Fitness Boxing

Genre: Boxing / Sports (Exercise) / Music-Rhythm

Players: 1-2 (Local)

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Review:

Fitness Boxing is a motion-controlled Exercise game with a focus on Boxing movements and making use of Music-Rhythm mechanics, and along with the more recent Ring Fit Adventure (and arguably even more so than that game), it’s the closest that Nintendo Switch owners have gotten to an updated version of Nintendo’s Wii Fit series, with its focus on maintaining a daily workout, rather than on gameplay goals.

Gameplay in Fitness Boxing is controlled through the Joy-Con controllers’ motion-controls, with players throwing jabs, straight punches, hooks and uppercuts in time with a beat. The game’s built-in tutorials (which to some extent never end) ensure that the player keeps proper form, reminding players how to stand, how to move, and even how to breathe as players throw punches at the air in time with on-screen prompts.

As far as the presentation goes, this game is fairly spartan, with a variety of nicely-detailed trainers to guide your actions and show you what to do, but not much else. While you work out, your chosen trainer will be rattling off commands and advice, which can sound a bit stilted at times, and can get a bit repetitive and even annoying, but given what it’s trying to accomplish it can be forgiven somewhat.

What’s less forgivable is the game’s soundtracks, which uses synth covers of only 20 pop songs. For the price of $50, one would expect this game would come with the original versions of the songs, or at least more of them. To get only a small bunch of knockoffs instead is disappointing.

As for the gameplay, this game does what it can with the inferior motion controls of the Joy-Cons, but these things simply weren’t meant for precise motion control, and it shows here. The game will frequently read a punch too early or too late, misread one type of punch as another, or on some occasions even whiff a punch you throw completely. Playing the game, I found that there was an odd nuance to it – that it was more likely for my punches to be detected properly if I made sure to stop my fist suddenly at the end and shake it slightly. This wasn’t a guarantee that things would work properly, but it helped.

The other issue this game has is in keeping with the legacy of Wii Fit – it’s all business, with no intention to cater to fun. The game gives players a slew of workout options, stretches, a focus on different types of training, statistical trackers that measure performance over time… but when it comes to encouraging having fun, this game simply isn’t interested. Even getting a second player to join in only results in having you both work out at the same time – there’s no attempt to even try to simulate any sort of boxing match.

And yet, as much as this game insists on focusing entirely on the workout, and despite the motion controls being ill-suited to the task… I have to admit that I did have fun playing this game, and I did feel like it gave me an excellent workout. I don’t know it was the good instructions being given, or the excellent way the Joy-Cons use the HD rumble to sell the feeling of punches, but actually delivering a multi-hit combo on-time with the beat in this game is immensely satisfying, and if you’re looking for something to keep your workout routine going through the Nintendo Switch years without any Wii Fit in sight, this is an adequate substitute.

In the end, Fitness Boxing is a game absolutely loaded with problems. The price is too high, the soundtrack is too sparse and low in quality, and the motion controls are terrible. Yet despite this, Fitness Boxing manages to deliver both on being entertaining and being a good workout. While I can’t give it a very high recommendation with all of its problems, those who are interested in a boxing-focused fitness game will find this game to be up to the task, so long as they don’t look too closely at its many flaws.

tl;dr – Fitness Boxing is an Exercise game that has players using the motion controls of the Joy-Cons to deliver different types of punches in time with the beat of the music. This game is plagued with problems – it’s overpriced, the soundtrack is too small and too low in quality, the motion controls are terrible, and the game has zero interest in being an actual game. Yet despite all of these problems, it somehow still manages to deliver an entertaining experience and a good workout. If you’re looking for a decent exercise game on the Switch other than Ring Fit Adventure, this one does a decent job of it, despite its many, many flaws.

Grade: C+

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