Plaidophile

The initial setup was a bit odd. For some reason I had to push the sync button on the balance board and on the Wii a few times before they finally acknowledged each other, but they did. Then the balance board took on a life of its own with a very Japanese anthropomorphized avatar. It was charming but also a little bit creepy.

It asked my height and birthday and weighed me and called me a fatass (not surprising), then it had me do a few balance tests which it didn't explain very well but I still managed to do them pretty okay. Then it said my "Wii Fit age" was 33, which was "4 years more than my actual age" (I guess it hasn't noticed the Life Clock on my blog sidebar either) and asked me if I wanted to set a fitness goal. I told it I wanted to lose 20 pounds in 3 months, which it said was a reasonable goal. Well then!

I played a bunch of the minigames. They certainly look a lot easier than they actually are. The balance board measures every little movement you make and is extremely sensitive. Even staying still is hard - and moving your center of gravity to follow various targets is much more difficult than you'd expect, especially since usually when you move in one direction, you start out by pushing, which actually makes you go in the opposite direction from how you think you're going. I was expecting the ski slalom game to be easy, but it was quite a challenge.

Jogging was surprisingly fun, and didn't use the balance board at all (it uses the Wiimote's accelerometer as a pedometer, the same way that my cellphone does). The goal in it is to run just fast enough to tail behind someone else, without running into him, and without falling too far back. Gently trotting in place actually does cause much more of a burn than you'd expect, and I felt like controlling my pace actually increased the effort.

Yoga was also very good. Quite some time ago I bought "Yoga for Inflexible People" and got very quickly frustrated with it, as it didn't do anything to really encourage people who needed help (all it did was call to attention how inflexible I was). However, Wii Fit's yoga mode is actually very encouraging, and even when it notices shakiness it still gives positive advice. Also, I had a very hard time holding the "Tree" form (which has come to affectionately be called the "foot in crotch" form on early Wii Fit reviews) and while the exercise was supposed to be held for 30-40 seconds it detected I was about to fall over and ended it early, just as I felt like I couldn't hold on any longer. Very thoughtful of it.

Oh, and the marble game is really freaking difficult. Somehow I managed to (barely!) complete it on my first try though.

Also, the step aerobics mode was pretty counterintuitive, at least to someone who is very used to playing DDR. It doesn't help that if you miss a couple steps in a row it pauses, admonishes you for not paying attention, and then starts up again without warning. (It would be better if it were to keep things going but just add more steps so you can get your bearings.) Plus, I was predictively timing my movements (like what you do in DDR) which doesn't work so well in this since it's actually looking for you to initiate, rather than finish, the movements on the beat.

After doing 30 minutes of exercises I went back and re-did the "Wii Fitness age" test. I didn't understand the directions on one of the tests and ended up getting 0% on it, so it gave my new "age" as 39, but then I redid it and got 88% and that dropped my fitness age to 28. I'm pretty sure at this point that the fitness age has nothing to do with a biological age. Oh well. It's still a nice single measurement of how you're doing. It also suggested that I add my other activities (namely my daily half-hour of walking) to the log, which I did, after spending several minutes trying to find the log (I ended up needing to RTFM).

The overall attitude was very much like Brain Age, which I pretty much expected, and while that works very well for adults I can completely see how it would discourage (i.e. shatter the self-esteem of) children. It really does need a kid mode.

Anyway. I can certainly see myself making a daily habit of this, although I can also see myself getting very fed up and possibly even bored after not too long. Still, it'll be interesting to see where this takes me, fitness-wise. I don't expect to lose a lot of weight, but getting better control of my balance and posture would definitely be a good thing.