Towel at the ready
I like to think of myself as a pretty fit person. I go to the gym and run multiple times a week, I watch my diet, I go on walks. Nintendo’s latest addition to the Switch 2 Edition catalogue has convinced me that, actually, I’m not as ship-shape as I thought.
You see, I just finished a few sessions of Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer‘s new ‘Boost Up’ mode, and I’m currently more sweat than man.
As is the standard for Nintendo’s own Switch 2 Editions at this point, Fitness Boxing 3 — developed by Imagineer and published by Nintendo — bundles in a small slice of extra content alongside the expected visual bump and system-specific bonuses like GameShare. The newbies this time around are the chance to play with your camera on, so you can correct your form in real time, and the aforementioned ‘Boost Up’ sessions, which crank up the tempo the longer you play.
Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube849k
Keen to make sure I was doing everything correctly, I did dust off my Switch 2 camera to keep an eye on my workout form. Seeing that it plastered my sweating face in a large box on the right side of the screen, it’s safe to say that it didn’t remain plugged in for long — I could already feel how wet the front of my top was, I didn’t need to see it, too.
Capture restrictions when the camera is attached made grabbing screens impossible, so mercifully you don’t get to see it either.
Which brings me nicely to the Boost Mode. These exercises divide your usual boxing workouts into four rounds on normal intensity, and six on high intensity, each one upping the tempo from the last. The idea is to stay with the beat for as long as possible, landing your punches at the right time to avoid getting a ‘Miss’ and losing one of your three hearts.
Being the optimist that I am, I whacked things straight on the high intensity and set out jabbing to the rhythm with relative ease. Let me be clear, it soon picks up.
By round four, I was feeling it, by round six, I was using the brief pause between combos to wipe the sweat out of my eyes as my dog looked disapprovingly at me from the corner. “I’m usually asleep in my bed while you’re at your desk, human. What the heck is this insubordination??”
I managed to finish it up and felt all the better for it (even if my lower back is now a little damper than usual). Hopping back over to a regular session, I got to see the new ‘Advanced Scoring Mode’ (not available in Boost sessions, fortunately), which gives your ‘Perfect’ timings an extra level of difficulty by also taking your punch speed into account.
I can’t see myself hopping on GameChat to do a session with my pals any time soon, nor do I imagine I’ll be subjecting myself to the horror of watching a live feed of me from the camera again, but I am impressed with just how much the new mode and scoring got my heart pumping.
I can only imagine that I’ll be far too sore for another session tomorrow (and just like the Switch 1 version, it’s good to give myself a break from that grating music), but Fitness Boxing 3’s Switch 2 additions might just be slotting into my cardio routine. Clearly, I need it.
