Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Games Entertainment

Games That Raise the Heart Rate 51

Posted by Zonk from the it's-not-what-you-think dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Games That Raise the Heart Rate More

Games That Raise the Heart Rate

Comments Filter:

  • Bussiness as usual: nothing to see here :p (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tibike77 ( 611880 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .zemagekibit.> on Saturday February 05, 2005 @02:51PM (#11584005) Journal
    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 ?
  • ...until some finds out the code for infinite stamina.

    Everything I know I learned from video games.
  • Any of the fighting games like tribes 2 or HL will work on your hand/eye not really your heart. Side-scrolling and Team sports where your with a bunch of people around a couch shouting might get you a workout. But it's the sexy games that will get your blood going. Good old Strip poker is the best for that. Again, that not the kind the article is talking about.

    Collecting resource games like Age of whatever etc will make you fatter. As will the online ones like Fable, NWN etc. I don't see much from online

  • As for me and my household... we will DDR (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @03:14PM (#11584205) Journal
    We just got into DDR this Christmas. Money is tight at the moment but the next scheduled luxury purchase is now a RedOctane [redoctane.com] 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 pad are you using?

      I got the Xbox one, Ultramix, in November of 2003 and the official pad it came with has worked fine. I'm a heavy guy, too, 270-280 lbs (don't weight myself often). The key is to make sure you've got a hard surface under the mat (I use one of those mats made for using office chairs on a carpet) and not to wear shoes. I usually dance with socks on, or bare feet.
      • If it's firing falsely and not springing back up, it sounds like one of the foam sensor separators has been crushed. I'm guessing they have been dancing with shoes, which is usually what leads to that situation.

        The Red Octane ignition pads, on the other hand, really do rock. They're about the best non-hard pads you can get. The foam is very, very strong, the pads actually require some real pressure to trigger, and there is some feeling there for when you're stepping on a button and when you're not. I j
        • If it's firing falsely and not springing back up, it sounds like one of the foam sensor separators has been crushed. I'm guessing they have been dancing with shoes, which is usually what leads to that situation.

          Unfortunately, I can't tell for how long it has been doing it. We started as rank beginners and I'm still a long way from finishing Tsugaru on Heavy, let alone Extreme (I've got DDRMAX2, translate those terms as necessary and I'm assuming it's the same basic Tsugaru I'm thinking of; even so, you pr

          • We started as rank beginners and I'm still a long way from finishing Tsugaru on Heavy, let alone Extreme (I've got DDRMAX2, translate those terms as necessary and I'm assuming it's the same basic Tsugaru I'm thinking of; even so, you probably know what I mean.)

            "Extreme" is the name of the 8th mix, where DDRMAX2 is 7th Mix. The difficulty after "heavy" is called "challenge" or "oni".

            I only relatively recently noticed how often it is false-triggering during normal use, even on buttons that our feet are

            • If you put your foot on a back corner (Downleft or sometimes Downright) and it triggers Up, then you have the game set up for controllers rather than for dance pads. In Konamix, DDRMAX, and DDRMAX2, you can turn off "DANCE PLAY" in the options, but in DDR Extreme (U), you can't.

              Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I would have caught that and that isn't it. It false-triggers sometimes even when no-one is on the mat at all. It is pretty clearly a mat failure.

              (In fact, I noticed almost immediately tha

              • I am in the market for exactly one pad. My wife has told me, flat out, that she prefers not knowing how much better at it I am than she is.

                Then buy two pads and play the game in 8-panel mode, with the pads duct-taped together in the middle to form a hinge. Doesn't this chart [ddrfreak.com] look more interesting than this chart [ddrfreak.com]? Even if you don't want to try double, you can still get a single BNS pad for $60 shipped.

              • I also would like to get my wife to DDR more -- I love it, but it takes practice and she gets frustrated. I don't know a geek that doesn't want to get his wife to play video games with him, so hats off to you. The suggestion of trying to lure her into doubles play is a pretty good idea though. Once you can both do Basic tracks together maybe you'll be encouraged to head down to the arcade and amuse the 13 yr olds on the real platform. Once I had enough home practice, I found playing on the metal stage to be
      • I asked my mother for one for Christmas.

        I really should have known better.

        I got this Intec one that I can't find a link to online anymore. It looks just like their wireless one, but it isn't wireless. It's hard to correlate it to the reviews for other products, as it is the only pad I've ever used (never even used a real arcade game) and all the reviews for the wireless pad, assuming the hardware is identical, that I've found so far focus on the fact that the wireless doesn't work and they don't even get
        • Well, how can they review it if the wireless doesn't work? :p "On the bright side, it feels squishy, and I think it would be safe to assume that if the console was receiving signals it would be getting them accurately and instantly."
          • Well, how can they review it if the wireless doesn't work? :p

            Sorry, that was more the point I was trying to make; upon re-reading you are right that it looks like I'm complaining. What was that line from Douglas Adams about Sirius Cybernetics...? "Their superficial design flaws merely masked the existance of deep design flaws" or something like that. I mention that quote because it applies here...

            "On the bright side, it feels squishy, and I think it would be safe to assume that if the console was receiv
    • I agree with a lot of what you said. I do think part , or most, of the problem is more related to the fact that exercise is hard rather than boredom. It becomes much easier over time and less "boring." No matter the exercise.

      I love playing DDR (actually StepMania) for hours at a time though. I have those fancy RedOctane pads and they do work well. However, I ended up building my own hard pads that I could wear shoes on. You really need shoes to protect your shins and ankles (shin splints hurt). I st
    • We got DDR for Christmas, as well. I got two high density mats and DDR Extreme for $120 from the following link. They have both PS2 and XBox models. My wife and I absolutely love playing DDR. I turned on the workout mode and got a feel for how much I was really doing... about 500 calories a workout at Standard level.

      http://www.hartsunlimited.com/dancepads.html [hartsunlimited.com]

      Note: I have no affiliation with the above company. I was just very happy to find both the mats for less than one from the store. Take not

  • Or... (Score:1, Redundant)

    by rmarll ( 161697 )
    Get a treadmil and only watch tv/play video games when you're on it.
  • Touching that damn metal edge is enough to kill an elderly person twice my size - I think it'll do the job.
  • What about games that just make your heartrate go up from shock or anticipation, such as Doom III or Counter-Strike?
    • Half Speed camperstrike ? you gotta be kidding! CS is surely a breakthrough in insomnia cures! With the exception of the sniper rifles, all the guns were borrowed from the A Team.

      I spent a good 10 seconds wearing a hole in some dude's skull with some sort of automatic rifle the other night. It would have been quicker to convince him of the error of his evil ways in a series of councilling sessions than shooting him: "you don't want to blow up the chateau... you want to go home and rethink your life...
  • I'd accidently set off the alarm, and that's good for 60-90 seconds of increased heart rate as I run for a corner to hide in :)

    Not what they're after, not really much of a cardio workout, but even so ...

  • GetUpMove.Com offers inspirational stories of people who have used the game to lose weight - people like Matt Keene, 20, who dropped 150 pounds playing the game.

    "He lost a person, an entire person," Snitker said.

    That's the absolute best way to phrase a success story.

  • Pads and Kilowatt (Score:3, Informative)

    by bippy ( 668525 ) on Saturday February 05, 2005 @06:27PM (#11585627) Homepage
    Red Octane sent me their pad to help me write the story for the Rocky and I really like it. The insert gives it a very nice feel and it seems to always trigger correctly. My pad seemed to move about a tad, despite the rubber backing, but that's probably because I'm such a spaz. I didn't get a chance to play with the Kilowatt, but it looks and sounds fantastic. I think it may become the first true blending of excercise equipment and gaming to hit the market. It's built like a high quality piece of equipment, so it costs quite a bundle. I've got a lot more about it in the article, the technology is pretty fascinating.

    Brian Crecente
    Editor
    Kotaku [kotaku.com]

  • For an exercise bike to raise my heartrate into the fat burning zone for 10-15 minutes (considered the point when you actually start discarding miniscule amounts of stored fat) and sustain that for a reasonable amount of time... the game had better have real world high stakes. I just don't see it.

    If you are genetically inclined to easy fat loss (easy for your heart to enter the fat burning zone), you may have some success with this. For the rest of us, it means getting off our asses and burning the calor

  • Why not an exergaming health club? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Teppy ( 105859 ) * on Sunday February 06, 2005 @12:14AM (#11587661) Homepage
    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 [ataleinthedesert.com], but doing it alone isn't as much fun as I'd imagine a health club setting.
  • http://ps2.ign.com/articles/567/567209p1.html
  • Someone should harness the aerobic power of these dance mats, and produce an MMORPG that has an ACTUAL level treadmill, where you level up your character by running on the spot. The next generation of geeks will still live in their parent's basement, but they will all be BUFF AS FUCK!
    • Good idea. Build a prototype/pre-alpha Version of the game and PATENT THAT BABY!

      Could mean the end of all worries for your monetary problems. *sheepish grin*

      No, seriously, your idea really could work. I truly see a market here. Which geek doesn't want to lose some weight?

Slashdot Top Deals

The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.

Close