Review of Walk it Out for Wii by Konami

5 out of 5 stars

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! :)

Review of Just Dance for Wii

5 out of 5 stars

Ubisoft hits a home run with a game that's fun and gets you fit.

Reviewer: Nutwiisystem
January 13, 2010

Ubisoft’s My Fitness Coach was one of the first fitness games released for the Wii. While it was not much more than a glorified exercise video, at the time it was revolutionary. You could choose from a huge variety of exercises, and had nice options for choosing things like your workout environment, music. Ubisoft followed up with the very good Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout.

The exercise game from Ubisoft I had most been anticipating this year was Your Shape. As you can see from the review of Your Shape on the blog, I was less than impressed. Apparently, Ubisoft felt that in order to compete with EA and its Resistance Bands and Nunchuk Leg Strap and Nintendo with its Balance Board and MotionPlus, it had to introduce its own peripheral. So, it valiantly tried to introduce a Webcam which did a horrible job of tracking movement.

Ironically, the best exercise game of the year so far is by Ubisoft, but the only controller it uses is one, count 'em, one Wii remote. And it’s not an exercise game at all. It’s called Just Dance, and it’s a winner. I placed an order for the game after Dianska mentioned it in the comments section of the best Wii Fitness Games page, and I’ve been particularly looking forward to it after reading positive comments from Partingsorrow and Mindy.

I admit, I wasn't expecting much when I first heard about Just Dance a few months ago. I figured it'd be just like another one of those games like Dancing with the Stars and High School Musical where you see characters on screen dancing, but all you're doing is waving your remote to match the visual cues on the screen. Ho Hum.

The first thing that struck me when I popped the game into the Wii was that these were fun songs from every era. They're all family-friendly, and there's something in the track list for everyone, from baby boomers to Gen X'ers to Gen Y'ers. Here's the entire track list. Most of the songs are not covers, but original tracks from the original singers.

• Girl Just Want to Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper
• Ring My Bell - Anita Ward
• A Little Less Conversation (JXL Radio Edit Remix) - Elvis vs. JXL
• Cotton Eye Joe - Rednex
• Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
• Heart of Glass - Blondie
• Womanizer - The Gym All-Stars
• Groove Is in the Heart - Deee-Lite
• Jerk It Out - Caesars
• I Live to Move It (Radio Mix) - Reel 2 Real feat. The Mad Stuntman
• Not N Cold (Chick Version) - Katy Perry
• Mashed Potato Time - Dee Dee Sharp
• Girls and Boys - Blur
• Fame - In the style of Irene Cara
• Lump - The Presidents of the United States of America
• Kids in America - Kim Wilde
• Pump Up the Jam - Technotronic
• I Get Around - The Beach Boys
• Le Freak - Chic
• That's the Way (I Like It) - KC and the Sunshine Band
• Louie Louie - Iggy Pop
• Funplex (CSS Remix) - The B-52s
• Jin Go Lo Ba - Fatboy Slim
• DARE - Gorillaz
• Bebe - Divine Brown
• Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
• Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue
• Acceptable in the 80s - Calvin Harris
• Who Let the Dogs Out - Baha Men
• Wanna Be - Spice Girls
• Step By Step - New Kids on the Block
• U Can't Touch This - MC Hammer

The second thing that impressed me was that this game features actual dance moves to the songs. In other words, not only are you playing the game, you're learning actual dance steps. You'll learn the "Mashed Potato" that was all the rage in the 1960's to Dee Dee Sharp's "Mashed Potato Time". You'll learn the bestd disco moves of the 70's with songs like "That's the Way I Like It". And my personal dream come true--you can make your own "Hammer Time" with "U Can't Touch This" (parachute pants not included). You can't do Dance Dance Revolution steps at a wedding (ahem, not that I've tried), but you can bust these moves.

Admittedly, the one thing I was skeptical about when I first saw the game was that it only used one Wii remote. That’s it. No nunchuk, no double Wii remotes, no MotionPlus, no balance board, no camera. They went for a decidedly simpler approach. For using one Wii remote, the controls are pretty accurate as far as detecting whether you're dancing correctly or not. For each move, you'll be given a grade of "Great", "Okay" and "X".

Now, I won't lie and say the controls are the most precise in the world. There'll be plenty of times you'll be doing the moves precisely, but the Wii will tell you you're not. But where this game triumphs is that even though the controls may be off, the game is so fun that you really don't care. You're not really "scolded" for getting an "X". This is a refreshing change from other games like Your Shape or Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatim, where I swear I want to put my fist through the TV each time Jenny McCarthy or Jillian Michaels yells at me when they should be yelling at the people who programmed them.

And you also find that the more you practice the moves and "feel the music", the better your scores become. You may never get to 100%, but you learn to take 60% to 70% "Great" or "Okay" as a major accomplishment. Here are some hints to improve your changes:

1. It helped me to remove the Wii MotionPlus from the Wii remote so it fit in my hand.
2. The best position for the sensor bar was at waist level so it could detect a full range of movement up and down.
3. It helped me to try to make sure the front of the Wii remote was facing me (i.e., the back was to the sensor bar) through the whole game. 
4. Before you start playing the game, move your Wii remote around to see where the boundaries of the cursor go. Try to keep your movement within these boundaries.  
   
5. Timing is everything. Practice until you learn the moves, and then be very precise when making them. Your right hand should be exactly where the character's left hand is; if its hand is high above its head, make sure yours is too; if it's at its hip, make sure yours is too, and so on. And it's just as important to keep still in the parts you're supposed to keep still as it is to move in the parts where you're supposed to be moving. If you've gotten to the point where you've memorized the dance and are just doing the moves to the music, your score will be great.

The game is simple. You choose a song, and then after a countdown from 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, you'll see a silhouetted character on your screen doing the dance moves. The character is generally dressed appropriately for the song: a disco dude will lead you through "That's the Way I Like It", a cowgirl will do a two-step to "Cotton Eye Joe", and a dog (yes, a dog) will dance to "Who Let the Dogs Out". You basically just have to do the mirror image of the character's moves.

They also have multiplayer games. In the first game (Challenge), you can basically have a dance-off between you and up to three other friends to see who'll get the high score. Again, you don't mind in this case if the controls are not completely precise because you're all on the same playing field. In the second game (Strike a Pose), it's like a game of Red Light / Green Light where you have to freeze in your tracks when the music stops. The third game (Last one standing) is an elimination game where the person who makes the least mistakes wins the game.

Oh yes, the exercise value. With virtually every song, I ended it panting because I was out of breath. Now granted, because it only uses the Wii remote, you could probably "cheat" by flicking your wrists at the right points. But why would you want to? It's a blast to learn the real dance moves, it's hugely entertaining when moving your whole body the way it's supposed to be done.

To sum up, Just Dance is an instant classic “exercise game that’s not called an exercise game”. And even though I was constantly out of breath, I invariably still wanted to try it again and again until I got it right. To me, that's the sign of a great exercise game.

Review of We Cheer 2 for Wii

4.5 out of 5 stars

Outstanding update to one of the first and all-time best Wii rhythm games.

Reviewer: Nutwiisystem
December 18, 2009

If you've been to a professional basketball or football game lately, you'll see that cheerleading has come a long way. Gone are the days of "pom pom girls" and guys clappping and yelling into bullhorns. Today's cheerleaders can be just as much athletes as the teams they're cheering for. They have to memorize playbooks, they have to undergo constant and rigorous training, they sustain injuries, and their competitions can be intense grueling. But of course the difference is, they try to do it all with a pretty face and a smile.

That's a good way to describe We Cheer 2 by Namco-Bandai. The primary audience for the game is quite obviously girls from ages 7-15, but it can certainly be enjoyed by people of all ages. The We Cheer world is a bright, colorful world with wide-eyed cartoon cheerleaders with big eyes and bubbly giggles. The music is licensed and recognizable music from such teen pop stars as Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Avril Lavigne. Even Fergie's "Glamorous" is the "Clean Version". You definitely won't find suggestive moves or skimpy outfits, it's all very family-friendly. Grown-ups probably won't have as much fun as the youngsters outfitting their characters with pom-poms, outfits, and every hair color of the rainbow, but kids will love it.

Unlike the last version, you also have option to play as a male character, although after playing a few minutes as a male character, I had to stop. I'm not sure why the artists opted to make the male characters awkward and effeminate as opposed to the more athletic guys you see at real college basketball games, but let's just say after a few minutes even I wanted to beat my character up in the hallway.

As far as the game play goes, I was very impressed. The best way I can sum it up is the same way I summed up the Wiiware game Helix--it's a lot like Dance Dance Revolution for your arms and hands. You hold the Wii remotes in your hands like pom poms, your on-screen character will dance in a cheerleading routine, and your job is to mimic her moves as closely as possible, with on-screen arrows and animated "timing star" showing you the precise moves you need to make and the speed you make them in. If you're feeling adventrous, you can even turn off the visual indicators and simply follow along with actual movements of the characters on the screen.

If you follow her moves precisely, the screen says "Cool!" and you hear a jingling sound. If you miss, the screen will say things like "too fast" or "too slow" or even "needs more energy". The routines you follow are actual, choreographed routines, so this game is truly as close to a real cheerleading simulation as you're going to get. Granted, you're only scored based on your arm movements, but if you want a full workout experience, you can also follow along with all of the dance moves the on-screen character is doing.

Unlike other rhythm motion games, which involve only moving your hands up and down and from side to side, We Cheer 2 takes it to a whole other level. literally simulating an actual cheerleading routine. You'll clap your hands, dance from side to side, tilt and twist your body, shake your virtual pom-poms, and twirl and wave your hands. The choreography is actually pretty impressive; after playing the game over and over again (especially on expert mode), you can literally dance a full cheerleading routine that rivals the kinds you see at high schools and colleges.

The original We Cheer, like Dance Dance Revolution, was touted just as good for exercise as it was for fun. With We Cheer two, they once again put an "exercise mode" under the "Training" menu. In it, your on-screen character will take you through a Jane Fonda-like aerobic workout, selecting exercise routines with names like "Cheer your Muscles" or "The Calorie Burn". Each routine has a little story; in one case, a tubby guy approaches you because he gained a lot of weight from eating hot dogs while watching soccer games; in another case, a chubby brown bear (yes a bear) laments that he's got a crush on a panda who won't give him the time of day because he's too fat (okay, whoever wrote the dialogue is not going to win a Pulitzer). As a nice touch, the characters will have different sob stories each time you play.

The exercise routine will start, with your character shouting out moves that you have to mimic (high kick! grapevine!). As you successfully mimic each move, the guy will "poof" in a cloud of smoke, revealing himself to be thnner and thinner. At the end, he'll thank you for helping him get in shape, and you'll see a report of your total workout time, "calorie points", and workout success. The workout you get here rivals anything you'll find in a "pure exercise" game, but is much more fun.

As far as room for improvement, I would have liked to see longer exercise routines (you have the choice between a 2 minute quick workout and an extended 4 minute workout). I also would have liked to see a lot more routines (you get four to start, but you can unlock others).

If there's one wrinkle in this game, it's the response of the controller. I should say that the controls are much more responsive and accurate than most other similar games before it, from Samba Di Amigo to High School Musical to Dancing With the Stars. With Wii Cheer 2, just as the authors of Helix did, Namco-Bandai made the very, very smart choice of eschewing the use of the nunchuk and instead using two Wii remote controllers to control the hand movements. This greatly increased the responsiveness of the controllers, although admittedly there was still room for improvement. The controls were spot-on when I was playing on beginning mode or intermediate mode. But when I moved to expert, it was admittedly a bit aggravating when I knew I was making the right moves, but the system just refused to recognize them. I suppose this is because in expert mode, the movements need to be so fast and precise, perhaps more than the Wii can handle.

If you're having problems getting the controllers to respond, here are some things I did to improve it:

• The Wii system and the We Cheer 2 game have options to adjust the controller sensitivity and to calibrate the controllers respectively. Play around with these.
  
  
• Make sure your movements are exagerrated. If it tells you to raise your hands, raise them emphatically all the way you can. When it tells you to move your hands in a circle, make a full circle. Like a real cheerleader, be very deliberate in your movements, and make sure you follow the animated star precisely.
  
  
• Practice, practice, practice. You'll have your best success when you've memorized the routines and do them precisely in real-time with the on-screen characters, as opposed to trying to match the on-screen cues. In the video you see above, I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me hours to clear the Expert mode for Miley Cyrus' "Girl's Night Out". But what helped was that as I tried over and over again, I started to memorize the routine, and once I did that, it just became a matter of trial and error to find out which motions worked for which moves. For example, in the part of the song where the cheerleaders are "high fiving" each other, I eventually found that you need to move your arms and wrists in an arc, and to "snap" your wrists at just the right moment.
  
  
• In desperation, at one point I ended up removing the plastic cover from my Wii remote, and unplugging the MotionPlus controllers.
  
  
• The biggest thing that ended up helping me was to move the sensor bar under the TV, rather than over it.

Here are some other things I liked about the game:

• There are great options for multi-player play. You can play alone, you can have two players each holding two Wii remotes, or you can have four players each holding on Wii remote. It's great fun to play with friends or as a family.
  
  
• The soundtrack contains a lot of recognizable, licensed songs which will excite any teen or tween girl in the house (and the rest of us who won't admit we occasionally tap our feet to them), including artists like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Lady GaGa, Rihanna, and more.

To sum up, We Cheer 2 is a worthy successor to the original We Cheer, a lot of fun, and  great exercise to boot. While most Wii exercise games focus on lower body, but We Cheer provides a great low-impact upper body workout. Sometimes the best fitness titles are ones that aren't fitness titles at all, because you end up playing the game over and over again to try to beat the game, without realizing you're working out. The only gripes I have with this game is that I wish they had much more extensive "Workout mode" options, and I wish the controllers were a bit more precise for expert mode (it might have helped, for example, if they included MotionPlus support).

Still, at the end of the day I was impressed. It's a game which can provide lots of fun, a good challenge, great fun as a group, and at beginning and intermediate levels at least, the motion controls are spot-on. Highly recommended especially for girls in their teens and tweens, as well as adults who want a new and incredibly fun way to work out (and have a very good set of window shades :))

(Note: this review is based on a review copy of the game provided by the publisher)

Review of Dance Dance Revolution 3 for Wii

5 out of 5 stars

Still the best way to "Work out without realizing you're working out"

Reviewer: Nutwiisystem December 5, 2009

Dance Dance Revolution 3 for Wii, of course, is first a game and second an exercise title. But ironically, this is the thing that may make it more effective than any "pure" exercise title.

It continues to have the "fun" features which makes DDR so fun to play alone or with friends and family. The dance mat controller was the first and is still the best controller for accurate tracking of movements.

There are different modes to suit everyone from beginners to seasoned pros whose feet move faster than a hummingbird's wings."DDR School" provides an excellent tutorial for those getting started. "Tournament Mode" lets you compete in a "DDR Tournament" with different challenges (you can play yourself or with 3 others, but there's no online support). "Training Mode" will take you step-by-step through any song you choose so you can practice particularly complex moves. "Relaxed Mode" is for those who just want to play without any pressure.

On a positive note, I appreciate the fresher track list with more recognizable music, and I like the fact that they use more actual videos from the actual stars. I also liked that owners of Dance Dance Revolution 2 could unlock costumes and songs with their saved data. I was a little disappointed that the songs and videos are abridged versions and that the soundtrack list was somewhat limited.

But enough about the game itself. The rest of this review will focus on how useful it is for exercise and fitness (i.e. "Workout Mode"). And in this area, it is a solid winner.

Konami invented exercise games before anyone knew what an exercise game was. Long before Wii Fit or Wii Sports, there was Dance Dance Revolution. Kids in malls and homes everywhere were doing 30 minutes of rigorous and sustained aerobic exercise without even realizing it, while their parents with their Jane Fonda videos hardly broke a sweat.

A lot of us had been using DDR for working out, but this version of DDR fully integrates exercise as a game feature, putting it right on par with other "exergames" like Wii Fit Plus and EA Sports Active.

When you start Workout mode, it'll use the balance board to calculate your weight before you start working out. One nice touch is that after it takes your weight it doesn't show it right away. Pressing the "A" button will toggle between the asterisks and your weight. A nice feature if you have others in the room.

You'll be able to set a goal for your workout sessions. You can set a goal by play time (e.g. 30 minutes), or you can set it by the number of KCALS burned.

As far as the types of workouts, you basically have three options:

Standard: This is "classic DDR", where you move your feet to the music, and in my book it's still the best way to work out. Every song has four difficulty levels (beginning, basic, difficult and expert). I find that the "difficult" setting provides me enough of a challenge while getting my heart pumping and my body sweating.



Hypermove Mode: This is basically the same as Standard move, but also using the Wii remote and Nunchuks to move your arms. Here, I was not thrilled with the way the remote and Nunchuk are implemented. You need to wave your arms to the side making a rainbow-shaped arc, and to wave your arms to the front as if you're casting a fishing pole. Even when you make exagerrated movements, the controls do not always register. I would have preferred Konami to do like Helix or We Cheer 2, and allow the use of two Wii remotes instead of the less responsive nunchuk. I also would have preferred more punching movements than arm movements



Balance Board Mode: Balance board mode is a new feature on DDR 3. In it, you stand on the balance board and bump your hips to the front, back, and sides; make punching movements with the Wii remote and nunchuk; and roll your hips like you're hula hooping. For the most part the movements are accurate, but sometimes you need to exagerrate your hip movements to get them to register. Each song has two difficulty levels (basic and difficult), but even at its most difficult it's not nearly as strenuous as using the dance mat controller. Still, it is fun, it does get your heart beat up, and it's a good diverstion to provide some variety to your workouts if you get tied of Standard and Hypermove modes from time to time.



Some other nice features:

- One nice thing about Workout mode in general is that if you mess up, it lets you keep going. (You'll just have to put up with the announcer saying "dancer needs groove badly").

- For the Standard and Hypermove modes, you can select a menu option called "Cut", which will limit any beats other than quarter notes. This will essentially make your workout feel like a step class. In Hypermove mode there's also a menu option called "jump" which can turn off simultaneous step arrows (good if you have neighbors downstairs).

- For Standard and Hypermove modes, up to 4 players can work out together. There are a number of interesting multiplayer options. You can compete against each other for accuracy, or you can use "Friendship style" or "Sync Style" where points are awarded as a group.

- The "Diary" provides a great running history of the total calories you've burned, the average calories you burn per session, and the songs you've played.

Konami has continued to hold the bar high with every new release of Dance Dance Revolution. I'm glad to see they're introducing new innovations and are fully embracing the "exergaming" craze. At the end of the day, the best way to exercise is to do activities that are so fun you forget you're exercising.

Review of Your Shape for Wii

3 out of 5 stars

A valiant attempt to create a new kind of Wii fitness game which unfortunately falls flat due to technological flaws.

Reviewer: Nutwiisystem November 29, 2009

Like others, I really, really wanted this one to work. Your Shape is an exercise game that, done properly, could have revolutionized the whole genre. At the end of the day though, Ubisoft bit off a little more than it could chew technologically. The result is a game which is nothing short of amazing those times you can get it to work properly (about 35% of the time), and just plain infuriating when you can’t (the other 65%).

Of course, what sets this title apart from the others is the inclusion of an “Innovating Motion Tracking Camera” to detect your movements. In actuality, this is just an ordinary USB Webcam. (Not exactly a technological revolution, but on the flip side if you don’t have a Webcam for your PC, you can use this one as a “free” one—I plugged it into my Windows XP laptop and it recognized it immediately).

Setup is a snap. You plug the camera into a USB port on the back of your Wii. When you put in the game CD for the first time, you’re prompted to perform a system update (presumably to install the driver for the camera).When you start the game the first thing you see is Jenny McCarthy giving a long laundry list of advice for how to set up your camera. Following these instructions will give you the best chance of success with this game but for reasons I’ll mention below, it may not be enough.

The video version of Jenny is then replaced with a slightly creepy animated version (with way too much computerized eye shadow on). An annoyingly frenetic, peppy cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” plays over and over and over again in the background, perhaps the game makers’ way of getting you to make your selections quickly.

Setting up your profile:

You start by setting up your profile. This works about the same as other games in the genre: you type your name, create an optional password, choose your units of measurement (not sure if people understand what “imperial” is, but it’s “not metric”), enter your gender and year of birth, and enter your height and weight. You still have to enter your weight by hand—in this day and age it’s inexcusable for them not to have added some balance board support.

Once you’ve entered all this, the game will turn on your camera and you’ll see yourself on the TV screen. From here, the system will “scan” your body and show an outline of your body. At first I thought this was amazing, but then I realized that the outline of my body was only just based on the height and weight I entered. In other words, the “body scan” is really nothing more than a gimmick. Its sole purpose is probably just to make sure your camera is in the right position.

You select a part of your body you want to work out: shoulders, arms, back, chest, glutes, or legs. For each of these, you can choose whether you want to burn, tone, and/or build strength. Ostensibly, your workout routine will be customized based on what you enter.

The Fitness Evaluation

The next step is taking you through an “evaluation”. Jenny will first ask you your current cardio level (sedentary, moderate, or active), as you how you're feeling, and then send you through some typical exercises of the type you’d do in your daily workouts. And this is exactly where you start to see both the best parts and the worst parts of this game.

The first exercise is a warm up march. I loved how the on-screen animated Jenny is juxtaposed to your video image, so the two of you will literally make the same movements at the same time. Every exercise has an optional tutorial where you can learn how to do it; or, you can just mimic Jenny’s movements.

The first time I did it, it did a fairly amazing job at detecting whether I was moving my legs and my arms. And it wasn’t just looking for random movement on the screen—if I stopped moving my arms but not my legs, the screen would flash “Arms!”, and Jenny would also tell me to start moving my arms. “Okay”, I thought. “This is going to be cool”.

The next exercise was jumping jacks. This was a disaster. Not once did the system properly detect my arm movements. For hours I tried everything possible to get this working. I tried changing into different colored outfits, exaggerating my movements, changing the timing of my movements, standing toward the front and toward the back, and even changing the lighting in my room. Each time, Jenny would yell out “Uhp! Please check out your arms!” and the on-screen report of how well I was doing the exercise would always plummet. My percentage of correct exercises was always in the 30 percent range, even though I knew I was doing all the exercises properly.

The next few exercises were lateral raises, squats, plies with shoulder presses (basically an exercise where you move your arms and legs like a frog and move up and down), and cool-down stretching exercises. They were hit or miss as far as my movements being detected. Whenever it worked, it was amazing. But unfortunately, for every one time it detected my movements, it would fail several times.

At the end of your “evaluation” Jenny will then give you a letter grade, but chances are you won’t be happy, as your grade will be artificially low because the game couldn’t pick up your moves. Based on all the information you provided and your “fitness evaluation”, she’ll recommend a fitness calendar with preprogrammed workouts for the week. You can customize the days and the amount of time you want to spend exercising.

Daily Exercise

From there, you just start up the Wii every day you’re scheduled to exercise and click “Workout” to go to your prescribed workout session.

As other reviewers have said, from a pure exercise point of view, this title is really no different from Ubisoft’s previous title My Fitness Coach. The exercises are “old school” calisthenics moves with names like “double heel jacks” (jumping up and down while kicking your heels) to “turn steps” (walking to the left and right while turning and swinging your arms) to “grapevines” (walking to the left and right while swinging your arms and clapping). The package touts that it has “over 400 exercises”, but the truth is there are just 400 variations of jumping, swinging your arms, moving your feet, and stretching. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—it’s a very complete set of workout routines.

On other positive notes, it really helps that you can see your own video image next to the animated Jenny, to see precisely how she does the exercise. And I do like the attention to detail, for example in how the on-screen Jenny will know “the weather’s getting cold outside” or that "mornings are a great time to work out", as well as how customized it feels (for example, how she’ll put together just the right exercise regimen to satisfy your goals).

The Achilles Heel of this title, of course, is how inconsistently the camera tracks movements. Poor controller response is the cardinal sin of Wii games. It seems that Ubisoft came up with a great idea and put in a valiant attempt to make it happen, but the technology simply isn’t there yet. I suppose the first warning sign was that they signed up Jenny McCarthy to be the star of the game. From Jillian Michaels to Daisy Fuentes, it seems to be the kiss of death for a Wii game when a celebrity is asked to headline a video game. Who knows what this title could have been had they spent the money they’re paying the celebrity for development and testing. I’m not a software engineer, but I wonder if there was anything at all they could have done to improve things, from providing reflective arms straps or leg straps which could be better detected by the camera, to doing more meaningful calibration than they do today, to supplementing the video information alone with Balance Board, Nunchuk, or Wii remote information.

From what I can tell, doing certain things gave you the best chance for success, but they were far from foolproof:

• Stand in the middle of the screen. Make sure your on-screen image is about the same size as the animated Jenny’s image (stand 8-10 feet away).
  
  
• Make sure the background is plain, and that your clothes contrast against the background (e.g., wear all black if you’re exercising against a white wall and wear very bright clothes if you’re against a darker wall). Clear away everything from the camera’s view.
  
  
• Time your exercises to precisely match the animated Jenny’s on-screen movements. Your own video image will lag, so you need to match her movements. The music is completely useless (it’s just background music with a beat independent of the exercise).
  
  
• Make sure the lighting is such that your images isn’t too bright (e.g. next to a sunny window) or too dim (have a lot of ambient lighting)
  
  
• Make sure there’s nothing else in the image that’s moving.

To sum up? Ubisoft came up with a great idea here, but they just couldn’t get it working. You’ll get essentially the same exercises with the $19 My Fitness Coach, so you need to ask yourself if it’s worth an extra $50 for little more than a generic Webcam and a sometimes-brilliant, sometimes-frustrating experience.

To sum up? A great idea, and if everything worked, I’d be touting it as the new king of the hill. But at the end of the day the poor responsiveness makes it too frustrating to deal with. Exercise-wise, there’s nothing here you can’t get in the $19 My Fitness Coach. So the question you need to ask yourself is, is it worth an extra $50 for a low-end Webcam and the thrill of seeing your own image on-screen, knowing that the motion-detecting technology is frustrating and probably years away from being perfected.

Review of EA Sports Active More Workouts for Wii

5 out of 5 stars

An improved six-week exercise regimen, an impressive number of new exercises that use the leg strap and resistance band in new ways, and some new and very fun fitness activities catapults EA Sports Active back to the top of our Best Wii Exercise games list.

Reviewer: Nutwiisystem
November 13, 2009

EA Sports Active: More Workouts is the much-anticipated sequel to EA Sports Active. Unlike what Nintendo did with Wii Fit Plus, EA Sports did not port the exercises and fitness activities from the old game to the new, but actually give you 30 brand new exercises and 6 new fitness activities that weren’t in the original.

While it’s designed for people who already own EA Sports Active (it doesn’t come included with a resistance band or a leg strap for the nunchuk), you actually don’t have to have the original game to play it. in other words, if you choose to purchase a resistance band and leg strap separately (you would need to get the EA Sports Active Multiplayer Pack), you can play the game on its own.

When you start the disc up for the first time, if the system detects that you have a profile from the original EA Sports Active, it’ll let you import it in just a few clicks. Something else that’s new in EA Sports Active: More Workouts is the use of trophies to motivate you. You even get a trophy for successfully importing your profile :)

One improvement is that you can now use the Wii Balance Board to check your weight. In this sense, they’ve caught up to games like Wii Fit and The Biggest Loser. Speaking of the Balance Board, it’s still optional for use in the actual exercises—you can certainly do most of the exercises without one. That said, if you do have one, they did an excellent job of incorporating it into the exercises, and it definitely enhances the experience.
You start out by recreating your profile. Once again, you can customize your on-screen character. You’re still limited to only a handful of body types, skin colors, and hair styles, but for some reason you now have 25 caps to choose from and 24 pairs of shoes.

Once again, you can choose a male or a female trainer, still the same somewhat creepy animated figures who shout out encouragement to you.

Once you get to the main menu it looks about the same with the same catchy music. The biggest difference is that instead of a 30-day challenge, you now have the option to take a 6 week challenge.

The new 6 week challenge is a vast improvement over the 30-day challenge of the original, more in lines of the type of training program you’d sign up for in a gym. For those who found the workouts in the original too easy, you’ll be pleased to know that you still have the option to choose intensity levels of easy, medium, or hard, and hard really is hard. The workouts are expertly designed to focus on different muscle groups more intensively throughout the workout, an improvement over the original where you’d work on one set of muscles and then alternate to another. One other major improvement is the ability to choose the days of the week to work out, rather than being forced into every other day. For me, I chose Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, mainly because I’m too busy during the week to take more than two weekdays.

Setting up a 6-week workout.

Another improvement is the Journal. This is where you can keep a virtual diary of your diet and exercise. When you click on the journal, you’ll be able to take daily surveys which ask you questions such as “how many glasses of water did you consume yesterday” and “how many restaurant/fast food meals did you eat”. Like a personal trainer, the Wii will give you advice based on your answers. There’s also a place in the journal where you can enter other physical activity you did outside of EA Sports Active More Workouts, letting you choose from a wide range of activities from walking and running to dancing and yoga. By selecting “Other”, you can record workouts you did in other Wii games.

The reporting tools are also pretty impressive. You can look up a weekly fitness tracker that shows calories burned, a chart of your weight, and the number of workouts, total exercise time, and number of miles covered in your EA Sports Active workout.

EA Sports Active More Workouts has a huge array of new exercises. Something I found impressive is that while they didn’t reproduce the exercises from the original, they came up with 30 completely new exercises that work out every part of your body, from lower body to upper body. One other nice addition is a warm-up and cool-down period, instead of rushing straight into the more intense exercises. Something else that impressed me was that they thought of new and creative ways to use the resistance band. For example, to do one-arm rows, you’re instructed to fold the band in half and step on the band in a way that you really do get great resistance on your biceps.

Other new exercises using the Leg Strap and the Resistance Band

The highlight of the title has to be the new fitness activities. As with its predecessor, EA Sports Active More Workouts has some great fitness activities: water skiing, paddle surfing, cardio boxing, step aerobics, squash, and an obstacle course.

One of my favorite new fitness activities: Obstacle Course

As with the fitness activities of the original, the fitness activities are so much accurate simulations of the sports activities as they are clever ways to get you to mimic exercise movements (like squatting and lunges) in repetition without realizing you are. It’s tedious to go through dozens of reps of squats and arm movements; on the other hand, it’s a blast to be doing it playing a fast-paced game of virtual squash.

Squash, a clever way for you to do lunges and arm motions

The controls are spot-on. Unlike games like The Biggest Loser and Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010, which passively “check” to see if you’re making the right movements once you’ve made them (and often give you false positives and false negatives—if I hear Jillian Michaels one more time yelling at me unjustly I’m going to scream). EA Sports Active More Workouts actually responds to your exact movements as they’re making them. And if you mess up, it doesn’t yell at you.

The game, of course, takes place on an island which seems to be a trend. After visiting Wuhu Island in Wii Fit, Jillian’s Island in Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010, and the virtual Biggest Loser Resort, I feel like I’ve worked out all over the Carribbean. But I admit, there’s something soothing about escaping for 20 minutes a day with the sound of the surf pounding on the shores.

All in all, I was impressed with EA Sports Active: More Workouts, so much so that it will once again regain position #1 in the list of Best Wii Exercise Games. While it may not be as “fun” as Wii Fit Plus, and the graphics aren’t as good, the workout regimen itself is a tough one which really gets you working out, and the fitness activities are a good balance of fun plus an effective workout. It’s not a game you can play with the family (although there is an option to exercise with someone else, side by side), but on the other hand it does the best job of any Wii Exercise Game to balance fun and fitness.

Review of Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010 for Wii

3 out of 5 stars

A good title for die-hard fans of Jillian Michaels and her intensive, no-holds-barred approach to exercise. For all others, there are much better choices out there.

Reviewer: Nutwiisystem November 10, 2009

There’s an expression that goes “fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you”. According to Majesco’s own press releases, over 600,000 of us were burned by Jillian Michaels' Wii game from 2009, by just about all accounts one of the worst Wii titles ever released, with terrible graphics and unresponsive controls. So the new burning question is: is Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010 any better?

The answer is yes, but mainly because you couldn’t get any worse than the 2009 version. There are enough improvements to keep it off our ignominious Worst Wii Exercise Games list, but overall, the game is still not up to the quality of the top games on our best Wii exercise games list. If you are a die-hard fan of Jillian Michaels, it might be worth getting this title. Otherwise, you’re better off getting one of those other games.

Overall rating: ***
Exercise value: ***
Fun: **

And now, for a breakdown of the good and the bad.

The Good:

• The game is fairly well organized.
  
  
• A “Workout Area”, contains the main exercise portion of the game:
  
  
• “Island Overview” allows you to quickly do one of 18 random exercises in one of 9 different environments, ranging from a cascading waterfall to a sunset on a pier. Great for if you want to exercise in a hurry and don’t want to have to go through a lot of menu options.
  
  
• “Single Exercise” allows you to choose the specific exercise, location, music, and number of reps.
  
  
• “Circuit Training” lets you choose from five combinations of exercises that Jillian herself recommends for Total Body workouts, working out Abs, or working out just the upper or lower body. You can also customize five of your own circuits.
  
  
• “Resolutions” allows you to create a customer workout schedule over time for up to six months, or use a schedule that Jillian herself made.
  
  
• “Jillian’s Locker” is very obviously something that the programmers stuffed into the game to make it appear more substantial. It isn’t substantial at all (The Biggest Loser for Wii, on the other hand, did it right).
  
  
•  “Outfits” contains outfits that you can dress your on-screen Jillian in. More of a gimmick than anything else, and the interface is confusing to navigate.
  
  
• “Diet Tips” is pretty useless. It contain tips on setting goals, food, and eating out. There’s an entire menu option dedicated to only 7 tips total.
  
  
• “Exercise Tips” is the same, but with 7 tips on setting Goals, Time management, and Mind.
  
  
• “My Info” is an interesting area where you can set your profile (height, weight, age) and then see your stats (how much you exercised using the game and a chart of your weight loss over time). Overall I actually prefer the more “professional” presentation of Jillian Michaels Wii game over the cartoony approach of Wii Fit, but again, the user interface is atrocious, with non-intuitive buttons and difficult controls.

  "Total Body" circuit training part 1. A pretty neat run through Jillian's island with Jillian.

• While you’re doing each exercise, the game will show an animated Jillian performing the exercise, showing you exactly how to do the exercise, complete with the Wii-mote or the Balance Board. You can use a 3-D camera to rotate and view exactly how to do it from any angle. This is a neat feature that isn’t available on other games.
  
  
• The exercises on Jillian Michaels Wii game are definitely more intense than the ones you’ll find on games like Wii Fit Plus or EA Sports Active. There’s are nine exercises that use the Wii Remote (water pump, sledge swing, hip twist, oblique, side lunge, back kick, jumping jack, squat jacks, running) and nine that use the balance board (boat pose, crunch, swing kick, lunge kick, bicycle, side plank, pelvic thrust, push-up, closed push-up). Use of the balance board is optional.

  "Total Body" circuit training part 2. Running through various other exercises.

• For the Wii, the graphics are pretty good. Even though the Wii cannot display high resolution graphics like the PS3 or Xbox, they do a fairly good job of displaying full-motion video. The exercises are all done in environments with rich graphical experiences and great background audio. When you’re running through the jungle behind Jillian, you really feel like you’re there running through a lush jungle. When you’re on a dune overlooking a beach, you can see the wind and hear the surf pounding against the shore.
  
  
• There is something cool about the way that Jillian serves as your “personal trainer”, leading you through intense exercises, shouting out positive reinforcement when you do well, and berating you to push harder when you don’t. The game does capture her intense, all-out style quite well.

The Bad:

• The game is still very spotty in its use of Wii-Mote or Balance Board to judge how well you’re doing the exercise. While it’s improved over the 2009 version, it’s still not always very accurate nor useful. For the most part the controller really doesn’t add much. There’s a ton of trial and error to figure out if you’re doing it right, and even if you do figure it out in most cases you’re on the “honor system” to do the exercise right. Sometimes just flicking the remote lightly will trigger compliments from Jillian; other times you’ll swear you’re doing the right thing, but Jillian will berate you for not doing it right. As an extreme example, for the “Swing Kick” exercise, I was graded as having done 20 reps. I earned 161 “power points” (as meaningless to me as the “Wii Fit Credits” from the original Wii Fit), and I was graded with 80% accuracy. That’s great, but here’s the problem. While the exercise was going on, I was nowhere near the balance board—I was sitting 10 feet away writing this paragraph!
  
  
• For any given exercise, once you press the “Start” button, the on-screen Jillian will start doing the reps for the exercise very rapidly, regardless of whether you are doing them properly or even doing them at all. Worse, there’s no ability to “Restart”, you have to either Pause or Quit.
  
  
• The “how to” tutorial for each exercise consists of just a “before” and “after” picture of the exercise, with a long description of the exercise which you read on screen. The copy is generally descriptive enough, but it misses the point. If I wanted to read how to do the exercise, I’d buy one of Jillian’s many books. Why not just use the same animation that’s already being shown with the actual exercise, with narration over it to describe how to do it? It just seems awkward and backward to make someone read long blocks of text on a Wii game.
  
  
• As you’ve probably noticed I said several times, the overall user interface design is horrific. There are a number of awkward or non-standard ways that controls and interface elements are programmed. For example, the programmers of this game didn’t even do something as basic as allowing you to scroll through text descriptions using the arrow buttons on the Wiimote—you have to point to a tiny up and down arrow on the screen to scroll through the text. The programmers didn’t bother to program it so you can use the arrow button on the Wii-mote to navigate menus. So you have to point-and-click at buttons, which for some reason are so tiny it takes several seconds to line up your cursor in the exact right place and click..
  
  
• There are a limited number of exercises (9 balance board, 9 Wii-mote). This pales in comparison to the exercises provided in The Biggest Loser.

To sum up? I’ll give it 3 stars out of 5. There aren’t any huge innovations here. You’ll find that Wii Fit Plus is funner, EA Sports Active is more precise in its controls, and The Biggest Loser for Wii has a much larger number of intense exercises. The main reason you’d want to get this one is if you are a die-hard fan of Jillian Michaels and enjoy the idea of her acting as your virtual personal trainer.

Review of The Biggest Loser for Wii

4 out of 5 stars

A Wii fitness title which provides an impressive set of calisthenic moves and accurately captures the spirit and entertainment value of the TV show.

Reviewer: Nutwiisystem
October 14, 2009

The Biggest Loser for Wii was just released this week. Since 2004, The Biggest Loser has been one of the most popular shows on TV. The premise of the show, of course, is that overweight contestants compete against each other to see who can lose the most weight. They're helped along by expert trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels. Aside from being a runaway hit TV show, The Biggest Loser has spawned books, cookbooks, exercise videos, kitchen appliances, exercise equipment, protein shakes, music CDs, clothes, and more.

So, it was only a matter of time before a Biggest Loser Video Game for the Wii came out. Now, I admit I was a bit skeptical at this one. Typically when game publishers buy rights to great brand names and trademarks, the games they create are anything but great. From Daisy Fuentes Pilates to Jillian Michael's own Fitness Ultimatum 2009, game publishers often get lazy knowing that the brand name will guarantee them a certain number of sales regardless of the quality of their game. And so they get sloppy with the game design or the quality assurance.

I'm happy to say that The Biggest Loser bucks this trend. It's a very solid fitness title for the Wii. I don't use the word "game" because it's not exactly fun like a game. It's more like an interactive fitness video. In fact, it reminds me most of Ubisoft's My Fitness Coach in that way, but they've come a long way since My Fitness Coach (so much so that The Biggest Loser has officially bumped My Fitness Coach out of our Top 10 list of best Wii Fitness games).

The core of The Biggest Loser is its very comprehensive list of dozens and dozens of Single Exercises, which are essentially calisthenic exercises (i.e. exercises that don't use weights or equipment). They really hit a home run with these. Every calisthenic exercise you can think of is included, including exercises for a cardio workout; for working out the upper body, core, and lower body; and even yoga poses. Each exercise ranges from light, moderate, challenging, hard, and intense. Each one is identified by an icon (color-coded by intensity). As you select each icon in the menu, there's even a figure telling you exactly what muscle groups you're working out.

When you start each exercise, an on-screen figure will show you very clearly how to do the exercise, including the correct posture, moves, and timing. You basically follow along. The exercises typically use the Wii-mote and/or the Balance Board passively to "check" your progress. For example, when you choose the jump rope exercise, you hold the Wii-mote like the handle of a jump rope and make small circles with it. When you choose "tire drills", you put the Wii-mote in your pocket and run in place, simulating the kinds of drills that football players do when they run through tires. Similarly, "fast skaters" is an exercise where you simulate a speed skater waving his or her arms. There are a number of exercises which use the balance board such as the "plank" (where you press both hands against the balance board), a "T-Raise" (where one hand is on the balance board and the other is stretched out). Some exercises will be very familiar (jumping jacks, push ups), but even the ones that aren't familiar are very intuitive once you watch the on-screen character doing them.

I should note that for the most part, you're on the "honor system" as to how closely you follow the on-screen examples. Even if you get a little sloppy in your form or don't do the exercise properly, more often than not it'll still register and Bob or Jillian will continue to shout out praise and encouragement. That said, when you do it exactly right, you'll usually see confirmation on-screen.

You can do each of the exercises a la carte, but more likely you'll want to choose Exercise Routines, which combine multiple single exercises into comprehensive pre-designed programs to work out your full body, upper body, core, lower body or do yoga exercises. You can also create a custom routine, made up of your favorite single exercises. As with single exercises, you can choose anything from light to intense exercise.

Sample Exercise Routine, Part 1

Sample Exercise Routine, Part 2

And of course, you can choose the full Fitness Program. You enter your name, sex, birthday, height and weight (conveniently, you can use your Balance Board to measure your weight, both your initial weight and in your very own "weigh ins"). Then, you pick your favorite real-life Biggest Loser contestant to play as, whether it be Matt Hoover from Season 2, Ali Vincent from Season 5, Michelle Aguilar from Season 6, or from a list of five others. You can customize the color of the T-Shirt your character wears, and then you pick whether you want to hear Bob Harper or Jillian Michaels as "your trainer".  From there, you can pick a personal goal: whether you want to simply maintain your current weight and improve your health, lose a little weight, or lose a lot of weight. You'll also pick a skill level and a program length. Based on all the things you enter, the system will calculate a specific exercise regiment for you, complete with dates. If you're really committed, you can also input the number of calories you eat every day, as well as log any additional training you do outside of the program (such as walking, running or biking outside), and the program will adjust itself accordingly.

An interesting part of this title is a menu option called Health and Lifestyle. Here, you'll find a large number of recipes, straight out of The Biggest Loser Cookbooks (they'll even show you the cookbook the recipe came out of). There's a pretty impressive list of food for breakfast (e.g. blueberry muffins, breakfast patties), healthy snacks (e.g. pesto pizzettas, creamy onion dip), lunch (e.g. BLT burger, chicken soup, cajun salmon), main dishes (e.g. broiled cod, sweet and sour chicken, chicken skewers), sides (e.g. noodle salad, squash casserole), and dessert (e.g. strawberry pie-lets, quick rice pudding, Italian hot chocolate). It's a bit awkward reading recipes on the Wii, as your Wii is probably not in your kitchen. But still, the recipes are generally short enough that you can jot them down on a piece of paper. Under this menu option you'll also find a large number of "quick tips" from past Biggest Loser participants, including short video clips from Bob and Jillian themselves. Finally, there's an extremely useful feature called the "Calorie Counter", which calculates the daily calorie intake recommend specifically for you based on your weight, age, and goals.

Health & Lifestyle Screens

The most interesting part of The Biggest Loser for Wii are what they call Challenge Events. Here, your chubby on-screen character will compete against other characters (all off-screen) in a number of interesting events, the types of which you'd see on the show. In a clever twist, you make your on-screen character perform by doing specific exercise routines, which must be done precisely and timed perfectly. As on the show, you start out competing with 7 personalities from the show, and after each round one is eliminated. I found this by far the most effective part of the game, because my instincts to compete far exceeded any resistance to exercise. While it's a bit contrived to have you controlling a character's progress by doing single exercises (I would rather have done something which simulated the on-screen character's movements rather than some random exercises), the bottom line is it got me motivated to work out more than I probably would have normally without getting bored.

Challenge Event: Light Cycle

Challenge Event: Skate or Splash

Challenge Event: Highflyers

There are a couple minor annoyances. If you connect your balance board and the balance board power goes out, the game is completely hung up until you turn it back on. The controllers are passive, meaning that instead of actively tracking your movements accurately, it'll just check whether you come close to making the on-screen movements. Sometimes the controllers will not register properly, and I admit I was a little disappointed that most of the activities didn't take advantage of the unique capabilities of the Wii and its controllers. And one thing to keep in mind is that you need a LOT of room to move around.

But still the bottom line is, they have an impressive number of exercises to work out all different areas of your body, and when I chose "intense" level, it really did make my heart pound and gave me a great workout that rivaled any kind of workout I'd get at the gym, for a fraction of the price.

Review of Wii Fit Plus

5 out of 5 stars

Nintendo reclaims the number one position on our list of Best Wii Workout Games with fun and beautifully executed improvements to the aging Wii Fit platform.

Reviewer: Nutwiisystem
October 7, 2009

When Wii Fit and its Balance Board were released a year and a half ago, it was a runaway hit. Wii Fits sold out for months at a time and it was the hottest thing you could get for the Wii.

Unfortunately, as time went on, millions of Balance Boards went into the closet. Wii Fit was an innovative title, but once the novelty wore off, a lot of people simply found it wasn't very useful for continuous exercise. The Yoga and Strength training exercises were good, but you could only perform them one at a time. The Balance Games were fun but with a few exceptions like Hula Hoop, they didn't really do much as far as aerobic exercise. The need to calibrate the balance board each time you played or switched players was a major annoyance. Your progress was based on time spent, not calories burned.

The best thing to happen to the Wii Fit was a little something called EA Sports Active. It was released by Electronic Arts a few months ago, and they raised the bar for what a fitness title should be. The influence of EA Sports Active on Nintendo's Wii Fit Plus is very clear, and the Nintendo folks did a great job of improving Wii Fit. The result was Wii Fit Plus.

The first thing to note is that Wii Fit Plus is not a "sequel" to the original Wii Fit, but rather it contains all the content of the original Wii Fit and adds a number of improvements. In other words, if you don't have Wii Fit already, you can skip it, buy Wii Fit Plus with the Balance Board. If you already have Wii Fit, you can buy the Wii Fit Plus game only.

For those with the old Wii Fit, the conversion of your old profile data to the new is quick and seamless. It just takes a couple seconds and voila, all of your old weight data and workout data is available in Wii Fit Plus.

The first improvement, clearly influenced by EA Sports Active, is that instead of choosing individual strength and yoga exercises ad-hoc, you can choose from a number of pre-configured workout routines. There's a new button called "My Wii Fit Plus". When you click on it, you're taken to a virtual locker room. Your animated balance board (as chipper and encouraging as ever) walks you through the process of choosing a workout routine based on any number of specific goals, ranging from better health to improving specific parts of your body. In all honesty, there may be a few too many options for my taste (I like the simplicity of EA Sports in this regard), but if you're committed to a specific workout and exercise goal, chances are you'll find what you need here.

The activities are still broken out by category: Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobics, and Balance Games. All of these are identical to the old Wii Fit, except that there there are a 6 new Yoga and Strength training exercises which add some more variety and challenge to those categories.

But here's the part of the review I'm sure you've been waiting for. The biggest improvement in Wii Fit Plus is the addition of 15 "Training Plus" activities.

Perfect 10 (Workout intensity: 2 of 5, Fun 4 of 5): A game that tests your math skills as much as your flexibility. Numbers will appear on giant mushroom, and you bump your hips to hit the numbers that add (or subtract) to 10 or 15 or 20. You won't be losing huge amounts of weight from this one, but it's a great way to test your mind and body coordination and this is one you'll play over and over again to try to beat your last time or the best score of a family member. 2.5 METs.



Island Cycling (Workout intensity: 4 of 5, Fun 4 of 5): This is a game that uses the Balance Board (you step on the board with your left and right foot to simulate bicycle pedalling) and the Wiimote (which you use to steer). The game itself looks a lot like the cycling game on Wii Sports Resort. Unlike that game, this game isn't timed; rather, you need to cycle around a large island collecting flags. The island is beautifully designed with amazing details, from the sound of distant trains as you go over a tall bridge, to the sound of windmills in the breeze, to an amazingly intricate layout of caves, ramps, cliffs, and bridges, to the need to "pedal" harder as you're going up hills. This is definitely one you can spend a lot of time on and not even realize you were exercising. 2.5 METs.



Rhythm Kung-Fu (Workout intensity: 3 of 5, Fun 5 of 5): This is the first game that put a huge smile on my face. Using your Wiimote, the Nunchuk, and the Balance Board, you have to strike different "kung fu" poses in rhythm to delightfully cheesy kung-fu movie music. It's essentially a game of "Simon Says", where you mimic the moves of a groups of Miis standing behind you (and if you have family or friend Miis on your system, you'll see some familiar faces). Another game that perhaps doesn't provide the most strenuous workout at first, but one you'll be playing over and over again to try to beat your high score (you're judged based on your timing). 3.0 METs.



Driving Range (Workout intensity: 1 of 5, Fun 4 of 5): Sure, golf has been done in Wii Sports, in Wii Sports Resort, and in games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour. Wii Fit Plus brings something a little different to the table, though. You position the Balance Board vertically, and swing your Wii-mote like a golf club. There's a "swing analyzer" which is surprisingly good not just for casual video game golfers but also for real golfers to analyze their form. It measures the straightness of your swing, your weight distribution, and gives a pretty good indication of how far your drive will go. With these new improvements and the improvements of the Wii MotionPlus (which surprisingly isn't taken advantage of in Wii Fit Plus), I think it's safe to say that the Wii is very close to being a real-life golf simulator. 3.0 METs.



Segway Circuit (Workout intensity: 3 of 5, Fun 4 of 5): In a clever co-branding deal, Nintendo teamed up with the folks at Segway for this game. In it, you ride a Segway around the island trying to pop balloons that are being put up around the island by pesky moles. Like a real Segway, you lean forward to move forward and you lean back to go back, steering with the Wii-mote. An especially fun, if infuriating part is when you need to chase down the last mole all over the island to pop the last balloon. 2.0 METs.



Bird's-Eye Bull's-Eye, a.k.a. Flying Chicken (Workout intensity: 5 of 5, Fun 5 of 5): This is the one you probably heard about, and it (along with Obstacle Course) is the winner. Your Mii dons a chicken outfit and has to fly from target to target. How do you fly? By flapping your arms. Seriously. You can either flap your arms with your hands extended, or do a "chicken dance" type movement by bending your elbows. Either way, the Balance Board will amazingly detect how strongly, quickly, or slowly you're flapping. Like a real bird, you flap faster to get better control, and you flap slower to soar great distances. You control where you're moving by leaning on the Balance Board. It is, I kid you not, the closest you will ever come to flying like a bird. It's a great upper body workout that you'll do again and again. 2.5 METs.



Snowball Fight (Workout intensity: 2 of 5, Fun 5 of 5): This one is just plain fun. You use the Wii-mote to shoot snowballs at an invading army of Miis (again, if you have custom Miis stored on your system you'll see some familiar faces), and duck left and right to hide behind a barricade to avoid getting hit yourself with snowballs. All of the fun of a real snowball fight, none of the frostbite. 2.0 METs.



Obstacle Course (Workout intensity: 5 of 5, Fun 5 of 5): This is the game I was most looking forward too, and I was not disappointed. The way it's been described is that it's like Mario Bros, only you are playing the part of Mario running through a 3-D obstacle course. You run in place on the Balance Board to make your character move forward and you straighten your knees to make him jump. In the process, you'll be navigating around huge swinging wrecking balls, moving sidewalks, and falling logs. 3.0 METs.



Tilt City (Workout intensity: 1 of 5, Fun 3 of 5): I admit, I'm not so crazy about these "tilt" games, maybe because I'm just not very coordinated. This is a game where you need to tilt the Wii-mote and shift your weight on the balance board in a coordinated fashion to steer colored balls into the right container. It's not really an exercise game, but one more to test your reflexes and coordination. 2.0 METs.



Rhythm Parade (Workout intensity: 4 of 5, Fun 5 of 5): This was another one to put a huge smile on my face. You're basically a drum major, marching in place to the sound of a beat. Like rhythm games like Helix and Samba Di Amigo, you move your Wii-mote and Nunchuk to match on-screen cues. The better you match, the bigger your marching band becomes (and again, you'll see familiar faces join in the band if you have custom Miis). Like other Wii rhythm games of this ilk, I'm not sure how accurate the Wii and Nunchuk are (there are times I'm sure I move it on time but it doesn't register on the screen), but the game is pretty forgiving. 3.0 METs.



Big Top Juggling (Workout intensity: 3 of 5, Fun 4 of 5): No, this one won't really teach you how to juggle, but once you're done you'll have the same satisfaction as if you did know how. It's a game where you have to stay balanced on a giant ball (using your feet on the Balance Board), while at the same time keeping 1, 2, or 3 balls in the the air by flicking your Wii-mote and Nunchuk. Like with the Hula Hoop game, Miis to the side will throw balls in your direction, and if you've got three going at one time, they'll throw bombs to distract you. 2.0 METs.



Skateboard Arena (Workout intensity: 4 of 5, Fun 4 of 5): I am not a skater-boy, but still, this is a pretty fair representation of riding a skateboard. You position the Balance Board vertically and stand on it like a skateboard. You can build speed by pushing off your back foot (I find it helps to pull up on my front foot just a bit and push down to move). You steer by moving your body back and forth, and you can jump by straightening your knees. You go through a series of exercises just like a real skateboarder, from jumping on ramps to riding on rails to doing tricks on half-pipes. 3.0 METs.



Table Tilt Plus (Workout intensity: 1 of 5, Fun 3 of 5): This one is a lot like those labyrinth games where you're trying to steer a ball around holes (in this case, you're trying to get balls into holes). Again, not a big fan of the games where you tilt your body to control the playing field, but I suppose for someone a lot younger, thinner, and more coordinated than me these kinds of things are loads of fun :P. 1.5 METs.



Balance Bubble Plus (Workout intensity: 1 of 5, Fun 2 of 5): Same sentiments as I wrote above. This is an improved version of the old Wii Fit Balance game where you're floating in a bubble trying to navigate your way through a maze. As your bubble gets close to edges, you start to fidget and your bubble pops if you don't fix it right away. And don't get me started about the killer bees you meet at the end of the maze. As for me, I typically end up falling over on my face with these games :). 2.0 METs.



Basic Run Plus (Workout intensity: 5 of 5, Fun 3 of 5): This is a variation of the jogging game in the Aerobic games section of Wii Fit Plus. Like that game, you control this one by running in place on the Balance Board, and you're treated to a lot of great scenery and new paths to explore on Wii Fit Island. An added feature is that at the end of the game, you'll be quizzed on things you saw, which is added to your final score. This little improvement surprisingly makes the run a lot more interesting, as you make sure to carefully observe every little detail as you're running. 4.0 METs.



Other improvements:

1) The use of METs and report of calories burned. What does METs stand for? METs (which stands for Metabolic EquivalenTs) is a standard way to measure energy expenditure. One annoyance with the old Wii Fit was that whether you did an exercise that used no energy like a stretching exercise or one that expended vast amounts of energy like Super Hula Hoop, your progress was marked by the time spent or "Fit Credits" that didn't mean anything in the real world. With Wii Fit Plus, METs are used in conjunction with your body weight and the time spent to calculate the number of calories burned. There's even a neat little function in My Wii Fit Plus where you can see the number of calories you've burned in terms of food (you can even choose the type and amount of food you want to burn off and set it as a goal).

2) Balance Board improvements. With the old Wii Fit, each time you started a new routine, you'd need to wait for the Balance Board to calibrate. I suppose this was intended in the case where multiple people would be sharing the Balance Board, but it got annoying very fast. Wii Fit Plus is a bit more intelligent, in that it'll sense whether the weight has changed and give the option to recalibrate only if it has. I've experienced a number of "false positives" in which it thought my weight changed when it didn't, but that's just a minor annoyance compared to the old way. I was actually a bit puzzled as to why the Wii MotionPlus wasn't used in this game, but with the improvements to the Balance Board they really weren't necessary.

3) The ability to measure a child or pet. This is a gimmick, of course, but a totally fun one if you have the aforementioned child or pet to measure. :)

Overall, Wii Fit Plus is a winner. To Nintendo's credit, they weren't content just to rest on their laurels, but they came up with improvements that truly breathed new life into the Wii Fit. As for the title of Best Wii Fitness game, I would say at this point it's a virtual dead heat between EA Sports Active and Wii Fit Plus. EA Sports Active is still the better game for a traditional workout with a good combination of strength training and cardio exercise. But Wii Fit Plus wins hands-down for responsive and beautiful graphics and pure fun, which at the end of the day can be just as important (if it's fun, you'll play it again and again). I'm looking forward to seeing how EA Sports ups the ante.