Following EA Sport's lead, "Your Shape" (a direct descendant of their earlier "My Fitness Coach") is Ubisoft's attempt to offer something new to the idea of home fitness through the Nintendo Wii.

The game is very easy to set up. Simply switch off the Wii console, plug the camera into the USB slot on the back and place the camera on top of the TV - it is well designed to fit on flat screen TVs however, despite looking as though it might, the camera does not clip on to the sensor bar.

Following that all you need to do is enter your details when asked and check the camera - you need to make sure that you can see all of your body on the TV screen. Now you are ready to go. You set up your profile giving your weight, height and year of birth and the camera scans your body shape (not my favourite part of this game!). Next you work through a brief workout to test your general fitness and then you are ready to exercise. You are given the option to select which parts of the body you want to exercise and set up a calendar for exercising with a choice of how long you want to exercise each day. Here you're forced to select every day, with no option to say "Mon, Weds, Fri", or to remove all Saturdays, etc. If you change your long term goal, it is not immediately clear what (if any) changes have been to your workout program, which makes the goal feature seem very "tacked on" rather than a well integrated part of the program.

It seems that the use of cameras as input devices is the new step forward in video games, and although it is a brilliant idea in "Your Shape" I just found the execution of this technology to be very poor. My first issue with the camera was that it wouldn't recognise my movements until I changed my clothing to contrast with the background The next issue I found was with regards to space. To monitor your actions, the game states that you need to be at least 5-6 foot away from the camera, and to have an area about 2.5m wide x 2.5m long x 2.5m high, and free of clutter including protruding lights. Not the easiest thing in a student flat!

During the workout, the screen is split into two: your virtual trainer on the left, and on the right is what your camera sees: you. If you're getting it right, then the trainer makes various encouraging comments, but if you're getting it wrong then it can be really hard to determine what the problem is so you're forced to turn to trial and error to solve the problem - are you too close/far from the camera? Is it unable to track your skin, or your shirt sleeves? etc. The trainer also gives you absolutely no introduction to the exercises, from the very first workout you're supposed to jump straight in and know what you're doing.

The game is fully based on old school aerobics routines that become very repetitive, even in a half hour session that should allow for plenty of variation. If you want something with a variety of exercises, games and activates then this will get very dull, very quick.

Overall I think the idea behind this game is a fantastic one but the actual execution very poor. Maybe Ubisoft rushed this game through before their competitors jumped on the attached camera bandwagon?