In a genre littered with copycats, EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer is at the top of its class. Nintendo started the virtual fitness craze with Wii Fit, but Electronic Arts put a more serious spin on working out, complete with a wide assortment of enjoyable exercises to get the blood pumping. Now the publisher's back with the impressive EA Sports Active: More Workouts, a tropical island themed paradise complete with palm trees, white sand and clean-looking water, but this isn't a digital vacation. You'll need to complete a series of exercises that'll tax your muscles and leave you drenched in sweat.

Similar to Wii Sports Resort, you'll enjoy a host of vacation themed activities, including paddle surfing.

Consumers will love the wide assortment of activities and positive reinforcement from the in game trainer. There are well over 35 unique exercises to complete, spread across Cardio, Fitness, Ab, Lower and Upper Body categories (the game also has warm-up and cool-down exercises). These include skipping, stride jumps, an obstacle course, water skiing , paddle surfing, leg raises, crossover lunges, double bicep curls and one of our personal favorites, sparring, where you'll physically punch the air to hit a non-player character's boxing gloves, while ducking to avoid jabs. The obstacle course also provides several moments of amusement, as you'll need to run to different checkpoints, jump on pegs and quickly turn a crank.

You achieve all of this with the Wii remote and nunchuk (certain activities, like water skiing, also make use of the console's Balance Board peripheral, sold separately). For the most part, you'll hold the nunchuk in your left hand and the remote in your right, and in some cases, slide the nunchuck into a Leg Strap (also sold separately) that slides around one of your thighs with the help of a velco strap. Thanks to the Wii's motion sensing abilities, the game knows the position of both controllers, allowing you to easily perform reps alongside the personal trainer. On top of that, the game offers plenty of encouragement, helpful tips and instructional videos for each exercise, just in case you need to watch someone perform them to study movement and posture; these are actual videos with a real person. You can even work out alongside a friend, via split screen.

Similar to other fitness games, you'll create a Fitness Profile that includes your weight, estimated body type and other useful pieces of information; if you have save data from the previous EA Sports Active, the game will recognize and let you import it. There's also a handy Journal that lets you customize your avatar (new sneakers, outfits and sunglasses) and chronicle your progress with the help of a Lifestyle & Nutritional Survey (How many glasses of water did you drink today? Be honest).

New to this game is a Weekly Fitness Tracker that displays the number of calories burned per week, your weight, number of completed workouts, total exercise time and miles traveled. To input your weight, simply weigh yourself on a scale, or connect and use the Wii Balance Board.

These routines will make even seasoned fitness veterans sweat.

The biggest feature, however, is the 6 Week Challenge. This ambitious endeavor was designed to offer a total body workout in varying levels of intensity. After selecting one of three difficulties and four workout days (you rest the other three), the game launches you into a satisfying regimen comprised of upper, lower, abs and cardio exercises, as well as cool down activities; you may change your level of intensity in between workouts. Expect to work hard, as the game thrusts you into 30-minute blocks filled with lunges, boxing, an obstacle course and bicep curls. By the end of our workout, we were gasping for air, sweating and exhausted, but also completely satisfied, especially after achieving various in game medals, such as Fists of Fitness (Hit all targets in a hard boxing combo station routine) and Feel the Burn (Burned 100 calories). And thanks to the Weekly Calendar View (expanded to Monthly), we could see days completed, planned activities and whether we had a Balance Board day coming up (if you don't own the Balance Board, the game won't integrate it into your routines).

In addition, the game comes with Custom and Preset workouts independent of the 6 Week Challenge. There are a plethora of Preset routines to choose from, including a 30-minute step aerobics class (broken down into fast, medium and slow difficulties), a Dynamic Warm-up and Ab Challenge. Each one offers you the opportunity to enjoy a quick workout, especially while on your lunch break.

If you prefer to control which exercises you complete, we suggest customizing your routine. You'll have access to all of the game's activities, and can string together a comprehensive list, combining the best from each category. We're huge fans of the obstacle course and sparring, so being able to select these exercises from the beginning helped us get the most from the experience.

As much as we enjoy EA Sports Active, the motion controls aren't perfect. Several times, we'd go into the required position, only to watch as our on-screen character failed to perform the same action. This resulted in the virtual trainer pausing the routine to offer helpful bits of advice, disrupting our rhythm. We also ran into an issue with jumping exercises, where a slight shift caused our spandex wearing avatars to leap prematurely, throwing us off our game. These missteps notwithstanding, the technology works well, for the most part.

That said, EA should have made use of Nintendo's MotionPlus peripheral that attaches to the bottom of the Wii remote and allows for a 1:1 ratio between a player and his or her character's movements. This works extremely well in Wii Sports Resort, released this past July, and it's a shame that More Workout's designers didn't capitalize on the opportunity to make their game even more responsive. That, however, should not prevent you from purchasing it.

Small criticisms aside, EA Sports Active: More Workouts is a fun exercise game that'll help you lose weight. It's by no means a replacement for an actual gym membership, but instead serves as a great companion to one, letting its users sneak in squats and push-ups amidst their hectic schedules. If you crave an exercise game with a more serious edge, don't hesitate to sign up for this workout. Just remember to bring a towel.