It’s the start of a new year and I’m ready to emerge from my chrysalis of post-Christmas overconsumption to become a brand new person, erasing the entirety of my past in a futile quest for self-improvement. None of that is true (not even mid-February being the ‘start’ of a new year), but a new year does tend to usher in those exaggerated promises: I’ll hit the gym, I’ll eat healthy, etc. etc.
I don’t believe in diets, but I’m aware that my job is incredibly sedentary. I work ten-hour days from my office chair, only getting up to make a cup of tea or stretch my legs once an hour. That’s not going for a walk or anything, it’s just working from a standing position for a while to change things up. It’s not ideal.
I don’t really enjoy exercise. I enjoy team sports like football, but there are no amateur teams near me. I’m not going to pay for a gym membership that I know I won’t use, and I simply refuse to take up running. I can’t think of anything more boring than just running. Okay, scratch that, running on a treadmill is even worse, but that’s still just running, right?
However, last year I found a way to gamify my workouts. Shardfall, a game on the Quell platform, caught my attention with its excellent roguelite mechanics, relentless levels, and energy-sapping workout routines. Thanks to clever gameplay that could feasibly stand on its own without the workout mechanics and the addition of resistance bands to work more muscles, it was like Ring Fit Adventure on steroids.
Still, I fell off. Thanks to the hectic work period before Christmas and then international travel (also for work), I haven’t touched my Quell kit in months. Lacking motivation to start from scratch again, I decided to take a different approach: I’d see if my Meta Quest 3 could provide a range of interesting exercise games to keep my head in the game. And the headset.
A Quest For Fitness
I noticed that Meta was pushing a new year fitness challenge that looked like exactly what I needed. I downloaded a few of the recommended games and set off with no particular goal in mind. I’m not trying to lose weight, I just want to be a bit healthier.
First, I tried FitXR. This is a boxercise game which sees you throw punches in time with the music, like Beat Saber for people who enjoy crossfit. I liked the variety of music and the virtual trainer was engaging, but the game itself focused too heavily on quantity over quality. It had no way to detect whether your punches were using the correct form, so lazily slapping the orbs that come towards you registers the same as a perfect punch.
Obviously you get out of these games what you put in, but I don’t want to give myself an injury or exercise the wrong muscles (is that a thing?) by approaching things wrong. Again, I find myself thinking back to the likes of Ring Fit and Shardfall, which let you know if you’re performing actions incorrectly and penalise you in-game.
Cleansheet Football had similar issues. I had high hopes for this one, seeing as football is one of the few ways I actually enjoy exercising, but nobody likes going in goal. From the boring backgrounds – why go for a template cYbEr RoOm when you could have a stadium full of adoring fans? – to the dull activities, punching, saving, and catching footballs flying at you gets old quickly. Those three actions are exactly the same motion with slightly different trigger presses. The other main action, throwing, barely works.
Les Mills Body Combat is like FitXR but better. While I’d still like more interesting scenery than its weird, roofless brutalist structure, its Beat Saber-esque punching gameplay is better realised than any game I played this January. Dud punches count as misses, forcing you to throw yourself into the activity, and the Kiwi trainers are engaging. I found myself coming back to Les Mills every time I switched on my Quest for an exercise session.
I would still rather play Beat Saber for this sort of cardio-first exercise (I’m under no illusion that this builds muscle or anything), but Les Mills caused me to punch a wall, which is a testament to how into my workout I was. Ice pack in place, I got back to testing games.
Games Do It Best
Maybe this is a sign of what world I’m coming from, but I found the game-y games to be the most entertaining Quest workouts. The likes of Pistol Whip and Beat Saber engaged me far more than any fitness-focused title. With that entertainment, exercise comes naturally. It doesn’t feel like a chore in either game, and before I know it, I’ve one more songed my way to a proper sweat, which is more than I can say about any fitness game I tried.
However, the ultimate fitness game on Quest had been staring me in the face this whole time. I’ve constantly compared games here to Shardfall, by far the best combination of fitness and gaming I’ve ever played. And it’s now available on the Quest 3. You can even buy Quest-appropriate resistance bands to get close to the full Quell experience.
Quell has just announced that it is shutting down the live-service elements of Shardfall. You can buy it along with the Impact for a discount price now, after which it will not be updated. The base game, however, will continue to work on all platforms.
It’s not perfect. The headset is clunky, awkward, and makes your head sweat profusely. Shardfall on Quest doesn’t allow for the chest tech, meaning that your jumps and ducks register less consistently. But it’s still better than any other fitness game on the market. It is a relentless mix of cardio and combat workouts, and that roguelite formula beckons you for another run even when you’ve been left panting after the last boss.
I’ll probably continue my workouts on the native Quell platform rather than the Quest, but if you’ve got a Meta device and don’t want to shell out for another set of hardware just to work out, then grab some resistance bands and load up Shardfall. If you’re looking for VR fitness, look no further.
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