Wii Fit review

As in Nintendo’s other training games, the actual testing - the weighing process - is limited to one shot a day. Importing your Mii avatar, you adjust the conditions of your session - although it’s a tad tricky to judge the weight of your clothes when asked (so, best play naked) - and off you go. Having scanned for fat cells, there’s a basic leaning exercise and standing still task to measure your COG - after all, there’s no point in being skinny if you’re a horrific freakazoid hunchback, right?

As far as tests go it seems more trustworthy than Brain Age or Sight Training. In those games it’s possible for your stylus inabilities to contribute to a sloppy rating. With Wii Fit any fool can stand upright and be judged. Adding your own weight goals is a nice touch; a set aim is much more attractive than casual whittling down over time. One does wonder if this idea is in place to remind people that Wii Fit has health implications - while a young brain is desirable to all, adult organs need adult-sized bodies to live in, perpetual weight streamlining leading to an unpleasant, and bony, place.

Divided into four categories the activities work towards three goals: working up a flab-frightening sweat, improving your balance and toning your muscles. Of the task groupings, yoga is as expected; your typical new age faffing with silly names like ‘The Tree’, ‘The Chair’, ‘The Sun Salutation’ and ‘The Sarcastic Taxidermist’. You follow the lead of the on-screen trainer and if you’re doing it right your centre of balance should lie in a certain location, and success is judged by keeping it there.

Call us crazy, but isn’t yoga meant to be relaxing? Having to keep a red dot floating in a sweet spot - this is how your COG is represented on screen - adds unnecessary stress. Yoga isn’t a game, so don’t rate the yogi as if they’d just finished one. Final star ratings make sense for the traditional minigame selection, but are massively out of place here.

It’s a similar story with muscle conditioning - activities not unlike the warm-up stretches our classmates would perform at the beginning of PE while we skived off with claims of ‘feet problems’. Leg-yanking, torso-twisting muscle hurters, they are well demonstrated by the trainers, but what’s the point of forcing you to perform them with a preset COG? It’s as if Wii Fit is suspicious of you not doing the exercises, so it forces you to stand atop the board where your movement can be observed. Big Wiibo is watching you.