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May 29th, 2008 @ 14:44
Wii Fit’s sold-out-everywhere, so you can’t even buy it if you wanted to. If you could, should you? We tell you after the link.
We, of course, bought Wii Fit for our wives, as we’re real gamers who shoot people and then chainsaw them in half, but we were able to get a few minutes alone with the Nintendo fitness “thing” to see what the all the fuss is about.
Wii Fit starts with working out your Wii Fit age. If you haven’t already created a Mii with your date of birth then the Balance Board - who is your ‘friend’ throughout the process - will ask for that info, in addition to your height and how heavy your clothes are.
A bit of hocus pocus later and we found out that we had perfect BMI but a body-age of 55. Great: the guilt trips start here.
After being chastised by the Balance Board avatar, the player then makes a daily plan designed to help lose weight over a specific period. Wii Fit charts your progress, recording everything you do in an effort to reach your target.
Wii Fit is based on physical mini-games, consisting of yoga, muscle workouts, balance games and aerobics. Each ‘game’ lasts up to two minutes and include hula-hooping, slalom skiing, standing like a tree, push ups and others. Each exercise has its own properties, designed to improve different parts of your body. Also, more importantly, each challenge has its own sense of “fun” - apart from the muscle work-outs, which are simply knackering.
Although Wii Fit is strictly a single-player game, you can have as many Mii profiles as you like on the go, so you’re not only limited to one profile per console. Also, for people like us who don’t like get up out of our computer chairs let alone actually work-out, playing it with friends was to be the most enjoyable aspect of it. Watching partners and loved ones gyrating their hips like lunatics trying to keep five hula hoops on the go in genuinely funny. Also, competing with each other for the longest distance on the ski-jump adds a sense of rivalry.
That’s not to say that if you really want to get your spandex out and train properly doing the steps, running, sit ups and so on, that the game becomes dull. In fact it’s testament to Wii Fit that it can be enjoyed on so many levels.
Plummet
After one daily work-out - around 45 minutes of it, mainly ski-jumping with a couple of minutes falling off the Board trying to stand on one leg with our arms in the air - our Wii Fit age had plummeted to 37.
It’s easy, therefore, to understand why stuff like this can happen. Taking Wii Fit too seriously isn’t the best idea in the world.
Be warned, though: our muscles are still aching from the various exercises. Wii Fit does feel like a proper work-out.
One addition that would’ve made for a more realistic “experience” would have been the ability to chose the things you want to do for a set time period and have the game line them up for like a kind of fitness program down the gym. Instead, after every exercise you have to go menu-hopping. Nothing major, but it breaks the flow, as it were.
All in all we were impressed. Not only does Wii Fit seem to actually improve your fitness, it’s also a great fun both alone and with friends. We’re not sure if we’d actually use it daily, but we can see why many would. Also, on a social level, if it gets people to be more active in their daily lives then we’re all for it: just don’t take all the information it gives you literally.
Ultimately, it’s easy to see why neither love nor money will get you a copy at the moment.
By Mike Bowden
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May 29th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
“Be warned, though: our muscles are still aching from the various exercises. Wii Fit does feel like a proper work-out.”
Could it possibly be that you’re just ludicrously out of shape?
May 29th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Fitness? FUN? Ban this sick filth now!
May 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Does anyone else ever the feeling that people are buying these sort of games just because they’re told they’re in-vogue? It’s like how everyone has an iPod just because they’re the “must have” lifestyle accessory, and not because they’re the best mp3 player.
May 29th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Good review.
It’s a great system - though I have to say, I’m still a bit annoyed at how bloody inconsistent the thing is - and I don’t trust its weighing / BMI calculations one little bit (always always go and weigh yourself on a proper set of scales before buying into what Wii Fit says).
Good fun though. Makes me wonder whether they’ll do any DLC for it (some better balance games wouldn’t go amiss)
May 29th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I’m sure it’s good, but there’s no way I’m buying it. I just got for a run and lift a weight now and then. It’s 70 quid cheaper.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Actually, I bought it, and it’s rubbish - don’t know why everyone’s so keen on it. Wait - maybe it’s because it makes out like it’s excercise, but isn’t.
Which is why you can buy mine for the low low price of £36: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=290234204490&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=019
Honestly - I just don’t see the benefit to it. But you might…
May 29th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Lots of people appear to be losing weight with it, though. I see things on teh internets every day about bloggers marvelling that they’ve lost pounds. Does it really not work?
May 29th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
The day I buy tat like wii fit is the day I float down our beaver infested river on my bed while wearing a “beavers are gay” t-shirt.
these damned casual gamers needs to graduate to fun games.
christ.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I believe most people lose about 70 pounds.
/coat
May 29th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Seriously, after I did two-sets of the sit-ups and the press-up where you then cross your back foot over and life one arm up I was bolloxed. That was three days ago and I can still feel my stomach muscles ever so slightly.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Sadly morriss that just shows you don’t do regular exercise. Ignoring that for a sec… how does Wii Fit fit in when you’re doing things like that. Do you sit on it or something… or put your feet on it?
May 29th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
TJ your beds a mess!
I had a play on one the other day, can’t say I would use it every day.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
This is the problem. Of the four types of exercise, only two (athletic and muscle) come close to being exercise, the other two are yoga and balance games, don’t really count.
So what’s left?
Athletic is a bit of a joke - the whole point of cardio is to get your heart pounding, but that’s pretty tough if you don’t go anywhere and you haven’t got a treadmill. The on the spot jogging only lasts 8 mins or so, and is hardly as interesting or challenging as going for a run. The rest of them are a bit crappy - hula hooping isn’t really cardio in my book.
Which leaves muscle - most of which are more stretching exercises than actual muscle building stuff - again, what can you do without a set of weights?
Basically, press ups, sit ups, and permutations thereof. Personally, the thing I was looking forward to was the machine detecting how many press ups I could do in a minute - a real way to judge improvement and motivate. But it doesn’t detect it particularly well, isn’t particularly encouraging, and is small enough that press ups are really rather uncomfortable (in a dangerous way, not a ‘feel the burn’ way).
Honestly, how are people losing weight by jogging on the spot and stretching their thighs?
May 29th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Because if you are overweight then that little exercise will make a difference.
It never says it’s going to turn you into Hercules.
Oh and if you play the Super Hula Hoop game and really go for it (480+) on both rounds, believe me it’s cardio.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Weight can easily vary by up half a stone depending on the time of day you measure it. I’ve gained 10 pounds in a day and lost it by the next moring on occassion. The truth is diet is the most important factor with weight, but anyone using Wii Fit as a fitness tool wants it to work and they’re likely to accredit any change to it whether it’s justified or not. I think that it’s of minimal actual benefit, but somehow because of the marketing it’s working wonders as a motivational tool.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
morriss: Very true. Adding a little activity to a sedentary lifestyle can make a big difference.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Spiral: Believe me, I played it with my whole family, we each took turns for about 2 hours on lots of different events. We were all knackered in the end.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Spiral - I know weight fluctuates but 10 POUNDS IN ONE DAY?!?!?
Are you John Prescott?
May 29th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
water weight
May 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Hah, maybe. I usually only check my weight once a fortnight, but that reading was so off the curve I had to check it a few times. I’d somehow gone from 191lb to 200lb during a day, and then the next morning was back down to 190lb. Even checked it on two different sets of scales.
@Morriss: I don’t doubt it. I just think that there is more benefit in a more structured form of exercise in the same time period.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
i remember on an episode of the ultimate fighter some guy needed to lose a load of weight and he was there pigging out on food all “ahhh dont sweat it. ill wake up and will have lost about 10 pounds or so”.
and he did.
the only good thing about wii fit that i can think of is if it gets people to actually get out there and do REAL exercise. at least its not some stupid diet or pill or other bullshit method that will not work yet becomes popular because people expect magic in this day and age.
Its not hard; if you want to lose weight then get down the gym. Dont have time? enjoy being fat.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
So many parents buy it for their kids, and I can see why, tbh.