I'm on the 30 Day Challenge.

I know I was going back and forth on this one, but we did end up buying EA Sports Active last weekend. As you might expect, I had boku Toys R Us cards to cash in. I think the actual cost of the $60 game was around $30.

First of all, Bob Greene is a colossal douche. I guess he's on Oprah a lot? Thankfully, you don't see much of him during the game. Just at the beginning speech and during little inspirational bits every few days. He is ingratiating and fake. Exactly what I hate about motivationists in general.

But I wanted a workout game, right? And preferably one with reviews somewhere outside of the toilet. EA Active was the one.

Note that the early releases on this game stated it would come with TWO leg straps (which is the bit that holds the Nunchuk to your thigh on exercises where the game wants to spot your leg motion). However the game only comes with one strap, so guess what you have to go buy separately if you want multiplayer exercising... at $20 a pop. There is also a chintzy resistance band that I'm convinced I'm going to snap.

Anyway, EA Active does succeed where Wii Fit fails in that you actually get 20-30 minute continuous routines. None of that stopping and starting like in Wii Fit. (Although Wii Fit Plus, due this fall, may address that...) Although Active does have its own epic fails, which I'll get to shortly, not the least of which is a complete lack of personality (which is about the only bit that made Wii Fit interesting).

Active's big claim is the 30 Day Challenge, where it offers up a month of workouts and tracks your progress. I started my 30 Days last Sunday, which would take me through our Origins vacation... which you'd think would mean an instant fail since I don't plan on taking the Wii along on the trip (maybe I should!) But interestingly, Active has a "rest" day built into the calendar after every two days of workouts. So if I skip the rests and just jump to the next scheduled workout, I'll do the 30 Day Challenge in merely 20.

I'm doing a medium-level workout with occasional Balance Board exercises. The game doesn't absolutely need the Balance Board, but there are a few Board-specific exercises and a handful of exercises that can also be played in a Balance Board enhanced version. In the Challenge, it only brings up the Balance Board every other day or so.

So far, I'm a little annoyed that the "20 minute workout" that the game promises appears to be mythical. I've done five days straight and have yet to do a workout that is under 20 minutes. Part of that is due to training videos that add to the time, but even when I skip through them I'm over the 20. You can create your own routines... so once I'm done with the big Challenge maybe I'll put together a workout of the exercises I like and keep that to 20. For whatever reason, there's a huge mental difference between "20 minute workout" and "half hour workout."

But it is a workout. Day 1 was pretty easy. But Day 2 was a killer. Day 3 introduced jumping exercises, which I absolutely hate. At the beginning of the week, I was in complete pain for a few days, especially in my legs from all the lunges and whatnot. By Day 5, I was adjusted and no longer limping around afterward in agony. It is still a sweatfest though.

Rhonda and I have both run up against moments where the game doesn't quite sense your movements properly. That can be frustrating because then the virtual trainer people start chiding you. I also think the sensing is too slow. Plenty of exercises seem to drag out when the motion should be faster. For example, there's four parts to each Toe Touch Side Lunge. You lunge to one side, then hands down to touch your toes with the Remote, the hands up, then back to standing. You're supposed to wait for the game to chime between each step, theoretically to set a good rhythm. I find that the pauses while you're waiting for the chime are completely random, which I surmise is because the game is sensing the position of the Remote and Nunchuk and recalibrating itself for the next motion. As a result, I get no rhythm at all, and end up holding a lot of painful poses for longer than I suspect is necessary.

Not that that stops the chirpy trainer girl from complimenting me on how I'm setting a great pace.

Here's an epic fail for you... no outside music. You can choose music from several genres - all instrumental background music kind of junk - but no playing your own songs off an SD card. How can Wii launch title Excite Freaking Truck have custom soundtracks, but a bloody EA exercise game can't? Even Endless Ocean had custom soundtracks, sort of.

Active does not weigh you, which I find staggeringly amazing. I'm sure Bob Greene has some kind of douchey explanation as to why weight is a poor metric of fitness, but pretending to estimate my burned calories is. Instead of graphing weight over time, EA Active tracks such useful indicators as "How many glasses of sugary drinks you've had" and "How you have self-identified your stress level." Just weigh me, dammit. Every day at work I'm stressed and going through cans of Diet Coke, you happy?

Another missed opportunity is that the game never once uses the Remote speaker. Those stupid chimes that tell me "Joe, you can stop dying on that reverse lunge" ought to come out of the Remote, not the TV.

And this one is the worst: the game steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the d-pad as an input source. Even though the game has screen after screen to page through, or giant blocks of text to scroll down, you can't simply use the d-pad to arrow around. You have to point at the screen. WTF.

As I mentioned, the game is bland as dry toast. The avatars are terrible sub-PS2 level designs. Worse than PlayStation Home, even. There's precious few environments and not enough background music. Were it not for the example videos and physical accessories, I'd imagine Active could fit as a WiiWare app. Which would probably be genius, now that I think about it.

But as far as workouts go, I guess I'm happy enough. There's obvious room for improvement, from lessons unlearned from Wii Fit and the game's own dopey mistakes. Nevertheless I'm working up a sweat, as they say, and looking forward to seeing if I notice any difference in health, shape, or endurance at the end of the 30 days. Or 20.