So last week I mentioned that I had picked up a copy of EA Sports Active 2 and I was not happy with my purchase. The leg sensor, which straps around the right thigh, kept cutting out, making the game impossible to play. After attempting 6 times to play the game and only getting it to sort of work twice, I decided last Thursday to take it back to the store and see if I could get a refund or an exchange.
Target customer service was very understanding about my problem with the game and said since they still had more copies of EASA 2 in stock, I could exchange my non-working copy for one of those. I have to admit, this was not the answer I wanted. After having read so many reviews of the game complaining about the exact same problem I was having, I wasn’t certain a second copy would work any better than the first. But since this was Target’s return policy, I was stuck with it. I went back and picked up the least battered copy of the game I could find. The tape on every copy had been cut through for some reason, and some of the boxes looked like they’d been torn. Again, this did not give me a happy feeling. But I did the exchange and walked out with my new copy. As soon as I got home, I set it up and tried it out.
My heart sank when the leg sensor immediately refused to work. But I decided to do a little trouble-shooting. I swapped out the batteries, rebound the sensors and….
It worked. The damned thing actually worked.
I got through a 15 minute workout without a single hitch. The leg sensor, once it had new batteries and had been rebound, worked and it kept working. I’ve completed two other workouts since then and still haven’t had any problems.
So now I can give an opinion of what the game is like when it works, and that opinion is, it’s a great workout game. It’s definitely more workout than game, which is fine. I wanted something that concentrated on strength training and EASA 2 definitely does that. It still uses the elastic bands with the nylon handles instead of hand weights, and you do still need to hold the Wii-mote while doing most of the exercises. But the game gives a good solid workout.
My favorite change to the new version of EASA is the trainer-generated workout. If you want a workout but don’t want to build your own and don’t feel like participating in any of the pre-programmed challenges, you can now tell EASA 2 to create a workout for you using a few simple guidelines. Simply tell EASA 2 what you want to focus on (whole body, arms, legs, core or cardio), how long you want to work out, and how hard you want to workout. Then once you hit the “generate workout” button, EASA 2 will put together a workout based on that info. If you don’t like the workout it comes up with, you can tell it to generate a new one using the same guidelines. The workouts are created on the spot, not pulled from some prepared list as far as I can tell, so you never really get the same workout twice. I like that. I always hated being stuck with the same 2 or 3 workouts for particular areas. Even more, I hated trying to scroll through the loooooooooooong list of prepared workouts EASA had, just to find a particular one I wanted to do that day.
So I’m now happy with my purchase. I will say EASA 2 needs to do some serious quality control and make sure that all future editions of the game do not have such serious technical problems as this one did. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as spending a good chunk of cash on a game only to have it not work as advertised. Or in this case, not work at all!
Final work – great game, but make sure you understand the return policy of the store you buy it from.
