Wii Fit: The Hardest Review I’ve ever Written
There’s no denying that Nintendo takes their own approach to just about everything they do. Their startlingly unique controllers and their game designs all break from the seemingly logical, yet they go on to be huge sellers and are heavily imitated and copied. There’s also no denying that Wii Fit and its balance board peripheral are the next step in this trend. But unlike the Nintendo 64 controller or the Wii Remote, this is one design philosophy that I’ve had a helluva hard time coming to appreciate.
After all, I first thought to myself, what does Miyamoto know about fitness? Who is Nintendo to tell me how, when, and why to work out? Though several health organizations have shown support for Wii Fit, none were involved in its design, and it shows. For starters the in-game timer that tracks your workout by tossing “time coins” into a piggy bank tends to round up, sometimes by thirty seconds or more.
The lifeless mannequin trainers also spurt out the same dialog every time you play and their instructions are sometimes unclear and out of synch with what’s going on on-screen. They also praise your posture and form during exercises that don’t even require the balance board. Many of the activities plot your movement and give you a score but even swaying well out of the target area only knocks you down a few points. Conversely, I’ve strained to keep my movement as tight as possible only to wind up with a record low score.
The music and visuals are nice, in the same airy style as Wii Sports, but boy do they get monotonous. And since this is a Nintendo offering there’s no option to adjust, change, or even turn the music off. This is a huge flaw in my opinion as you can never play your own music over top without muting the verbal cues and sound effects that help you through the exercises. It’s also impossible to skip the in-between talking and score tallying, collectively wasting several minutes of valuable exercise time each day.
While these can all be considered quirks of the hardware or just niggling complaints, what’s really disheartening is how Wii Fit’s sole basis for health analysis is the outdated Body Mass Index (BMI). Because BMI is simply an equation of your height and weight compared to a social health average, the very use of Wii Fit is liable to skew your results into the overweight category. BMI doesn’t take into account muscle mass, humorously labeling Lance Armstrong as overweight before the 1993 Tour de France. But since the balance board doesn’t have sophisticated fat measuring calipers, BMI and weight is all it can track.
Well, BMI, weight, and the novel gimmick that is your Wii Fit Age. Like the seemingly arbitrary numbers doled out by Dr. Kawashima in the DS’ Brain Age, your Wii Fit Age is some calculation of your daily BMI and a couple of randomly selected balance tests. As unreliable and unpredictable as BMI is, your Wii Fit Age makes it look like the infallible scales of justice in comparison. I’m not thrilled about the fluctuating nature of BMI, the sometimes questionable weight scale, or the pointless Wii Fit Age. I can just see unsuspecting users freaking out when their stats fluctuate like a roller coaster and jumping to drastic, unhealthy means to try and control it.
So why am I still using Wii Fit if it bugs me this much? Shame, mostly. You can play games and work out and log your daily activity, but the basic purpose of Wii Fit is to spend five minutes a day checking in to plot your changing physique. And who can’t find time to do that? Immeasurable shame on you if you outright skip a day! I will admit that all I do now is turn on the Wii, check in via the handy Wii Fit Channel (installable via the game disc), and shut it off. I’ve circumvented all the waiting and repetitive chatter by taking a few photos of the Yoga and Strength screens with my cellphone and doing the poses on my own. The pressure of trying to balance an on-screen cursor seems to contradict the tranquility of doing Yoga so while I don’t get ranked on it, I feel much more at ease once I’m done. Whether it was all the issues I had with Wii Fit that drove me to this routine or if it was Miyamoto’s inspired design I can’t say, but I think that’s what makes Wii Fit an overall success.
It’s not supposed to be a rigid virtual workout. Anyone can get whatever they want out of Wii Fit. You can do every exercise every day, you can stick to your favorites and make a routine of your own, or you can just play balance games. I’m close to my ideal weight but I’ve had a bad knee for a few years so my focus on Yoga is intended to tone the muscles around it, and it’s working. It’s disappointing to see my weight and BMI fluctuate so wildly but I know I’m getting something out of it and that’s what really matters.
Wii Fit offers just enough substance to get you thinking about your health and body with a daily hook that’s simple and quick enough to stick with. If you’re already health conscious it may provide a fun new way to work out and track your progress, but the $90 price tag may not be worth it. For the lethargic Wii owners or healthy-hopefuls out there Wii Fit may be the subtle kick you need to start turning your health around.
