Sunday, June 8, 2008

Wii Fit review

 

What's there to say about Wii Fit that hasn’t been said before? Honestly, even grandparents know about the freaking thing.

Quick refresher if you don’t already know, Wii Fit is for the Nintendo Wii. It essentially has a balance board, which is ridiculously accurate, you may curse that you bought it.

Balance Board

Wii Fit is essentially a bunch of mini games, much like Wii Sports. Except all of these are designed with fitness in mind. Most of these got me sweating quite a bit. But I never exercise. I think most of the mini games that are here are good enough for most couch potatoes to get their blood flowing and to stop getting atrophy.

This perv is using a girl instructor

The problem with Wii Fit being a bunch of mini games is that if you would really like to use this for your primary source of exercise, is that it will annoy you trying to get a good workout going. And what I mean by that is, after every exercise, you will have to fiddle with the menus and get to your next routine. You cannot set up a “play list” of different mini-games, and just keep going.

The graphics in Wii Fit are very much identical to Wii Sports, so you will get no frills, Miis all over the place graphics. Not that's a bad thing. It fits with Nintendo’s whole vibe they are going with for this console. The only deviation you will get from this is when you do the real exercise training. You will get to choose from a male or female trainer. Both of which have NEVER seen, looked at, or touched a sun ray. But the thing is, viewing them makes it easy to see how to do an exercise correctly, so mission accomplished. Again, Wii Fit is not about wowing you with the graphics, unlike other games.

The sound is your usual no frills but strangely appropriate sounds. From the “Starting up” little girl voice, to the drum roll when obtaining your “Wii Fit Age” for the day, the game isn’t going to wow your ears with sound. The music is catchy but all together generic. Lets be honest, the whole point of this game is the balance board.

Now to the real reason this game is selling as fast as the Wii system itself, the balance board. Now Nintendo has had its fair share of useless peripherals. But this one really works. I its fun. As fun as the console that it came with is. It is so responsive, I could have sworn there was a fault line under my house, but I am wrong about that. I shouldn’t play this while strung out on coffee. Seriously, you lean forward it knows it. You lean right it knows it. You put a foot on the floor, it kind of knows it. This is a sold piece of equipment. It should be, its essentially 4 scales in one unit. So yes, Wii Fit knows how fat you are, up to 330lbs.

So the big question is, do you buy Wii Fit. For me the answer was a solid yes. I need to start exercising, I like video games, I hate gyms. I win. I mean, who is going to tell me I have a high score at push ups at a gym? No one! I need points, I grew up with them, so this satisfies that want and need. Is it going to end up collecting dust in my closet in a month, hopefully not but I think with most people it will.

For my review I will give Wii Fit a 4, simple because again Nintendo is creative and crazy enough to try something so weird, and it works. The balance board is innovate, not as much as the Wii Controller itself, but still amazing. I am just hoping Skate on Wii uses it.