their routines, please let them know. Also some information regarding weights is on the sites too so it's worth a look.
Hopefully in a few months I'll come back having lost weight and talk about them all in more depth, but I don't want to keep you all day.

Seduced in the Sleepless city and other sims by Voltage!

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Was Cinderella as passive as Disney make out? You decide!

I've always been a fan of Visual Novels (VN's), some more savoury than others, however here in the west you can either buy from JAST and other places online for £20-30 or not at all.
Cinders is extremely refreshing, not only for the fact that it isn't a Japanese developer and there is a certain lack of sex in it (By all means not a bad thing) but it has clear choices throughout that equal the different endings. By the end of your first run through you will have a clear vision of how much work is ahead of you if you wish to obtain all of them.

Cinders, as you have probably guessed, is about Cinderella. Her father is gone, she's left with 2 fairly uptight sisters and a vicious step mother. We assume these things because of how Cinderella has been portrayed in the past. In reality, or virtually, her mother is trying to rescue their lifestyle whilst giving her daughters the upper hand, because your own children always come first, one sister- Gloria- is trying so hard to walk her mothers footsteps there is a rod inserted... and Sofia just wants to be left alone to read in her own room, but she seems to have more promise for being nice for Gloria.

I assume in the course of the game there are 4 main outcomes involving 3 men. The Prince Basile (or Basil, not entirely sure as he's called Basile throughout but in their splash screen for his character they called him Basil, let's hope Moacube notice and rectify it), Captain Perrault (My personal favourite on my first run through as he has a certain Kingdom Hearts love of belts and a realistic look on life) and Tobias (Childhood friend to Cinders, expanding entrepreneur of his own business and a very real escape for our dear girl).
I have to admit I'm not fond of Tobias and I would like more interaction with the prince but maybe my love of these characters is more understandable when I explain my path through the game.

It was a dark and lonely night, with a small candle to light my way. I jest. I sat down to play Cinders and paid my £18 fee and very quickly booted up the game. Remember there is a full screen option and you can use the enter key if your clicking finger is getting tired. I suggest using two fingers, it seems to be less stressful on the hand. The story began where it ends, this scene never changes even at the other end of the game, Perrault barges in demanding Cinders appearance, the rest of the game is a flashback, though fortunately not a Naruto flashback.
From here on there are choices galore and several save slots so you can go back to points without starting over. I played with Cinders life, I suppose, the way I would have played my own. Plagued by having a mother who never brought me up and hasn't spoken to me in years may have left me a little jaded. I didn't particularly want the kingdom as I feel being a Queen is just too much hard work and Tobias was just too tame for me.

(Spoilers below)

I aimed for the good captain, I flirted with him, I suggested we run away together, we didn't know each other well at all, and then...it fell apart. I wanted him to arrest my step mother and he took an instant dislike to me. I was devastated, my ending was to take back my family home, have sisters who despised me, a mother who became a shadow of her former self, a kingdom that loved me but no man that did. I was alone and married some crummy aristocrat later on where I no doubt die a lonely bitter death.
The plus side you ask? Save when you see important choices and return to them to see what happens with the other options. There are many variations and I've still only done 50%of the endings for one of the categories, which there are 4 of. I went back and aimed for the Prince but with my previous paths I already lost my heart to another so it was a loveless marriage with many other factors I won't spoil here, but the point is;

(Spoilers end)

Your choice's matter!

If you want Cinders to be a b*itch you can, if you want her to be passive, you can, if you want her to have flowers streaming from her rear end, you can. It's the best VN I have played in years, I'm contemplating doing another run through for more endings, and this time I won't befriend the good captain, I'm interested to see how I fall for the prince. Maybe it's similar to one of the characters in Princess Debut where you must refuse everybody in order to obtain him, maybe...

My leaving thoughts on Cinders are= Buy it with a great aplomb!
But also the characters are well rounded, even Madame Ghede the Voodoo witch and the great fairy whom you won't hear about from me here. There are still a few spelling errors in the end part of the game, though I only noticed about 3 which was impressive for such a text heavy game. The art style is divine and reminds me of Alfonse Mucha.

 Give them your money!

Visit Moacube to purchase the game on Mac or Pc.