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By brikrok3 (12th Jun 2008)

There’s something counterintuitive, even vaguely off-putting, about a videogame that’s earnestly intended to improve your health. Videogames, as we all know and have heard, are pernicious, sedentary, monotonous activities that promote obesity, strain vision, and engender repetitive-stress injury. On top of that, videogames aren’t even supposed to be edifying, their gruesome morbidity desensitizing children to violence and ostensibly encouraging teenage delinquency. In recent years, of course, much of this has changed: videogames have become increasingly educational. With the introduction of the Wii, moreover, games have become physical experiences; a game of Wii Tennis, for instance, as most will attest, is a formidable workout. But a game by which, Nintendo says, “you, your friends, and your family can work towards personal goals of better health and fitness”? Is it perverse to think that Wii Fit isn’t, in fact, a videogame because it doesn’t damage you physically or psychically? And would it be perverse, then, for a die-hard gamer to like myself to like Wii Fit, though it lacks everything I think of as a game? Apparently, no.

Wii Fit, as you might expect, lacks any cohesive sort of plot, though it nonetheless offers some health-based continuity. Before starting in on one of the game’s many, many activities—yoga, aerobics, fitness training, running, soccer, tight-rope walking, skiing, snowboarding, etc.—you’ll be physically assessed. This less than flattering process means you’ll be physically, and psychologically, skewered with none of the Richard Simmons-esque kindness all of us have grown to love. Thus your body-mass index, your weight, even your back-handed Wii Age, a phony number concocted by the unsympathetic, will all be on display. This information will be tracked through all your workouts and after every game, giving you some sense of overall progress. After your health assessment, you’ll be forced to take on a male or female trainer. These paragons of health—nothing like the barking numbskull or the Sapphic terror readily available at your local gym—will usher you along, offering you encouraging (and figurative) pats on the bottom for a job well done, and gentle reprimands for spotty performance. Then just go to the menu and hit the “gym.”

All of this (except running, which is controlled by a pocketed Wiimote) is controlled by the Wii Balance Board, a tremendously intelligent little white step that’s about the size of a skateboard. For most activities, you’ll be required to stand squarely on the board. More than just a scale, the board accounts for your shifting centre of gravity, measuring the extent to which your body tilts one way or leans the other. Your actions are then reproduced on screen—a tremendously impressive feat, considering the relative paucity of hardware needed. For the most part, you’ll be reproduced pretty accurately on screen, but occasionally you’ll wonder what the odd on-screen ghost arm or leg is doing. Unfortunately, though, the board’s batteries tend to deplete rather quickly, especially if you’re playing in large groups or over the span of several days. Gamers are thus cautioned to have their board charged for any and all—I can’t believe I’m saying this—fitness parties, at which, I assume, pomegranate-tofu smoothies will be served to slake attendees’ post-aerobic thirst while they await seaweed-wrapped quinoa and kale rolls, smothered in fresh wheat-grass juice. Moreover, additional boards—yours is included with your purchase of the game—are expensive, thus limiting more than single-person play, unless a neighbouring friend happens also to have a Wii and Wii Fit.

For the most part, game play—if that’s really the right term—is quite good. As you progress through activities, more reps will become available, challenges will become more challenging. That’s all fine and dandy, but if in reality my tub-of-lard brother is winded after eating a sandwich, and I’ve just finished my third Iron Man—the example, of course, is hypothetical: my brother, for instance, doesn’t like sandwiches—then it would be nice to control the game’s settings from the get-go. On one end could be, say, John Goodman, on the other, Lance Armstrong. You could fall somewhere in between, though one hopes nearer the latter than the former. Added to this is the problem of downtime: between activities, you’re forced to flip through the usual wealth of menus, hunting for your next “exercise.” Some sort of queue system would have been nice, in which you select, say, a dozen activities, or even an at-random workout function, in which activity after activity instantly loads. Overall, though, game play is good, if lacking the customization that I want from a game that will ostensibly improve my health.

Visually the game is quintessentially Wii, employing as it does its scaled-down graphics and silly big-headed people. Fortunately, though, the silly, big-headed person on screen is you: instead of creating new characters, the game simply imports your Mii. For the most part, then, the game is just sort of passable-looking: bright colours combined with chunky, block-like surfaces. Strangely, you’ll notice, your trainer is more lifelike-looking than you; in Japan, apparently, the only things more anthropomorphic than humans are their virtual representations. That being said, the visuals live up to the demands of the game: for the most part, your trainer’s instructions and demonstrations are easy to follow, making your workout all the easier to enjoy.

Ultimately, Wii Fit is a tremendously fun game, if, that is, it is a game at all. But the good people at Nintendo have done with the Wii what they had done to gaming more generally: rethought what a game, even a gaming experience, could be like. Instead of cramming the proverbial square peg into a round hole, Nintendo has thrown out the board and its useless pegs and started anew. Thus, gone are not merely the button-hammering controllers, but controllers altogether; gone are not merely plodding, onion paper-thin narratives, but narrative altogether. And the result couldn’t be more satisfying. Admittedly, gym buffs and pro athletes will get little in terms of physical gain from Wii Fit, but the average person—you, me, most people—will be surprised to find out just how intense a virtual workout can be. Wii Fit isn’t just another great game. Instead it marks another turn in Nintendo’s sneaky attempt to rethink, even reclaim, gaming, without seemingly having offered a game at all.

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