About.com Rating
Updated January 01, 2014.
The Bottom Line
EA Sports Active is an excellent addition to your home fitness arsenal (and takes up much less room than a treadmill). If you have a Nintendo Wii console, this game gives good sweat at a reasonable price, and you have lots of flexibility in how you use it. Choose preset workouts, or set up custom plans based on your favorite moves or trouble spots you want to target.
Pros
- Extremely customizable, with many choices of exercises
- How-to videos and on-screen instructions demonstrate exactly how to do each move
- Exercises can be combined into continuous workouts
- On-screen journal tracks progress and goals
- Calorie counter shows how much you burn in each workout
Cons
- Juggling resistance band and Wiimotes can be frustrating
- Thigh strap can slip during play
- Some exercises are high-impact (hard on knees)
- No exercises target abs specifically
- Trainer's chitchat can be distracting or annoying
Description
- Requires Nintendo Wii console, Wiimote, and nunchuk
- Compatible with Wii Fit balance board
- Includes resistance band and leg strap with nunchuk pocket
- Cardio exercises include running, walking, in-line skating and dancing
- Upper-body strength moves (using resistance band) include bicep curls and shoulder presses
- Lower-body strength moves include squats and lunges
- Sports-based drills include baseball, basketball, tennis, volleyball, and boxing
- Use preset workouts or combine any of the above to develop your own custom workout
- All exercises can be performed at varying levels of intensity
Guide Review - EA Sports Active for Nintendo Wii
If you're looking for a workout you can do on your own time, at home, EA Sports Active might be right for you. Like Wii Fit, EASA is an "exergame" for Nintendo Wii. But it offers a very different workout experience. While I found EASA fun to play, you won't get cute games or backdrops here. It's a serious, straightforward fitness program, complete with instruction from a virtual trainer.
To begin, I set up a profile to capture my height and weight, body shape, music preferences, and so on. After testing it on a few exercises, I opted not to use the Wii Fit balance board. Only some moves are compatible with it, and it was annoying to take my shoes on and off between drills. However, if you want a lower-impact workout, the balance board modifications might help.
I chose to do a 30-Day Challenge to get a good tour of the system. The challenge exposed me to all the different exercises and drills EASA has to offer (see lists above), in a series of increasingly tough workouts. For example, early on I might have done a set of 12 squats. Later, I did more reps, or upped the ante by adding calf raises, holding a squat for a much longer time, or doing jump squats.
Even with the game, doing strength-training reps can get, well, repetitious. I also found it tricky to hang on to the resistance band and both remotes (the Wiimote and the nunchuk) while doing upper-body strength exercises. My favorite exercises were the sports-based drills. In real life, I'd never be able to hit a home run or sink 30 baskets in a row, so being able to do so in EASA's virtual world was a thrill.
A resistance band and a thigh holster with nunchuk pocket come packaged with the game. The band doesn't offer much resistance, so I had to fold it up to shorten. The holster (used to track lower-body movements) takes some getting used to, but has held up well with frequent use.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.