Wii Fit Review, or, What I do At Work

Work was pretty dead today and my boss brought her Wii in, accompanied by the strange and oddly sturdy pad that goes with Wii Fit. I didn't get through much of it as it was limited to breaktime only, but it was enough to give some solid first impressions.

Surprisingly, there is little use of the remote, and the main focus of the "game" - I suppose it's more of a tool - is on balance. Basically, you stand on this pad and answer a bunch of questions, including age, height, weight, and then you take a balance test. The pad is kind of freaky because there is this computerized voice that sounds like a typical reserved Japanese girl, and as it is calibrating it flashes messages like, "Please don't step on me yet." The creepiest is when you step on to measure your weight, and as soon as your smooth, silky foot graces the pad, you hear a quiet little, "Oooh..." from Computer Girl. Afterward, the game spits out your body mass index and your "Wii Fit Age," supposedly the age that you are in terms of health.

And I'm 28!? What the fuck, Wii? What the fuck?

Afterwards, you start the games, which are in four categories: Yoga (which I didn't try because frankly yoga scares me), Strength, Balance and Aerobics. You also earn minutes, which are the currency of Wii Fit Land and unlock more games and bonus material. So, on to the games.

My best activity was push ups, where I did six iterations of a push up, then this weird twist-on-your-side thing -- OH YEAH!

I forgot to mention the trainers. When you do exercises, you pick between a male or female trainer. They are these kind of glowing, blue people who look like something right out of the Ethereal section of a D&D Monster Manual, only in gym clothes, and their mouths don't move when the speak to you! It is kind of weird to see this glowing person tell you how to do a Warrior pose or how to catch a hula hoop and see no mouth motion what-so-freakin-ever.

::ahem::

As I was saying, I did best at the push ups, scoring 91% on my first and only go, when quickly collapsing from exhaustion and crawling under a table (I wish I was fucking kidding.) I proved decent at hula hooping, and was average at everything else I tried: the ski jump, ski slalom, jogging, and soccer goalie. Ing.

Soccer was by far the most entertaining - though really me and my co-worker making asses out of ourselves was probably better - because you are suppose to lean towards balls to block them, but occasionally a shoe or a severed panda bear head will fly at you, slapping into your Mii's face with a hint of brutal realism and causing you to lose your hard-earned points.

The only game that actually used the "Wii"mote (God I hate that) was jogging, where you just run in place and keep the remote in hand or in pocket as a pedometer. We quickly found a way to cheat by flailing our arms around wildly, but even that gets tiring after a while, and besides, what kind of fucking pathetic loser do you have to be to skimp out on a video game workout? These people, honestly.

My knee-jerk reaction to Wii Fit was the world was in a sad, sick state of affairs when we had to market exercises gear in the form of a video game because people are too lazy to go outside, but I've had some time and now experience to rethink that. People, particularly in the U.S of A, need to work out more, and Wii Fit is innovated enough to actually get your sweating. Or at least it got my apparently 28-year-old ass sweating. The game also comes with a calender where you can check off days you exercise and how well you did, and also set goals on how much weight you wish to lose by a given date. Since the focus is on cardio workouts almost exclusively, it is designed to burn fat. And, while a hundred and seventy bucks might seem steep for a game, home gym equipment is double or triple the price, massive and heavy, and non-portable. You can fit Wii Fit in a backpack. And lets face it, a Bow Flex or that thing Chuck Norris sells is just far less entertaining. See, see, the bastard can't do everything!

It was a smart move on Nintendo's part to see that people took to the Wii as a form of exercise and capitalize on the idea. Wii fit is one of, if not the biggest selling Wii game to date, and it helps in that stupid Arms Race of entertainment because it is something neither the Xbox nor the PSIII can offer.

Fucking 28.