Review of Walk it Out for Wii by Konami
Konami hits a home run with Walk It Out, a low-impact aerobic game which make walking in place a ton of fun.
Reviewer: Nutwiisystem
February 16, 2010
The first thing to know about Walk It Out
is that it’s not a “video game” in the traditional sense of the word. There are no puzzles to solve, no targets to shoot at, no time limits, and no levels to conquer.
What it is is a very rich and in-depth virtual environment where you walk around and explore, unlocking different parts of the world as you go. The virtual world is stunningly beautiful, with parks, beaches, ocean views, buildings, and trees. The time in the virtual world matches the real world time: during the day you can admire the vast blue skies with beautiful cloud formations; at night, you can walk under a starry sky.
In many ways, Konami was brilliant to focus just on walking as exercise. While this may not sound very exciting, keep in mind that studies have shown that sustained walking is one of the very best forms of exercise. 67 million Americans walk regularly for exercise, whether doing step exercises in a gym, walking on a treadmill, or just walking outdoors. With all the Wii fitness games out there, it’s a category of exercise that hasn’t really been done very well. All other games focus on things like boxing and running. Wii Fit Plus’s “Rhythm Parade” is good, but too short. Its “Step Aerobics” is also good, but just much too short.
Starting up the game is very simple. You first create a profile, choosing from a male or female character, and then customizing the color of his or her hair, skin, and clothes. I would have preferred to use my Mii character, but their anime-style character was good enough. Next, you input your birthdate, height, and weight. For the more bashful among us, you can also protect this information with a password. I was disappointed that Konami did not build in balance board support to measure my weight.
You then select the controller you want to use. You can choose one of three options: a Wii Balance Board, a Dance Dance Revolution Dance Pad, or a Wii Remote and Nunchuk.
- The Wii Balance Board is the most straightforward controller. You stand with one foot on the left, one foot on the right of the board, and you just march in place to the rhythm to make your character walk.
- For me, the best choice for a controller is the Dance Dance Revolution Dance Pad. Like the Wii Balance board, you march in place on the dance pad to make your character walk. What’s nice about the dance pad is that it provides more flexibility. You can position your feet on any one of the six buttons on the dance pad, and you can even “mix it up” by moving your feet around to one of six positions. Unlike Dance Dance Revolution, you don’t have to stand on specific arrows: you can march on any button on the dance pad.
- The Wii Remote and Nunchuk can be used if you want to give you arms a workout or if you don’t have a dance pad or balance board. Just wave your right hand and your left hand to the beat to make your character walk.
You start out the game in a stadium on a track, where a tutorial will teach you how to interact with the virtual world. A soundtrack with upbeat music will play throughout your game, and you basically need to step in time with the rhythm (by default, you’re stepping to every beat, but if it becomes too fast for you, you can configure it to step to every other beat). There’s a visual indication in the upper left-hand corner of the screen of each beat, and every time you step exactly to the beat, you’ll see a “great” or “perfect” message, and you’ll collect a “chip”. Like Dance Dance Revolution, you need to be precise in your steps to get credit, but unlike that game you don’t need to place your feet on a specific spot; as long as you step anywhere on the mat you’ll get credit. Every time you miss the beat (or stand still) you start losing chips.
This is where the fun starts. You goal is collect as many chips as possible, and to use those chips to unlock various things in the virtual world, each one costing anywhere from 10 to 400 “chips”. As you walk through the world, you’ll see icons with a point value. If you have enough points, clicking on the icon will replace the icon with the actual item. If you click on an icon before you’ve earned enough points, the icon will be moved to the top of the screen and will be unlocked as soon as you earn enough points.
Among the things you can unlock:
- 120 songs
- 69 route branches (arrows that open up new parts of the map for you)
- 3346 town elements (ranging from trees to fire hydrants to cars)
- 24 magical clocks (which allow you to change the time in the virtual world, regardless of what the time in the real world is)
- 12 zodiac signs (constellations which appear in the night sky)
- 7 rainbow spheres (which will make a rainbow appear in the day sky when all are collected)
As you step, your character will walk through the island. As you come to crossroads, you’ll see arrows that point you in different directions, which you can point and click (or use the Wii Remote arrow button) to take. Certain arrows need to be unlocked before you can take them.
As for the music, throughout the game you need to click on icons that look like CDs to unlock new songs. I find that I wanted to use all my first couple hundred points on unlocking enough music to avoid the music from repeating. There’s a great mix of licensed songs from artists like The Black Eyed Peas, Demi Levato, and Ne-Yo, as well as a number of the kind of generic-yet-peppy stock songs from Japanese composers you might have heard on Dance Dance Revolution. As each song is playing, you’ll see the name of the song and its tempo in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.
After unlocking all the music I could find, I spent the next couple hundred points on unlocking parts of the map. I then became obsessed with unlocking all the scenery. Some of the scenery adds beauty to the scene, while others are actually functional (for example, unlocking street lights will brighten up the scene when you’re walking at night). With thousands of items to unlock, that’s a lot of steps you have to take. But the thrill of “earning” your points and then spending them to create your own little world really does make the time go by quicker and more enjoyable than if you were just walking on a treadmill staring into space. Konami did a good job of taking elements from video games (collecting points, cashing them in, building your interactive world).
Throughout the experience, your virtual trainer will pop in to give you training tips (for example, if you overdo your exercise, she’ll tell you to slow down), give you instructions, and shout out encouragement.
So bottom line, is this a good title for exercise? My answer is an emphatic yes. It won’t give you the kind of high-impact, heart-pounding aerobics that a title like EA Sports Active or My Fitness Coach will give you, but it is a nice way to mix things up and add a pleasant, enjoyable component to your Wii fitness regimen. It’s the perfect way to work out for rainy days or days when there’s 20 inches of snow on the ground outside!
By the way, thanks to Karen and “L” for posting comments on the Best Wii Fitness Games page to tip me off to review this great game! 
How do you get out of the stadium? I just received mine and have walked over 700 steps and can't seem to get out of the stadium.
I've heard that you can't lift your feet all the way off the balance board without getting an error message, that you are only allowed to lift your heels. Is this true, or can you really walk in place like the marching game in Wii Fit plus?
I ordered this game last week from Amazon, I've been waiting for it to arrive in the mail, it looks like good fun to me. I've watched most of the videos of it on Youtube, a lot of joke comments but it seems like they took the DDR concept and make it kind of "freeplay" with a big virtual world. As a fan of free roaming in games and "exergaming" I don't think I'll be disappointed. The jogging in Wii Fit is already a favorite.
Anonymous, just start walking and by the exit you'll see an arrow. Move the joystick on the nunchuk or press the left or right button on the Wii remote, and you can direct where your character will walk.
Jay, I've found it helps to make somewhat exaggerated movements with my feet on the balance board, e.g., lift up your leg fully and when you put your foot down, deliberate put down the ball of your foot, followed by the heel, making sure to put pressure on. Obviously the DDR Dance Pad is much more responsive.
Arianna, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! It is kind of a silly concept if one considers it as a "video game", but as a workout routine I absolutely love it!
I have had the Walk it Out for about two weeks now and am hooked! I do it about an hour every night. When you get to walking you get all caught up in what you can unlock. I am all about unlocking the big items first (hotel, apartment building, cars) as well as all the routes and I will go back and “clean” up my trees, streelights, etc. afterwards. I am fairly new to the game and cannot seem to grasp how to unlock new songs? There seems to be no pattern that I can find. I click on songs and the icon goes away but it is the same songs from last time. I have unlocked about 4 additional songs but not really sure how I did it? The rainbow is fairly simple to unlock but have not figured out the significance of the zodiac signs? I have “stepped” through them but nothing seems to happen? I am still a fan though. I like it because at the end it summarizes your steps, your calories burned, how far you walked and then what events you unlocked. You can even customize your walker to somewhat resemble yourself! You may not get a heart pumping workout but my legs are sure telling me about it every morning!
Hi Tracey,
It took me a while to figure out, but it’s actually quite simple. With songs (the green CD icons), constellations (the blue star icon) and the “magic clock” (the brown clock icon), each icon represents one “piece” of the item you’re collecting. You need to collect all the “pieces” in order to earn that item.
For example, clicking on a CD icon doesn’t get you the song right away–there are at least 2-3 other “parts” of that song scattered around the island. If you see an icon that says “100-A”, it means it’s the first part of song 100, but you also have to collect “B”, “C”, and “D” in order to get the song. When you get the last piece, you’ll hear a little jingle, and Nancy will congratulate you. It’s the same with the zodiac signs and the clock icons.
The zodiac signs are to collect constellations which you can see in the starry sky when you’re walking at night.
The “magic clocks” will let you change the in-game time. By default, the time in the game reflects the time in the real world, but if you unlock these “clocks”, you can change the time to anything you want. If you can only work out at night, for example, this will allow you to change from 9 PM to 9 AM to give you a little variety in your workout.
As for keeping track of what you’ve earned (songs, constellations, and clocks), you can see that in your menu (click on the lower right icon). In fact, if you’re missing a piece, you can use the map which will show you where all the icons in your world are.
Definitely agree with you that it’s an addictive game, which means it’s an effective workout game
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Keep it up!
so ive been steady collecting the zodiac signs, but nothing seems to change. do we know what they are for yet?
Yes, as with the songs, zodiac signs are broken into “parts”, so you need to collect all the “parts” for a given sign in order to “activate” the zodiac. The parts are all scattered throughout the island, so it might take a lot of time to collect all the parts for a single sign (for me, I’ve been walking for months and I still don’t have a completed one yet, mainly because I’m focusing on songs and scenery).
Once a zodiac sign is activated, you’ll get a congratulations message and it’ll appear in the night sky when you walk at night. Just look up
oh thats awesome. thanks a lot for responding. I suppose they’ll have to wait, because I am also mainly focused on the songs and the clocks too. thanks for your help.
how do i change time ?
cuse if iam in the 6 a.m it look like 6 p.m
Hi lamia,
By default, the time reflects your Wii system time. The first thing you should do is check that your Wii time is right. You can see how here: http://bit.ly/dxcBMo Just remember that the Wii uses a 24-hour clock, so 6:00 PM = 18:00
In addition, in the game you can collect “magic clock” icons around the island. For example, if you collect all the parts of “2:00 PM” (just as you collect parts of music or zodiac icons), you will be able to go to the Walk It Out menus and change the time to 2 PM.
Hope it helps. Enjoy!
I got it three days ago and I have walked about six hours so far. It’s addicting…I just keep going and going. And I DO lift my feet all the way off the Wii balance board. Just no jumping or stomping on it. But I certainly walk just like I do in the Wii Fit Plus cycling, running or marching games.
Thanks for the tip about the songs though. I’m going to have to make one night just for the songs because I keep collecting the CDs and I still have the same 15 songs playing. Its getting monotonous. The other stuff I’ll get in time, but I WANT MORE MUSIC! I saw a post somewhere about a song list so I know what I need to get, but I can’t seem to find that post.
Colleen
I’ve had it for a little over a month and was hooked in the first week. Its so addicting even if your just challenging beating your previous steps and miles. I will do 30,000 steps at one time just cause I don’t want to stop.
I’ve almost gotten everything with big points done. I will only have trees to do to finish the game. What I can’t find is one clock? I’ve looked at all my clock times to see it on the map but I just can’t find it. Anybody have this problem?
I wonder if they will come out with different towns that would be cool.
Watch out its very addicting.
Donna
To find the clock icon, try going to your options screen and selecting the Map. You’ll see all the remaining icons and where they are on the island. Sometimes the icon will hide in a place you can only see it by looking up or around the area.
Those are great suggestions about a sequel to Walk It Out–I hope someone from Konami is reading!
Congratulations on almost finishing the island!