Shedding Pounds

While the balance games and yoga sides of Wii Fit are focused on bettering the posture of players and improving balance – and yoga is definitely a good balancing exercise as the more difficult poses are introduced – it is the muscle building and pound-shedding exercises that most people are interested in I think.

As mentioned before, there are two types of activities in Wii Fit that don't focus on improving your stance – aerobic and muscular workouts. If you're like me and are new to this whole 'staying healthy' fad then all you need to know is that, boiled down to the basics, the aerobic exercises will help you lose weight while the muscular work-outs will help you build muscles instead.

Both sections are pretty much just what you'd expect – press-ups in the muscular section, jogging in the aerobics. It gets a bit more involved and complex than that later on as you unlock new activities, but those are the most basic exercises in each category.

Nintendo has been clever when it comes to these activities and not ham-fistedly shoved the balance board in where it isn't needed. It's this approach that seems to have ensured that first-party games for the Wii and DS are of high quality when compared to other games that shoehorn in motion-sensitivity in when it isn’t needed.


There are some activities therefore, such as jogging, which don’t require the balance board at all – you just hold the Wiimote and run on the spot to navigate your Mii through a pleasant setting.

However, some activities make use of the balance board to their own detriment – take press-ups as a prime example. Granted, I’m a fairly broad kind of guy in the shoulder department but I don’t think I’m too huge compared to the norm and yet I found doing press-ups on the balance board more than just a little uncomfortable for the way it required your hands to be on the board. The board isn’t wide or grippable enough for such exercise in my view, though the under-board grips do help some.

There are a good number of extra exercises to unlock as you progress through, especially in the muscle building category, but you have to question the worth of unlocking these on some level. After all, the game isn’t offering you anything new like a new level – you can do all these exercises outside of the game and that somewhat diminishes the apparent worth of continuing effort via the game when the whole thing could be replaced by some bathroom scales and running shoes for the most part.

Conclusions

I say this a lot, but it really is hard to know what to think about Wii Fit. On the one hand it’s obviously great. The hardware has a lot going for it in the future and is just as clever as everything else in the Wii. It’ll help get lard-arses off the couch and on their feet and even if you aren’t into fitness then the game itself is still fun for a little while.

Yet, on the other hand the balance board is quite expensive, it is still just another collection of minigames at the most basic level and the reality is that those lard-arses will play the game every day for about two weeks at most before going back to exercising their drinking arm.

Sure, that last part is grumpy as hell, but it’s also true. There’s room for movement, but the vast, vast majority of people will vociferously defend themselves and pledge to play the Wii for hours every day – only to let themselves off because they had a hard day at work. I know. I’m one of those people.

Judged on fun and ingenuity, Wii Fit gets top marks. Judged on longevity and value though, the game suffers horribly at our admittedly grumpy hands.

The decider then goes to the future of the balance board and whether the hardware can prove itself useful in upcoming games. If the support is there then the game and the hardware will flourish – but otherwise it may end up as ugly and uncomfortable as the Zapper.