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Games That Raise the Heart Rate
The Rocky Mountain News is running an article by Kotaku's Brian Crecente entitled Fit to Play, about the effect that games with a workout component have on the health of the player. From the article: "...five years later and 100 pounds lighter, Jennsen is a video evangelist in the most 21st-century sense of the word, preaching the fat-melting, muscle-building power of video games to generations that have grown up holding joysticks."
So instead of going to the gym and/or buying expensive fitness machines, you buy some peripherial and some game(/other nondescript software) that basically does the same.
Same thing, only cheaper ?
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...until some finds out the code for infinite stamina.
Everything I know I learned from video games.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
We just got into DDR this Christmas. Money is tight at the moment but the next scheduled luxury purchase is now a RedOctane dance mat, the soft $100 one. We have a cheaper one now and it is now ruining my score from false triggering (just sitting there with nobody on it, it fires) and not releasing the trigger correctly. (I'm on the verge of getting the easy AAA's in Light mode and starting to move up to Standard, but the pad makes that impossible.)
I think the key is to avoid the Education Game Trap (it's quite similar); the quickest way to a crappy "educational" game is to take the same-old, same-old and bolt it on to one of the Stardard Generic Game Frameworks. "Answer this math question to advance one space closer to the end." Woohoo, mommy can I please play "Advance The Squares"?
Similarly, I've seen people bolt a crappy racing game onto an exercise bike that in essense consisted of a line advancing forward that you had to stay ahead of, or lose. Woohoo, mommy can I please play "Finish The Boring Task In The Alloted Time"?
DDR isn't trying to make you exercise, but if you expect to play at the higher levels, you'll be sweating.
I'd also love to see a traditional car combat or 'kart' racing game that ran on a bike that you could turn, that used your pedaling as the acceleration with adjustable levels. See, the fun would be the cart game, the exercise the means to an end, instead of the explicit and boring goal.
I thought I didn't like to exercise. Turns out it was the boredom of doing laps that was killing me (semi-literally).
The real world works like this, too, after all, so this should hardly be a shock. Which is more fun, running a mile for no real reason, or a game of soccer, basketball, or water polo? Why do people insist that exercise has to be boring? That's really a relatively recent "innovation", you know. Maybe there's a reason that innovation has coincided with people dying due to lack of exercise?
What about games that just make your heartrate go up from shock or anticipation, such as Doom III or Counter-Strike?
Not everyone has access to a heated pool and lives in a warm environment all year round. I wouldn't be caught dead swimming in an unheated pool here during winter, it hits -20F at times.
I prefer swimming in natural bodies of water, but that can be kind of hard with over 2 inches of ice on the surface.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Actually, if you tried swimming in an unheated pool at -20, you might be caught dead there.
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"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Brian Crecente
Editor
Kotaku
I'll tell you, this is a place I would attend daily. DDR is great fun - I've gotten so into it that I built my own studio, but doing it alone isn't as much fun as I'd imagine a health club setting.
Why, no, I haven't stopped to consider my "a humorless clod." Thanks for asking, though.
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