Wii Fit has been all the rage across the world, selling out within hours of hitting store shelves. Nintendo’s attempt to turn gamers from fat, lazy people to fit and productive individuals has certainly grabbed the attention of the mainstream media. But how well does it work? Nintendo did a decent job of making your workout fun, which is one reason many people don’t exercise. By adding cute animations and your Mii characters, the barrier to entry has been dropped.

The graphics in Wii Fit are about on par with Wii Sports, which is to say they’re decent, but nothing to get you too excited. Most segments of the game don’t have much going on outside of your particular exercise, so there isn’t much eye candy. The sound is about equal to the graphics, with some little bleeps and bloops here, some midi-type background music there, and odd vocal work from your trainers.

You begin Wii Fit by creating your own personal profile that is symbolized by your Mii. You then input your height and the weight of your clothes and the balance board starts doing its work. The first measurement taken is your weight. Afterward, you have to go through a balance test by leaning left and right to keep your center of balance in certain areas. These two pieces of information is all that is used to calculate your Wii Fit age. First timers will most certainly have a high Wii Fit Age due to inexperience with the balance board and the mini-games. After my first experience, the game honestly asked me if I fall over and hurt myself a lot because my balance is bad. These types of insults the game spews at you whenever you don’t perform to Olympic-like levels will definitely turn some people off to the game, as well as the odd calculation for BMI which is what tracks your progress. Nintendo could have easily added the ability to measure percentage of body fat into the balance board as most low cost scales have this ability. Using the body fat percentage as an additional factor would have been a much better way to track the user’s fitness level.

The game is broken down into four segments: Aerobics, Strength Training, Yoga, and Balance Training. You start off the game with four exercises in each area to better yourself. Extra exercises are unlocked by spending more and more time with Wii Fit. The game has a timer built in that tracks the amount of actual training time you spend each day. Most exercise types will only take 1-3 minutes, so you’re going to spend a lot of time repeating each of these intro exercises just to unlock the rest. Speaking of the rest, Wii Fit really does not have many total exercises for each focus area, which may cause you to get bored with the available activities over the period of a few weeks. I would really liked to have seen more exercises available from the start and more total activities to increase your fitness level. How about the ability to create a 30 minute workout in one or more fitness areas if I choose?

Wii Fit definitely does a good job of helping you lose weight, which is its primary goal. The balance board is a solid accessory with a lot of promise. With more exercises and better fitness level calculation, Wii Fit would be great. As it is, it’ll help you get fit while insulting you and boring you slightly.

Overall: 7.5 of 10

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