I had heard about the Zumba craze for a while and how good of a workout it provides. However, not only am I completely out of shape, the dancing gene completely skipped over me. Correction: there was never a dancing gene in my family that I could have inherited. After watching several Zumba classes from afar while sweating on the treadmill at my gym, the verdict was in: I would easily be the most uncoordinated person in that room, bustin' out moves reminiscent of Steve Urkel. Call me self-conscious, but this gal doesn't like making a fool out of herself.Plus, those classes aren't included in most gym memberships. The thought of a one-time payment for an XBox game is rather appealing instead of dishing out cash for continued group classes.In terms of a good workout... Oh. My. Gosh. It gets the heart pumping, sweat flowing, and muscles burning -- which, of course, means that it's working.The game breaks down in a lot of different ways. It offers an instructive session on the basic steps for four of the major dancing styles that are incorporated into the songs and routines (salsa, merengue, cumbia, and reggaeton). My one complaint here is that they don't offer instruction on other styles that are used such as mambo and cha-cha for those bumbling klutzes like me. You eventually pick up on them after repetition, but a primer would be nice. These sessions introduce four steps per dance style. They start off slowly to help demonstrate the actual step and then speed up to make sure that you actually have it down. This makes the actual workouts a LOT easier to follow, so I highly recommend going through this first.The dance routines are classified by intensity levels: high intensity, medium intensity, and low intensity. When you are selecting a song or a workout, you are given a choice of intensity level. The choices also provide you with the "location" of your workout. Your instructor can lead the workout from a variety of backgrounds such as a yacht, Bollywood, a New York alley, a rooftop, Carnivale, etc. You can also preview each song or workout before beginning.You can opt to do a single song, create your own workout from the available songs, choose a set workout, or try to find a live class.With the set workouts, you can choose either a short workout (20 minutes), a medium workout (45 minutes), or a full workout (1 hour). The intro to each workout tells you how many songs there are, and each song is prefaced by an update telling you which song in the set you are about to begin. Once you select the length of your workout, you choose the intensity of your workout (low, medium, or high). Don't be fooled; even the low intensity workouts will make you sweat. The length and intensity options of the workouts give you a great starting point if you are really out of shape. You can start small and work your way up without killing yourself, yet still get a good session.During each song, you will see several different things on the screen aside from the instructor and the background. On your left, there is a meter that grades each of your moves. Not only does it measure the accuracy of each of your steps, but it detects your intensity. More gusto = more points. Along the bottom of your screen are five empty stars. As the dance goes on, these stars will fill up, again based on accuracy and intensity. It doesn't take an expert or a Shakira to get all five stars, so it's actually somewhat of an encouragement. In the bottom left corner, there is a box that shows your silhouette so you can see how good you look. ;) Or in my case, the reason why you're doing this when no one else is looking!!! And as the steps are about to change, a box will appear in the upper right corner to show you the next move so you'll be a step ahead of the game and can keep up with the dance.At the end of each workout, you are give a summary that shows you how well you did. You get an overall star rating, an accuracy percentage, and your total calories burned. From the main menu, you can also track your overall progress which documents your accuracy, calories burned, time played, etc. It also breaks it down by the dates of your workouts so you can track your fitness and weight loss goals. This also lists the different achievements that you have gotten throughout your different workouts, including hidden, behind the scenes dances that you unlock as you go. I've gotta say, unlocking one of these dances is definitely a good feeling, and it makes you want to keep going. With these achievements and "secret" levels, the workouts become like an actual game. It will engage your competitive side.When you're going through a workout, the instructors change with every dance. Each instructor seems to have his or her own style or genre. Translation: as soon as the new song is about to start, I know whether or not I'm about to hate my life. One in particular makes me groan every time she pops up on the screen. However, as time goes on, you'll pick up on the steps and styles, and things will get easier.If you have Zumba experience, getting the hang of this will be a lot easier for you. If you are a newbie like me, it will take some extra time and work -- but don't get frustrated. For a while, you will probably get stuck a time or two during the workouts while you try to pick up a new dance move. But if you stick with it, there will be no regrets. Regularly pushing through the pain is well worth it. I was stunned by how quickly I began to see results. I use this as my cardio workout three times a week, and it's actually fun!If you're serious about getting in shape, this is the way to go. Well worth the money.Others have explained the structure of this game, so I'll skip that and move on to my take on Zumba Rush....FUN FACTOR: 5 of 5 (this only cover the Full Dance Section)SWEAT FACTOR: 5 of 5 (when compared to other video games)INTERFACE: 3 of 5 Although somewhat confusing, not much worse than the abysmal standard set for xbox games. (BUT SEE ALSO CONTROLS, AND RANT ABOUT CONTROLs at End)FEEBACK / BODY TRACKING: 4 of 5: Not especially accurate, but certainly acceptable if you're not gonna obsess about this. I feel that overall the ratings reflect how I did on a song, and I've learned NOT to get bent out of shape if it simply can't read a movement or two.CONTROLS: 1 of 5: By controls I'm referring to ability to select menu items (thru any means). See Rant below. For me this severely limits my ability to use anything in the game except the Full Class. (when trying to do tutorials, I kept accidentally choosing the wrong, item)I'd hoped the update would fix this, but alas no improvement whatsoever.CALORIE COUNT: Ignore these: Video Games calorie counts are a joke. Get yourself a decent Heart Rate monitor watch (I like Timex but there are other good ones too) if calories matter. Even if the Game asks your weight sex etc. It's just a guess - the game will never really measure YOUR energy level output (which is the most important factor) until these games can actually measure a Heart rate - these counts are absurdly inaccurate.----------------------SUMMARY---------------------As annoyed as I am about not being able use anything other than the FULL CLASS options (see rant below). I find the FULL DANCE section surprising close to the Zumba Class experience. (You'll never be able to replicate the incredible fun a Live Zumba Class) but I think they came as close as one can expect in a video game. IF you are someone who's had either some Zumba experience, OR a lot of practice doing mirrored style video dancing, I don't think the Tutorials will be greatly missed.For anyone who's never tried Zumba, the music is really fabulous, the movements are wonderfully varied - not nearly as mechanical as Hip Hop or some of the other styles featured in other dance games.Based on a combo of Fun Factor and Sweat Equity (calorie burn) This was the true winner for me when compared with my exercise video game collection: Dance Central (1 or 2), Your Shape (orig or 2012), Just Dance 3, Xbox sports: (ie my current exercise collection.If you really want to be fit, you'll also need to do other forms of exercise (I find exercise DVDs and live classes best for this. I've hurt myself too many times trusting "Your Shape's" tracking rather than using my own common sense) But for calorie burn and core work I'd say Zumba tops the heap of Vid Games.If feedback tracking and tutorials is your thing you might want to go for Dance Central 2 - though even in that game, I found I learned faster, just cooling out and trying to mimic the characters.Both Just Dance and Dance Central have a better (but not perfect) interface - if that's real high on your list.Lastly: We all have different tastes in music and I'd say music is one of the biggest motivators in these games, so by all means investigate the track lists and you tube vids to help you make Dance Game decisions.--------------------------------------------------------------RANT: AN EXERCISE IN FRUSTRATION - A RANT ABOUT GAME "CONTROLS":PS: I ALSO INCLUDED something similar to the following IN A COMMENT (so you needn't read this again)One reviewer said "you can use your hand, voice or controller." Not so for me.My game TOTALLY ignores my controller. Personally I'd much rather use the controller than hand gestures when choosing menu items.Which brings us to Hand Movements: I'm not sure why, but my hand movements in this game jump about totally erratically. This makes it almost impossible to access correct menu items reliably - so I finally gave up on the tutorials (or anything that required frequent menu selection) and chose to stick with "Full Dance Class". Since others haven't complained I'd say YMMV.As for Voice control: I'd say it's so-so. The system hears certain commands, ignores others. (Yes, I've tried screaming, turning the volume down etc) I wouldn't say that the voice control is much worse than other games - it's just not a very reliable option and frankly I think it's always going to be of limited use in games that play music while you need to issue a command - nobody's fault, just the nature of the beast.So All in all I feel that this game has by far the worst menu response of any game I've tried (I have about 6 Kinect Games). The strange thing about the funkiness of menu selection is that body tracking is decent.Lest you ask: I tried recalibrating the Kinect Tuner - no improvement. I went back and tried other games (thinking maybe my memory was off since I use the controller whenever possible) but hand gestures worked considerably better in All of them.I started zumba classes in the fall and had fun, but wasn't very good at the moves. This game has a breakdown on the basic dance steps that has helped my rhythm and accuracy dramatically. This workout is so fun and the choice to do a single song, 20 minute workout, 45 min or 60 minute workout already premixed is great. I am having a blast and I really get my heart rate up. I have used this for almost 1 month about 4-5 days a week and I am still not bored. Highly recommend this game if you want a great workout without a lot of pauses between songs.I have Zumba Core, Rush, and World Party. I play it in the basement with shoes on carpet so a lot of the twisting and jumping moves are modified.This version is a great game. Zuma World Party is newer, the characters are more realistic than the previous versions but it doesn't necessarily make it a better workout than Rush. This version is a great workout with more traditional Latin moves than World Party and Core. I wear my Fitbit and an hour class gets me about 6500 steps, similar to Core and more than World Party.All in all it's a great cardio workout when you can't get out of the house,Very Happy with my purchase.As a first time Zumba dancer I was very pleased with the learn each move at slow and normal speeds.I appreciate that a small window pops up to let you know in advance the next move ( this can be shut off once you learn the moves).I like that the game keeps track of your progress.If you want to sweat those ponds off this is a fun way.Vraiment je m'amuse et fais mon exercise que demander de mieuxIt's a great game to keep track of exercise wile you dance. Have an average amount of songs, and you can choose between 3 levels of impact.Fully recommended, but keep in mind that you will need other similar games to not get bored quickly on the songs.