Thoughts on Wii Fit and other Nintendo titles

May 31st, 2008  |  Published in whatever...

Stacy and I ordered Wii Fit from Amazon when it first became available for pre-order back in April and it was finally delivered on Wednesday. We’ve been using it consistently for the last three days and while it’s got some fun activities that definitely get me exercising, on the whole I’m not all that happy with it.

I find that Wii Fit suffers from the same problems as Wii Sports: too many things to acknowledge, poor feedback when trying to learn activities, there isn’t a “play” mode, and the activities are actually fairly short. I’ll explain each in a little more depth.

First off, is anyone else as sick as I am of having to hit the A button all the time to acknowledge pithy little comments from the game or its characters? I want to play the game, not respond to dialog. I find this happening in too many Nintendo-produced titles (Paper Mario, Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii). I’d really like a “quickplay” mode where it lets me jump right into playing instead of having to specify a lot of options or respond to prompts.

As for feedback, the sports titles are pretty unforgiving when it comes to executing an activity. I got extremely frustrated with some of the tennis and boxing training in Wii Sports. I knew I was doing it wrong, but the game didn’t give any hints as to how I could improve my skills and in the case of tennis, once you miss one ball, it’s over and you need to start from the beginning.

The next gripe is related to the last; many times I really don’t care how well I do on an activity or game, I just want something to help me unwind and play around. The Nintendo titles are too structured, in my opinion. You can’t just head soccer balls endlessly, keep skiing for twenty minutes, or just keep belting out home runs. How many of you prefer unstructured play to rule-driven activities?

My final complaint was the shortness of the sports activities; it’s related to the previous point, but even if I were trying to get a proper workout I find myself spending just as much time navigating through menus and dialogs just as much as I am performing the activities. I get that Wii Fit tries to ease you into exercising and gives you more reps or time when you’ve mastered the basics, but sometimes I just want to keep doing something until I perfect it, instead of having to start anew each time.

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