Common Sense Media Review
By Christopher Healy
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Poor controls mar lackluster mini-game mix.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 8+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Play
Videos and Photos
Family Party: Fitness Fun
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's It About?
FAMILY PARTY: FITNESS FUN is a collection of mini-games that is ostensibly based around family fitness. Many of the activities are sports-themed (volleyball, dodgeball, squash, trampoline, etc.), but some have nothing to do with fitness (like a counting game in which you race to put numbers in order or a game in which you tilt a board to let balls drop into a bucket). The characters are all depicted as members of the same family (you start with a mom, dad, brother, and sister, and can unlock other relatives as you go along).
Is It Any Good?
Family Party: Fitness Fun is the latest in a franchise of mini-games collections that have all been somewhat lackluster. The amount of games is good -- more than thirty. And the price is nice -- only twenty bucks. But the activities themselves are very blah. Many of them are rather dull and the ones that could be more exciting are marred by frustrating controls. For one mini-game -- in which your avatar eats a lot of food and you are then supposed to shake your controller to exercise your character and burn off the calories consumed -- four players wiggling their remotes like lunatics didn't manage to score a single burned calorie for anybody. Our testers wondered if we were all doing something wrong, but the tutorial was so unclear that we had no idea. This is not to say that the mini-games are all that bad. Some work just fine and even have the potential to be entertaining. But there are far better mini-game collections on the market.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about active gaming. Are motion-controlled video games a true substitute for physical exercise? Does this particular game really promote physical fitness?
Also, how often to the parents and children in your family play video games together? Can you use gaming as a chance for family bonding? Do video games help bridge generation gaps?
Game Details
- Platform : Nintendo Wii
- Pricing structure :
- Available online? : Not available online
- Publisher : D3Publisher of America
- Release date : September 28, 2010
- Genre : Mini-games
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : August 30, 2016
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