Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer

I've always been quite a fan of the Fitness Boxing series on Nintendo consoles, because while I understand and know that they aren't really designed to get you into amazing shape and be a substitute for heading to the gym or even actually employing a personal trainer, they are useful for encouraging movement and providing an easy avenue into aerobic exercise. What I mean by this is that the latest instalment, Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer, won't make you sweat buckets or lead to rock hard abs, or leave you in an consolable heap after a session, but what it will do after frequent use is make your body feel a little more lively, less tense and even a bit more flexible. It's an ideal and fun way to add some lighter activities to supplement a more aggressive and impactful workout.

The Fitness Boxing series has always done that but with a caveat. The second instalment in the series was inaccurate and frustrating due to the motion elements being unreliable at the best of times. It also felt a tad one-dimensional because of its very limited slate of exercises and game modes. The visuals were fine for a game of this kind, and the difficulty range did mean you could tailor each workout to how you wanted to be tested on the day. All of these are areas that Fitness Boxing 3 has either maintained or improved considerably, albeit lacking in one, quite significant area for a rhythm boxing experience: the soundtrack.

The second game featured a slate of recognisable and popular audio-only tracks. You could exercise to pop hits from Zedd, Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran, Avril Lavigne, Lady Gaga, Pitbull, Owl City, Maroon 5, the list goes on. Regardless of whether you like these artists or not, the mainstream pop music made for a more compelling soundtrack to what we get in Fitness Boxing 3, as the focus here has been on original tracks that at the best of times are unmemorable. Thankfully, this really is the only area that Fitness Boxing 3 pales to its predecessor.

I say this as the biggest improvement comes in the motion controls. Now, it feels as though every move is recognised when you do it. It doesn't matter if it's a jab, straight, uppercut, dodge, hook, side dodge, weave... No longer will you throw a punch on time just to see the dreaded "Miss". The folk over at Imagineer have done wonders with the motion controls responsiveness that it makes me wonder why it took so long to get there in the first place. But that doesn't matter, a new dawn has risen over Fitness Boxing, and the day that it leads to can only be described as "Perfect".

The other big area that shows improvement comes in the form of the game modes. Daily Workout remains to make up the bulk of the action, and it's just as effective, albeit lacking an option to significantly ramp up the difficulty for those searching for more of a challenge. Instead, we're stuck in a steady progression system where each day leads to more complex workouts, which is great for beginners, but for more veteran players who even have transferred data from the second game, it'd be excellent to have a way to crack up each workout manually.

But anyway, the other modes. Now you can enter Free Workout to hop into Mitt Drills, regular exercises, and even Box and Bond activities where you can become more familiar with your trainer. The latter is a bit of a silly gimmick in my eyes, as is the ability to customise these digital avatars that provide you direction, but the option being there doesn't detract from the overall whole at all. The other two modes are wonderful additions that add depth and extra challenges to the game. Mitt Drills for one significantly adjusts how we play Fitness Boxing, and it's quickly shaping up to be my favourite way to play as it's snappier and often more intense than the regular Daily Workout.

Adding to these improvements is better visuals and art design. For a rhythm fitness game, quality graphics are not a priority in any sense, but having more vibrant visuals, better looking trainer avatars, clearer punch and movement symbols, and so forth all come together to produce a much better whole. And this is a similar point in regard to performance too, as the game operates more smoothly and with less hitches making this feel like a big jump in quality from the second game.

With all of these points combined, the main thing to note is that while there are a lot of similarities between Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm and Exercise and Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer, this game also feels like a significant step forward in almost every conceivable metric. It's tighter, more responsive, has a deeper list of game modes, looks better, and still delivers the engaging and rewarding fitness activities that we expect from the franchise. If it just had a more compelling slate of songs in its soundtrack, it would be hard to say that this game is anything but a knockout.