Active Life Explorer
Score: 86% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Developer: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 8 Genre: Action/ Family/ Mini-Games
Graphics & Sound: Active Life Explorer will look familiar to fans of any early Wii games that took inspiration from Wii Sports and other avatar-based titles. The focus here is on showcasing your avatar in various environments, keeping things light and fun. If you're looking for realism, you're barking up the wrong tree, but the fun factor is definitely high. Each contest of skill you'll play through is presented as a mini-game, pitting your Mii against the environment, opponents, and in some cases enemies. It's all very family-friendly, so don't be put off by the idea of enemies, unless running away from mummies and villagers is your idea of inappropriate material. The design elements are intended to get out of the way, but to remind you which actions you should be taking on the included control pad. Visual feedback on the screen keeps you on track with what you're doing on the pad, and you can easily visualize success and failure by watching your character. The music and sound effects back this up, supporting the rise and fall of action on the screen. If there were a point for improvement, it would be to have a more one-to-one relationship between the actions taken on the pad and the sound effects in the game.
Gameplay: It's ironic that Active Life Explorer launches as we are seeing platforms like Sony Move and Microsoft Kinect, isn't it? Wired meets wireless, and two worlds collide? Not exactly. The thing about Active Life Explorer is that it works extremely well. It does a good job providing a "touch" interface on the floor, letting you control without using a traditional controller. The idea of playing mini-games through a Dance Dance Revolution controller isn't all that new, but it is executed well in Active Life Explorer. More than we would have thought. The pad that ships with the game is well built, designed to last, and responsive even when played on a soft carpet floor like ours. There are some moments when you'll use the Wii controller, but the focus is more on the pad itself. There are roughly eight main points of contact on the pad, which is not coincidentally the total number of players you can have... Either with one or two feet, you control Miis on-screen and put them through their paces. The social payback on all this is extraordinary, providing much of the same experience that Sony and Microsoft have designed their new systems around. Of the mini-games included in this collection, we won't run down an exhaustive list, but suffice it to say that anything and everything you could conceivably control with your feet is modeled here. Flying a winged bicycle, running, jumping, moving objects, powering machines... if you can follow instructions and perform the moves, you can interact with this game and guide your characters to the finish line. Each game is brief, the objectives are simple, and there are reasons to go back and play again. Not only do you watch yourself on the leaderboards, but you unlock new content. Not many folks will buy this for solo play, but there's a nice Treasure Adventure that walks you through each stage at first to open up the full game. Free Play and Party Mode and freewheeling explorations of any area in Active Life Explorer you wish to tackle, and Treasure Trials combine multiple challenges as a sort of remix.
Difficulty: One of the additive pieces of the game as you play through are increasing levels of difficulty. The training available is all presented up front, in the form of screens showing a depiction of you in the real world stepping on the pad. It's hard to really grasp the timing until you play through, so the first pass is super easy. This makes it accessible to younger players that may not have all their coordination together, but others will quickly progress through the harder settings. It's not that the basic controls change, just that you'll need to step up the action and be more precise about how you interact with the mat. As mentioned, the game lets you know in multiple ways when you aren't cutting it. Meters tucked away in the corners of the screen show how fast you're moving, while counters at the bottom indicate the percentage of completion for your goals. If you really get off track, you'll sometimes get a prompt showing exactly how you should be moving your feet in order to recover. All this visual feedback sounds really messy, but Active Life Explorer doesn't clutter up the screen. It does exactly what it needs to do to reinforce or chastise you, then gets out of the way. There can definitely be some high stress moments, but those are created more by the frenzy of activity than any bad design within the game. Expect plenty of elbows and knees flying around when you play this with more than a few people...
Game Mechanics: The only areas for improvement would be to combine the pad with a plug-in to the Wii controller, so there would be no need for the cord. This may have been tried and evaluated, but the cord is only a danger to passersby. The gaming action takes place on the mat, so there's very little chance your cord will become a trip-hazard. All the same, we worry a bit about the connectors between the mat and the cord over time. It appears to be well-made, but extended use will tell the full story. On the mat's construction, we see a lot of durability, clear markers for controls, and even some handy additions to the mat that let you select menus, pause the game, or interact outside of strict gameplay. Having spent some time with both the Move and Kinect, we can also say that what the Active Life Explorer mat lacks in wireless capability, it makes up for in precision. There's nothing fuzzy about stepping on one of these buttons, and even though the action on the screen isn't intended to be perfectly simulated, it feels good to not battle the interface. We were pleasantly surprised by the game, and it will be a treat for families that want more of the "get off the couch" magic Sony and Microsoft are promising, without a crushing investment. Recommended.
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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