Virtual Reality Fitness games, a review with accessibility in mind
Today, I’ll share with you my favorite Virtual Reality (VR) Fitness games. By way of full disclosure, I am not much of a gamer, at all. In fact, I find most video games tedious and boring. However, VR Fitness games I enjoy, so much that I’ve become somewhat of a VR Fitness evangelist. If you’re new to VR Fitness you may want to read the article I wrote I recently wrote about why VR Fitness is a great way for disabled folks to exercise.
In this article, I will describe my favorite Fitness games and at the end, I will add a few videos of me playing with my VR setup, so you can get a sense of what it “looks like” to be exercising in VR.
I bought my Oculus Quest 2 VR headset on a bit of a whim. It was the middle of the pandemic and gyms were all closed I had heard that VR fitness could be fun. I’d enjoyed doing a bit of VR on an old-school Oculus Rift when I was tethered to a desktop computer, but knowing that I could be untethered with the Quest and that I could set it up with just my iPhone made it far more appealing than a Rift setup. If I didn’t like it, I knew I could gift or sell the headset to someone else.
BEAT SABER
I started with Beat Saber, because it was the game that I could find the most reviews of, and it was fairly inexpensive. This remains the game that I play the most often and I find it fresh and interesting every time I play. To make it even more engaging for me I bought a few packs of songs by some favorite musicians such as Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, and Imagine Dragons.
The setting of Beat Saber is somewhat like being inside of a game arcade: there are neon lights and a futuristic backdrop. You can play with friends, with strangers, or play solo. I generally opt for the latter. I use Beat Saber for both warm-ups and cool-downs from the other games I play, because each “game” is just a single song, and the time flies. The choreography of the game consists of striking floating targets and an indicated angle, dodging walls, and avoiding spiky mines. You can change nearly every element of the experience: slowing down the tempo, eliminating mines and walls, and even allowing the targets to be hit from any angle. There are numerous levels that you can play at, each with an increasing level of difficulty. Personally I usually play the Easy or Normal levels, and I’m able to get a good cardio workout from those.
SUPERNATURAL
This is, by far, the most engaging VR Fitness experience. Supernatural has Flow, Boxing, Meditation, and Stretching workouts. Each workout experience happens in a gorgeous natural setting and has popular music to accompany the experience. The workouts also have a human coach who encourages the player (aka “athlete”) along in their fitness experience.
FIT XR
This game offers an arcade-like experience that’s a bit like Beat Saber, however, it is structured around workouts to upbeat music, but not to particular songs. FIT XR started out with only boxing games and it was pretty bare-bones, but it worked so well that it became my go-to for boxing. I should add here that I am not interested in boxing a person, even a virtual person, so I have avoided any games with that element. The boxing in FIT XR is all at targets, and there are visual indications on the targets for various types of hits (side jab, uppercut, block) as well as more points given for the speed of the blow. There’s a coach who is sometimes encouraging you along, but it’s a lot less coaching than you would find in Supernatural. FIT XR has evolved significantly in the past year and has added dance and HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) workouts. I’ve tried them all and have to say that the boxing elements remain the ones I enjoy the most. Kudos go to FIT XR for recently adding seated workouts, as an added inclusive element to their platform.
One interesting aspect of the recent developments in FIT XR is that they’ve added disabled coaches, including one with a prosthetic limb, Zion Clark. To me, this is a fantastic development, because I believe that fitness is important for all abilities, and the representation of disabled folks in fitness arenas is long overdue. That said, I actually have yet to try a workout with the amputee coach, so I can’t comment on how helpful this element would be for a disabled VR gamer like myself. Clark is also himself an accomplished para-athlete, so he is not an everyday disabled person like most adaptive users of this platform would be.
OTHERS
I’ve tried numerous other VR fitness games and haven’t found any of them to have the engaging fitness experience of the three that I’ve detailed above. Perhaps you may want to try them and see for yourself? I’ve included a shortlist of those that aren’t my favorites, here:
· Synth Riders: not as engaging as Beat Saber, though with similar gameplay
· Smash Drums: too many details of drum strokes to learn and remember and I was often scored down for drumming too hard
· Guided Tai Chi: way too hard to follow the moves with any degree of consistency
· The Climb: fun, but not enough of a workout to stick with it consistently
MY VR VIDEOS
First, I should mention that when I do seated VR, I use an “active stool” which allows for some flexibility of movement and activity that a standard chair would not. You can find a stool like mine here (on amazon). I can vouch for how sturdy these stools are, despite being lightweight and easy to move around.
However, I most often play from a standing position, rather than seated. Here’s a timelapse of me playing Supernatural:
I’m always interested in hearing about how others are using VR for fitness. Drop a comment for me if you have any suggestions of others games or activities I ought to try.
I’ll be writing more articles about fitness, VR, and disability. Follow me to keep alerted as I continue publishing.
