Wii Fit Plus

Review from Cav - Thursday, 17 December 2009 @ 8:31am

I will be the first to admit (and my brother from another mother, Jae, would come a close second) that we let you down with our Australian Gamer Biggest Loser WiiFit article, by not following up. I won’t speak for Jae, but after about two months of on and off work-outs... I didn’t really get anywhere. That could be accounted to the fact that I really wasn’t in it for the hardcore workout, if you could stretch to call it that (pardon the pun) as I enjoyed the balance games like Ski-Jump and Headers. In the hope of more of the same, the introduction of WiiFit Plus has had me drag out the board again. So what does $27 dollars add to your WiiFit Workout regime, if you have one...and I know people that actually do. Well, your $27 will get you:

• 15 new balance games to try out.
• A few new Yoga moves
• The option of multiplayer for a few of the games.
• A routine suggestion or routine creator
• Some activities based on Wuhu Island from Wii Sports Resort

If that board snaps my arse with a wet towel one more time....

But... once you have spent that money, your original WiiFit disc is useless and I thoroughly doubt that it will get you anything for trade. I wonder why this couldn’t be download content? They could probably still charge $20 and save on disc production. They will still have to make discs for the bundle. I wonder what stores are doing with the old WiiFit bundles they have in stock? My mother in law put one on a Christmas Lay-Buy, with a console, before Wii Fit Plus was released... I am going to try and get that changed for her. Good book points are worth a fortune.

Tony Hawk... eat your heart out... or not

In my eyes, WiiFit Plus has undergone a big change from its predecessor. This time round you are not only working on your body, but your mind as well..... which isn’t what I was looking for, but a healthy challenge all the same. It seems to be a lot about co-ordination, with players having to do things with their feet on the Balance Board and with the WiiMote in their hands at the same time. That doesn’t really make you work up much of a sweat, even though I did.... but it has been averaging around 35 degrees here over the last week. Not only do you give the WiiMote a flogging, but the Nunchuk sees a lot more use too. This is a BAD thing. Why? Because there is a lot of ’flicking’ going on and on more than one occasion I thanked the big guy upstairs that he blessed me with a crappy set of eyes that forced me to purchase some spectacles, as I nearly lost an eye from the cord, lashing my face. It makes me wonder when Nintendo are actually going to release their own wireless nunchuk and fend off the glut of sub standard wireless nunchuks on the market. Is it gonna take a law suit when someone loses an eye? My guess is that they would just say that the plaintiff was ‘over exerting’ or put out some crazy promotion stunt and begin issuing WiiSpecs safety glasses. Only available in white, of course.

There is no need to start a new profile if you already own WiiFit. Mine was more than willing to tell me that I have been on the program for over five hundred days and that I failed to reach my last goal.

Surprise, surprise.

From the main menu, there are a few more options which include weird stuff like weigh in a baby or pet. I really don’t see the use in that. Maternal Health nurses take care of the latter and we pay vets enough that they can throw in a weigh in too. For those of you with very little time there is now the simple test, which weighs you in and does your balance/centre of gravity test in one move. I don’t like to use this option as it forces you to forgo the two Balance Tests that used to be part of the assessment.

Segway racing should be an Olympic Sport

As most Wii owners know, some Wii games will install a Channel on your Wii Menu screen. Mario Kart did, as did the original Wii Fit. I just assumed that the WiiFit Channel would have records of my weigh ins and body test. Wrong answer. I decided to weigh in and take the daily body test thru the Channel screen, you know, to show my commitment. That smart mouth, little oblong with the squeaky voice had the balls to tell me that I hadn’t logged in in over 140 days! So I found out the hard way that Wii Fit Plus has nothing to do with the Wii Fit Channel that has installed. I didn’t look hard enough into it to find out that I had to install the Plus channel and the delete the original.

Is multiplayer in WiiFit Plus really multiplayer? Well it's not simultaneous multiplayer, it's more of a take turns affair. Who could afford to fork out for a secong WiiBalance Board anyway? One by one players can pick their Mii and the have a go at on one of the nine selected games as a single player, set a high score and them lets others select their Mii and try to break them. All scores are reset if multiplayer is exited. I give the multiplayer element a ho-hum rating - playable, buy not that exciting.

Um.. yeah..you better buy it

Pros

Twenty odd bucks is about what you'd pay for an add on on the 360 or PS3, so the price is pretty fair - Some of the new games are fun - Quick launch body test is a bonus.

Cons

Too much nunchuk - leans more towards traning the brain this time aound, not shedding the kilos - I still find that the goals set by the game are unreal, I don't wanna be a supermodel, just wanna ditch my 'central roundness'