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Friday, June 19, 2020

Jump Rope Challenge for Nintendo Switch Review

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Is this even worth reviewing? Well...

Today, The Last of Us Part II came out. If I wrote to you how I felt about it, Sony will submit a DMCA request and try to shut KoopaTV down. Quite frankly, they don't deserve the attention, so let's talk about Nintendo once again. At the start of this week, they released the free download-only game, Jump Rope Challenge, which is supposed to let you “jump rope” with your Joy-Cons while the software keeps track of how many you've done. You know, so you can stay somewhat physically active while you're unable to buy Ring Fit Adventure due to supply shortages.

I guess I'll review it. There's not much to it, so this should be sort of easy.

Fast Facts

Names
Jump Rope Challenge
Console
Nintendo Switch (incompatible with Nintendo Switch Lite)
Publisher/Developer
Nintendo
Genre
Exercise
Space Required
Approximately 78 MB
ESRB rating
E for Everyone
Number of Players
One to Two
Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price
Free
Demo?
None, but it's free
 

I suppose since the game is quite barebones, it doesn't make sense to go section-by-section. There's only one gameplay input: Waggling your Joy-Cons (or one Joy-Con if you're doing multiplayer mode with another person, which isn't a co-op mode but more two rabbits sharing the same screen). You're supposed to be jumping, but the actual input is that the Joy-Con senses any kind of movement. Therefore, it doesn't matter if you're leaping, or bending your knees, or doing anything at all with your body. Personally, I'm just sitting on my chair and drumming the Joy-Cons like that Wii Music drummer from Nintendo's E3 2008:


And that's the whole gameplay. You can set a daily goal for yourself (in multiples of 100 from 100 to 900—mine is 500), but it tracks up to 1000. Once you get to 1000, it stops counting. As you play, the background changes from a solid green colour to something like a cat, the beach, space, or... a blurry picture. Depends on the day. You can also change your playable rabbit's outfit, but I don't believe there are any unlockables.


Jump Rope Challenge Day 4 Nintendo Switch dashboard progress
All of these days had over 1000 actual jumps, but it's only going to record up to 1000.



There's no actual music in the game, but there's dynamically-generated noise as you do successive jump-roping. I believe that the noises differ very slightly depending on what the background is (the later ones certainly aren't meow-y like the above video portrays), though the differences are rather subtle, and since you're certainly not playing the game with headphones on, you may miss them. I guess you could also think of it as Wii Music-esque.

This is strictly inferior to Ring Fit Adventure's Multitask Mode, which asks you for up to 500 repetitions of playing with the game's Ring-Con peripheral. The Ring-Con by design offers resistance to your motions (which makes it a more viable form of exercise), while Jump Rope Challenge is literally just waggling your controllers in whatever way you please. It's not intrinsically satisfying, and unlike Ring Fit Adventure, there is no extrinsic satisfaction to Jump Rope Challenge, either.

Jump Rope Challenge will apparently be removed from the Nintendo eShop after September 30, 2020. Why? I dunno. But you're not missing anything if you pass it by.


Ludwig actually feels stupid that he played Jump Rope Challenge for a few days but decided to stop playing Ring Fit Adventure until 2021. That was probably a poor decision on his part. Do you agree with Ludwig's assessment of Jump Rope Challenge? Do you think he's ineligible to review it since he failed to actually treat it like a jump rope? Let him know in the comments.

2 comments :

  1. My copy of Ring Fit Adventure arrived from Amazon today, so this game really means nothing to me now. Even though it released last year, it might just become my personal game of the year. I feel sorry for all those who are playing The Trash of Us 2 instead of this. At least RFA has a believable story and doesn't have any golf in it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I dunno about it having a believable story...
      ...But I can confirm that I've stopped playing Jump Rope Challenge after writing this review.

      Delete

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