Your Shape was a game that seemed perfectly suited to Microsoft's motion sensing camera, Kinect. Freeing up your hands to create a game that gave you a fitness routine to perform, and accurately tracked you doing it, there was no room for slacking here - Kinect was a harsh mistress indeed. Guaranteed to give you a good work out (if rearranging your living room in order to run Kinect didn't do that already), we gave it a decent 6/10 in our review, but were slightly disappointed with how the game didn't go far enough to ease beginners in. It was a fitness addict's fitness game - not something you picked up when you felt you really needed to start exercising.
With the game proving an immense success, it should come as no surprise that Ubisoft have recently announced Your Shape 2012 will be hitting the Xbox 360 and Kinect (somewhat illogically), later this year. The theme this time round seems to be variety, with a wide range of exercises helping add a little bit of spice to your fitness routines. From backgrounds that chance as you work through different exercises, helping alleviate the somewhat clinical feel of the last game, to a selection of all new modes, including "run the world", which sees you jogging on the spot around virtual, stylised recreations of Paris, London, and New York, Ubisoft have gone out of their way to make Your Shape a much more appealing, and varied game - and it's looking all the better for it.
With a range of new minigames, including jump rope (or "skipping", to use proper English), a range of redesigned social features, letting you challenge and track your friends via Facebook, and much improved motion sensing technology, which brings with it the ability to track floor movements, letting the game set you challenges involving sit-ups, push-ups, and more, Your Shape 2012's certainly shaping up to be one of the most interesting fitness games of the year - and a sequel that offers a huge step up as compared to the last game. We are still a bit concerned about the amount of space required though - we almost didn't have room to run the last one, and having to get on the floor to perform sit-ups, and push-ups may stretch our room to its limits. We'll have to wait and see. In the mean time, you can find a trailer for the game below:
