Quick Wii Fit review

This was my 26th day of using it.  On the whole I’m pleased because it’s helped me get about a half hour of exercise a day.  I had achieved some similar effects via DDR which gave a bit more intensity I think but was largely limited to aerobic exercise.

Since the Wii Fit is fairly well known, I’ll skip the description aside from saying that its largely based on a balance board and occasionally supplemented with use of the wiimote.

The yoga and strength training exercises feel rather good, although in some cases getting a perfect score is far too easy or score doesn’t even apply at all.  This is a bit of a problem as the score is the a key support to telling if your form is right.  You do still get the onscreen instructor, which is really the main guide, but aside from avoiding the hokiness of some exercise videos it isn’t a huge advantage.

The aerobic exercises are fairly fun with a hip gyrating hula hoop game, a backdrop for running, and a rhythm game.  Some of these are designed to work by giving you cues through the wiimote speaker, which means you can watch TV or in my case play Persona 4 while doing the exercises.  Finally, the balance games are fun, but while they do help your reflexes and posture I’m not sure how beneficial they are relative to the other three categories.

Problems:

• There needs to be an option to do sequences, ideally with recommendations from the game based on weakness or parts of the body you want to focus on.  This is particularly an issue because you can easily spend a quarter to a third of your play-time going between options.  They seem to be implementing some form of this in the sequel, so that’s a good sign.  One obvious fix for the current version would be allowing navigation directly from one related exercises to another in the workout sets suggested by the game.
• On a related note I twisted my knee ‘running’ a few days ago.  They should really incorporate stretches as a suggested option for the longer exercise if a person hasn’t done any yoga yet that day.
• There’s a fair amount of repetition in fitness advice, instructor sayings, and the like.  This is the biggest problem in terms of music.  There’s only really one rhythm game song per version of the game.  In addition, it be nice if you could copy over a workout soundtrack or something, other sorts of game manage this.
• There should be way more unlockables.  They seem to have largely petered out by day 26.  I’m not sure what exactly they should offer, but just unlocking them would be something to aim for in addition to getting higher scores.  These could be available through mods holding purchasable downloads .  The motivation benefit might well be enough to get me to buy them, assuming what was unlocked was interesting in the slightest.
• Finally, the 'personality’ of the balance board can be a bit passive aggressive and sometime the scale disagrees with other digital house scales.  Instructors aren’t bad though.

On the whole I’m pretty happy and hopeful about most of these being addressed by the sequel.