Nintendo is on a roll and helping to lead the charge is the Wii Fit franchise. Seeing the widespread popularity of the Wii and the success of Wii Fit, many other publishers are trying to put out other active games in efforts to produce another hit title in the genre. One such game trying to cash in is newly released Active Life: Extreme Challenge.

As soon as you open the box, you will immediately see the controller that will take you on your extreme challenge. A quick look at the “controller” will reveal a Dance Dance Revolution like game mat with directional buttons along with 2 square buttons. This is what you will be using to play a wide variety of sports including Luge, Double Dutch, Skateboarding, Rock Climbing and many more. The different sports require you to push different buttons with your feet to make your character move and perform the actions on the screen.

Active Life: Extreme Challenge offers single-player mode, which - in turn - offers tournament play, free play and challenge modes. Tournament play mode consists of the user playing different sports to receive the highest score. Free play is where you can play any sport at any time and challenge mode lets you play different sports with different goals. Winning in these modes unlocks more sports among many other features. It also offers multiplayer where you can play sports, tournaments and challenges against another friend.

Unfortunately, Active Life: Extreme Challenge will not hold up to other “get active” games on the platform for two simple reasons, controller problems and less-than-fun sports and mini-games. Many times during the gameplay, there were times where the controller mat was unresponsive or had late responses. Active Life: Extreme Challenge is a game that bases its high score on quick responses and the controller problems were definitely a downfall. The other problem were the lack of fun sports. A lot of the sports in Active Life: Extreme Challenge aren’t that fun at all, especially compared to other active sports games on the Wii resulting in a very average game.

Overall, Active Life: Extreme Challenge may look fun at first but don’t fall for it. The fancy controller pad and extreme sports look to be a great equation for success, but it definitely will fall short of your expectations.

Gameplay: 5.0
The game lacks solid mini-games and sports resulting in a very average gameplay experience.

Graphics: 6.5
The graphics were the best part of the game, and sport an 'artsy' feel.

Sound: 4.5
Not much excitement here. The audio was mostly just background music.

Difficulty: Easy/Medium

Concept: 4.0
The game mat and game combo has definitely been done. With Wii Fit dominating active games, it was hard for this one to have a new concept.

Overall: 5.0
The under-responsive game mat and uninteresting mini-games really took away anything that was remotely good about the game. It is essentially an average game that some kids might have fun with, but that is all it is.