Nintendo Wii Fit

After 2 weeks of using Wii Fit I ended up gaining two pounds, but since muscle weighs more than fat I am not surprised. Now that I tested how effective they are lets look at the different exercises the game offers.

The games are broken up into four different categories, Yoga, strength training, aerobics and balance. The game lets you choose between a male or female trainer. It gives you a time bank which keeps track of how long you have been excising.

Let's start with Yoga, this section has the most exercises. Unfortunately when you start most of the exercises are locked. You get started with some strange exercises that girls like to do, so I thought it would be super easy but girl was I wrong. Yoga also has the most exercises that did not use the balance board, which I thought was real strange since the balance board is the main reason we have this game. I preferred to use Yoga as a warm up or warm down exercise.

Strength training is the hardest of all exercises and it should be. There are all the exercises you should doing in a normal workout. Instead of unlocking more exercises towards the end you unlock challenges against the personal trainer. These exercises also have so some that did not use the balance board but instead used the Wii remote. The game reads the remote accurately but will miss one of my moves once in a while. They even offer the choice to up your weight using a water bottle for your sets, but it is a little hard to hold.

Aerobic games are the ones I tended to do most often, they have four different kinds of games. Hula hoops may look simple but it may tire you out fast. Step aerobics which you have to step on the balance board in rhythm to the music an instructions the tv. Boxing is more like step aerobics, boxing and stepping according to the music. It is boring and takes too long. My favorite of the whole game is running. You put the remote in your pocket and you start running in place, it is just that simple. As you play more you can unlock longer tracks, a second player option and my favorite a free run.

Then there is the balance games, soccer heading, ski slalom, ski jump, table tilt, tight rope, balance bubble, penguin slide, snow boarding and zazen. I particularly like ski jumping and you can play over again. Unlike Zazen which is game you sit still for minutes at a time looking at a candle. No I am not kidding, that is the whole game.

There is a fifth option which is called favorites, which looks at which games you play the most and puts them one page so that you can access them easily. It would have been great if we could this screen to set up our own workouts and go to the next one on the list after you have completed exercises. That is my biggest complain about this game it forgets that you want to use as an exercise program and not just a game. When you finish an exercise it gives you two options, quit or retry.

Retry, I just finished that exercise why would I want to do it again? How about an option to move on to the next exercise. Because of this huge oversight your 30 minute workouts would not have taken twice as long you have to continuously quit, select new exercises, waiting for the board to recalibrate then you can do the exercise. It was just a big hassle. There are suggestions once in a while on which exercises you should do next but that should be available after every exercise. I had no idea what exercises I should be doing, so I ended up just picking them randomly and hoping I was getting a balanced workout.