Wii Fit attracted millions of new players to the world of video games. Now Wii Fit Plus offers a range of new features and enhancements to help players reinvigorate their workouts, along with exercises and balance games designed to keep them fun. Players will find a new dimension to the Wii Fit experience as they easily set their own customized workout routines, or choose 20-, 30- or 40-minute workouts based on how much time they have available.






 

Gameplay

As with the original Wii Fit release, Wii Fit Plus is designed, as its name implies, to improve the user's fitness. The game contains a large number of activities that fall into a variety of categories, including: yoga, aerobics, strength training and balance games. With all but a few exceptions, which utilize variations on a standard Wii Remote configuration, all activities utilize the Wii Balance Board (included with this bundle), either alone or configured with either a Wii Remote alone or the Wii Remote and nunchuck. The Balance Board, like any other Wii controller acts as a motion/pressure sensing device wirelessly synched to your Wii and replicating your body's movements. Each controller employed occupies one of the Wii's four wireless inputs, together mapping the reference points needed to recreate most full body motions on screen. Although this limits the majority of the activities to a single player orientation, various activities throughout the game support up to eight players in alternating play.


 
To use Wii Fit Plus players import their Miis from their Wii system, set up profiles, establish a current physical baseline, set fitness goals, and embark on a routine to reach them. Wii Fit Plus tracks your usage, weight and progress towards your goal over time, giving you a status report as you start each session. At any time players can choose whatever activity they want, whether exercise or balance game, and as they progress in these they will level up in each, gaining points, setting high scores and unlocking more activities.

Personalization Option Via 'The Locker Room'

The original Wii Fit was designed to have something for everyone. Now Wii Fit Plus raises the bar by providing users with personalization options that allow them to find/create a specific workout routine that is exactly right for them, their family and their lifestyle. One example of this is "The Locker Room." Easily accessible throughout the game, here players can choose from a number customizable options that allow them to maximize their time with Wii Fit Plus without having to navigate through the game menu while in the middle of a workout. In essence this allows players to become their own personal trainer. Customization options available within The Locker Room include: preprogrammed and timed Wii Fit Plus Routines; My Routine, where you choose your own set of activities, optimizing their length and area of the body to be focused on; and Favorites, a notation of activities you frequent, which provides fast access to exercises you enjoy doing the most.

 

Addition Yoga and Strength Exercises

Designed as an addition to the already substantial list of focused, physical exercises available in Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus contains six new and challenging strength and yoga activities. But continuing with the game's commitment to personalization, the key to these additions is not in their volume, but in how the player chooses to mix and match them. Do them in the order they are presented, or combine them in whatever order you want. The choice is yours. The player even has the ability to repeat the ones that he/she prefers, maximizing attention and effort where it is needed most. In addition, for those to whom time is a commodity, you can now omit unnecessary interludes between exercises, making for a continuous, timesaving routine.

A Wealth of New Balance Games

Regardless of the considerable fitness factor packed into Wii Fit Plus, the Nintendo brand is and will always be all about having fun. With that in mind Wii Fit Plus also comes packed with 15 new, entertaining balance games suitable for every member of the family. Just a few of those that players can expect to see are: Juggling; Skateboarding; Snowball Fight; Obstacle Course, a log-leaping, cannonball-evading event reminiscent of what Nintendo icon Mario must go through; and Perfect 10, a balance game designed to promote a combination of physical and mental health. In this final example the player's Mii is situated between multiple color-coated balls, each showing specific numbers, with the goal to swing your hips, hula style, in different directions to tap out a total of ten as many times as possible before time runs out.

Key Game Features

• The Wii Fit Plus Bundle includes the game software and the Wii Balance Board.

• Users can input the amount of time they want to spend on their workouts or select an area for personal improvement, and Wii Fit Plus will suggest a number of diverse activities for them.

• For the first time, users can mix and match which strength and yoga activities they prefer on a given day. The seamless exercise flows make it easier than ever for users to maintain their daily workout routines.

• Users might be asked to run an obstacle course across a series of platforms, zoom across a beach on a Segway x2 Personal Transporter or flap their arms to help their hilarious chicken-suited characters aim for targets.

• The range of games and customization options will make players want to play every day. They’ll be having so much fun that their workouts will seem to fly by in no time at all.

• Players also can see estimates of calories burned and can even activate a feature that lets them weigh their dogs or cats.

 


Wii Fit Plus is exactly what it sounds like — a revision, rather than a revolution, of the 2008 game that almost single-handedly propelled the fitness genre into the mainstream. The core experience hasn't changed, but Plus is a big improvement over the original Wii Fit thanks to the ability to create your own tailored workouts and the introduction of plenty of fun new balance games. And while there are still some head-scratching omissions (and some questionable health advice), Plus' excellent integration with the Wii Balance Board peripheral and its solid presentation make it an ideal tool for those wanting to improve their fitness without having to trek to the gym or publicly expose their downward facing dog in a yoga class.


While it's essentially the same game as its forebear — a series of muscle, yoga and balance game exercises which (mostly) use the board peripheral — there are enough reasons here for those who bought the original game to dust off their balance boards and shell out cash for Wii Fit Plus. Extra activities are the most noticeable additions: Plus features three new yoga poses and three new muscle workouts, all of which are tailored for more advanced users and nicely round off the existing offerings (and bring the total to 18 yoga and 15 muscle exercises overall). While the actual number of exercises hasn't increased significantly, the way you access them within Wii Fit Plus has been given a positive makeover, making workouts a much smoother experience.

First, all exercises are available to try from the get-go; you don't have to unlock them, which was the case in the original. More importantly, you can now easily string together individual exercises into routines, remedying Wii Fit's most glaring omission. Plus comes with its own preset routines bundled into different target groups. The Form group, for example, has three routines (each made up of three individual exercises) which target hips and behinds, arms and figures, while the Youth grouping targets posture, mind and body, and legs and hips. You can join these preset routines together to create a longer session, or better still, you can create your own routine from scratch. Plus allows you to create a session of up to 60 minutes in length, but it strangely lets you choose only from muscle and yoga exercises. Creating your own routine is a more-than-welcome addition, but not being able to include some of the more aerobic-heavy games such as Hula-Hoop, Jogging or Rhythm Boxing seriously hamstrings Wii Fit Plus' effectiveness as a total fitness tool.


You may not be able to work up as much of a sweat as you'd like with your individual routines, but Wii Fit Plus does provide you with an excellent way of tracking your health plan's progress, even if it's still heavily reliant on body mass index (BMI) measurements. BMI is a widely accepted indicator of whether a person is overweight, but any health professional will tell you that it's reliant on age and muscle mass, points that Wii Fit doesn't take into account. You can once again set weight and BMI targets, and if you have a previous Wii Fit save, Plus will automatically transfer your history and goals. Plus also adds a calorie counter, using a somewhat complex measurement named METS to figure out how many calories you've burned while doing any of its activities. And in another neat addition, Plus also has a long list of foods and how many calories you need to burn to work off said food (which is either a great motivational tool or an easy way to get depressed once you see that 10 minutes of work only adds up to a boiled prawn).

By far the biggest addition can be found in the balance games section, with 12 brand new games and three improved versions of existing challenges. Most of the new games are quite fun, offering more depth and challenge than the originals bundled with Wii Fit. Tilt City, for example, is a great test of coordination, requiring you to guide coloured balls to their appropriate destinations by tilting three different platforms using the Wii Remote and by shifting your weight on the balance board. Snowball Fight is a Time Crisis-like game which sees you leaning left and right from cover and using the remote to shoot snowballs at opponents. Segway Circuit has you emulating a ride on the unique mode of transport, shifting your weight forward in an open course to try to pop balloons. And for golf fans, Driving Range lets you hit the range, and the balance board shows you the mechanics of your swing by tracking how your weight shifts.


Not all of the new additions are appealing. Obstacle Course at first glance looks promising, requiring you to run (lifting your feet up and down on the balance board), avoid obstacles, and jump onto shifting blocks (bending your knees and then quickly pushing up) in a Mario-like platformer environment. It's a great concept, but it's let down by the balance board, which often seems a step behind (literally) in realising when you've stopped or started moving. The same controller inaccuracy also makes Perfect 10 — where you have to swing your hips against large on-screen bumpers to create sums of 10 or 15 — more frustrating than fun, occasionally failing to register the right direction where you're thrusting your hips. And Bird's Eye Bulls Eye, while not suffering from control problems, might be one that you end up avoiding simply because it requires you to shred your dignity by standing on the board and flapping your arms like a gigantic chicken.

While you could have family and friends play the balance games with you in Wii Fit, it was a fiddly process which required you to reselect and restart the game for every new player. Plus makes this process much easier, allowing multiple players to take turns on games. But just as the create-a-routine ability is oddly limited in Plus, so too is multiplayer, with only nine games selectable for group fun.

Wii Fit Plus' presentation is the same as in last year's game, which is to say it's clean, clear and pleasing to the eye. The generic male and female trainers are back to help you (and sometimes goad you into activity), as is the cartoon balance board, which serves as a guide to all of the features of Wii Fit Plus.

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