Wii Fit Plus (Balance Board Not Included)

Wii Fit Plus, that is! I couldn't wait to try this new title because I enjoy and use the first one so much. When you start it up, the Plus goes and gets all your info and stats from the older version and brings them right into the game, so you can continue right where you left off, but with lots of new games and features. This is well worth the $20 just for the 15 new games.There are lots of nice new features with this Wii Fit Plus. I always wished I could set up routines instead of having to move from one menu to the next after each exercise, or that there were ready made routines that I could follow involving several exercises. With the Plus this is possible. You start in the locker room and select from Wii Fit Plus Routines, My Routine, or the Favorites menu. You go to another screen to decide what parts of your body or what type of goals you want to pursue and the difficulty level and length of time. Then the system will set up a routine designed just for you and your goals. I think it's much more efficient to go through exercises this way. You can also compare how you did each day and how much you're improving. There's a multiplayer mode so that more than one person can play, but you do have to take turns. Still, it's nice to not have to 'log out' each time a different person wants to play.Another new feature is that you can add babies or pets to the Plus. I have a big fat long haired 'mini' dachshund that was too embarrassed to be weighed today, but that pupper is going to get weighed tomorrow! They don't get to do body tests or play any games, but you can keep track of their weight and record it in their stats. Useful? Well, maybe not so much but big points for the cuteness factor.I love the games because it's such a great way to get exercise without even realizing it and the 15 new ones in this title are just as good as the old if not better than the first edition. Want to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time? One of these games will have you balancing on a big red and white striped ball (your Wii Fit board) while juggling smaller balls thrown to you by your assistants. Or how about Rhythm Parade where you march and raise and lower your hands on cue and in time with the music? Tilt City has you using your Wiimote turned sideways and the balance board to maneuver dropping balls into one of three color coordinated pails. It's easy at first, but when several different colored balls start dropping at once, it's a challenge. I love the balance games and if you're a fan of the balance board game with the little balls in the first game, there's one here that uses some different colored slots to "pop" the balls up over small obstacles and into the hole. You control their movement by leaning in different directions on the balance board.There are also 3 new yoga activities and 3 new strength training activities. That's not to say that some of the games don't improve strength and muscles. There is one game where you flap your arms like wings to fly from one target post to another over water to get points on each one. This is one where you want to draw all the curtains because you'll look completely ridiculous standing there on your balance board wildly flapping your arms like some kind of a crazy bird. But you won't believe how tired your arm muscles feel afterward and you don't even notice while you're busy flying from one target to another. There's another game, Island Cycling, where you step on the balance board to simulate pedaling a bike, trying to pass Wii flags where you accumulate points. You steer with the Wiimote held sideways. I was surprised how sore my calves were afterward, trying to control the speed of the bike.When you can get exercise while doing something that's challenging and fun without even realizing that you're exercising, that's a successful game. That's why I bought the Wii to begin with and this game takes full advantage of the balance board and all the interactive features. Can I walk and chew gum at the same time after playing these games? Well, maybe not yet but I can bust big blue and white balloons by running into them with my Segway on a beach and get almost halfway through the course inside a big ol' bubble in Balance Bubble Plus. Great job, Nintendo! Two thumbs up!

My favorite feature of Wii Fit Plus is that it finally got my girlfriend playing. Despite my own use of the Wii Fit for months now, she'd always just maintained she didn't like video games and refused, yet she just spent over an hour playing balance games and flapping her arms around. I think part of the credit goes to how much easier it is to switch Miis in this version -- rather than having to almost entirely exit the program, Plus makes it easy to switch Miis back and forth while playing; "here, you want to try?" became a matter of two button presses rather than ten, and that was enough. I think several of the new balance games also were more appealing to her -- more challenging and more entertaining than the games she'd seen me play before.Even discounting that, though, this game definitely contains enough improvements to be well worth the $20. There are three new "Yoga" and three new "Strength" exercises; I personally found the new "yoga" positions excellent stretches and the new "strength" ones less worthwhile, but your mileage may vary. I greatly appreciate the ability to see a measurement of how many calories each exercise is burning; as an ice cream fan, it's pretty amusing (and informative) to be told exactly how much farther I have to go to burn off that hot fudge sundae (425 cal.), and I wonder how many people will be surprised to find out how their exercise correlates to their activity (no more "well, I ran for five minutes, so that means I get a triple-patty cheeseburger (770 cal)".The interface is more streamlined, and I appreciate the "go directly to Wii Fit Plus" doorway on the startup screen, and the quick stats check at the beginning. The preconfigured workout routines are little more than a few minute's worth for each goal, and most people will probably reconfigure their own workouts; thankfully, the Plus gives the option to do that (although only Yoga and Strength exercises can be fit into the user-planned workouts, not balance games or the new Training Plus games, and rearranging your workout list is a little cumbersome).This isn't a huge change, but it's convenient, and an improvement.Other reviews go into a game-by-game breakdown of each minigame, so I won't cover that here. Suffice to say, there are a lot of them, and I expect that these additions will revive my Wii Fit usage for the next month or two at least, which I consider worth the $20. I especially appreciated that there were more games that emphasized upper-body workouts -- flapping my arms like a chicken isn't just fun, it's also mild-but-decent shoulder exercise, and I like having more upper-body options.I did notice one apparent bug; the Rhythm Kung Fu game seemed slightly "off", sometimes registering a "perfect" for multi-part moves when I had only completed the first movement. This is a minor issue, and I imagine it will be fixed soon enough (if it isn't a problem unique to my own experience), but if it is a general bug it might be a reason to wait, especially if your Wii cannot download Nintendo's patches.Now I just have to get her to let me play it again!