It coulda’ been a contenda’

I’ve had Wii Fit for a few weeks now and, while I haven’t been able to keep a solid schedule for it every day (something I’m still struggling to do), I think I’ve used it enough to come up with an opinion about it.

My overwhelming response to it is that, once again, Nintendo really missed out on a golden opportunity here.  There are a lot of things to like about the game: the training instruction, the stat tracking, even some of the aerobics stuff, like running and place and hula hooping, is implemented fairly well.  The balance games that are provided are also enjoyable mini-games that show-off the abilities of the balance board. However, the game has two important problems: the lack of any workout “programs”, and the fact that it’s not really that fun for the things that really matter.

The best way to workout is to have some sort of routine.  Often times, this can be as simple as simply rotating working out upper body and lower body, with cardio every time.  Wii Fit will let you do something like this, but there’s no formalized mode which just automatically lines up a bunch of activities for you, or even allow you to pick several activities up front yourself and have you just go through all of them back-to-back. As something that is purportedly supposed to help you lose weight or at least stay fit, the lack of any actual training program is disappointing, to say the least.  There’s some hint of the game actually trying to provide you with some direction, like when you complete a strength training exercise and it informs you that a specific yoga pose would go well with it.  Well, why doesn’t the game just combine them for you, or at least ask if you’d like to continue on to the yoga pose then?

Instead, you choose from a list of mostly 1-3 minute exercises, then have to go through a balance board calibration, and then finally you get to the exercise.  There’s a lot of “gap” time between exercises that is just lost to your workout time; something that becomes increasingly evident by noticing the difference between your in-game workout “bank” (which keeps track of how much time you’ve spent actually doing exercises), and the real time.  Getting credit for 30 minutes in Wii Fit may actually take you 40-45 minutes depending on how fast you are at going through menus and such. So not only are you responsible for putting together your own workouts each and every time you play, it also wastes your time. If you want to complete that strength training + yoga pose, you’ll probably have at least a 1-2 minute gap between the two exercises as you make your way through the menus, re-calibrate, and start up the pose.

As for whether the game is entertaining, there are actually some fun parts to it.  The problem is that basically all of the fun parts are the “balance” games, which, while the game may say otherwise, are probably completely worthless as far as your fitness goes.  These games, like skiing, sliding for fish (in a penguin suit), and directing a bubble through a course, are fun little extras, but they mostly serve as a demo for the Balance Board’s functionality. Perhaps it would be too much to ask for a game that basically just guides you through exercises to be fun, but it definitely seems like there were a few missed opportunities here.

For instance, the “running” activity, which does not make use of the balance board, actually does a decent job of sort of virtually scrolling the environment to the pace that your running at (by using the Wii remote somewhat ingeniously as a sort of pedometer).  However, as far as I can tell, there’s only 1 sort of generic level to run around in.  Before you start your run you can set the approximate distance which you want to go (although not specifically, as the options I’ve seen are “Short”, “Long” and “Island Lap”). The longest distance I’ve been able to run so far took me about 11 minutes (according to the game’s counter anyway), and it just basically brings you around the generic island.  What if instead of just the sort of generic island, the game had some more interesting locations you could run in?  For instance, since it’s Nintendo, why not bring in some classic locations?  Hyrule from the Zelda series could probably be a pretty interesting place to run around in, or maybe some Mario or Mario Kart levels (the one with Peach’s Castle would probably be a good classic one to pick ).  While they’re at it, why not put in some environmental dangers (lava, karts, etc) that you would have to somehow dodge (stepping off to the side or perhaps some other kind of motion could be detected).  Hell, couldn’t they have at least added some kind of race?  This kind of stuff could still be a good workout, but it’d make it a lot more interesting than just running around a generic island with a few waterfalls and hills.

What about some of the strength training activities?  There’s actually a few “challenges” that can be unlocked that I held out some hope for, but after trying one of them today, I can say that they seem fairly worthless.  The description of the “challenges” says that you need to beat your trainer at them… That could be promising.  Adding a bit of competitiveness in, even if it’s just a computer, could still be both a good workout and a bit more fun than just doing a few reps.  Then you start the activity and it’s the same exact activity you did before outside of the challenge (with a pre-specified number of reps).  Afterwards, my trainer just said “Whew, I’m beat…” or something to that effect.  Now, perhaps there’s some randomness to this, or perhaps the “trainer” calculates something about how much more work I can handle, and if I could handle more, they would’ve said “Let’s keep going!”  But, that’s not what happened at least here, and it was definitely disappointing.

Finally, something that would probably have helped increase the enjoyment of the game would be better graphics and a customizable soundtrack.  You’ve probably seen the screenshots by now, but the training environments are extremely sparse and boring looking, while the trainers themselves are fairly generic and monochromatic.  I guess this was probably a conscious design decision, but I’m not sure it was the right one.  The custom soundtrack would’ve been nice for the running and other activities, but also if they could’ve somehow integrated it into the step-aerobics too (the music they have for it now is extremely dumb), that would’ve made that particular activity a lot better.

In the end, I’m going to continue using Wii Fit because I like the stat tracking, and some workout is certainly better than no workout.  And, despite my complaints and the lost opportunities, in a strange sort of way, I actually still sort of like it.  Perhaps it’s just the convenience of it.  Rather than having to drag myself to a gym, I can just workout in the comfort of my own home (for a tiny fraction of the cost of a gym membership as well).

With that said, if you’re looking for something that’s going to make your workouts a lot more enjoyable, this may not be the solution (except that you can, I suppose, intersperse your workouts with non-fitness related games that are kind of fun). Additionally, you’ll probably want to augment your “Wii Fit” workouts somehow if you want to be fit, and not just, unfortunately, “wii fit”.