There’s the obvious reason of “it’s a fitness game- it has no end”. True, but there’s a lot of games like that. The end of Wii Fit is when you put your controller down and don’t touch the console ever again. However, I want to talk about the technical parts of the game that make it virtually impossible to ever truly be good at it.

First of all, the scale and science behind the Wii Fit are unbalanced and one-sided. It takes your weight at face-value. It doesn’t matter if you have a small body but big breasts, lots of muscle tissue, are short for your age, or what. It will weigh you and judge you harshly if you are not up to statistical standards. Not that the scale is ever accurate-- if you have it placed on anything that isn’t solid concrete floor, it will be a few pounds off. Up or down? Depends on the position of the moon and sun, apparently.

In addition, the tests it throws at you are weirdly critical of you. It starts off asking you to work on your center of balance. I, after a few years of playing this game, figured out how to stand in a way that gets me close to the center. Even then, it judges you harshly, saying you’re still slightly off even if your right side is 50.5% and your left is 50.45% or something. You would have to be superhuman or astronomically lucky to get the exact middle down to the tens of the whole numbers. Several other tests work the same sort of way. Stand on one foot, stand perfectly still, etc. No normal human being can resist shifting weight from one foot to another or breathing in a way that doesn’t make you move an inch or two.

Not only that, but the results are extremely unforgiving. If you get a single test worst than your last result, it will raise your age and you are deemed “very weak”. Even if it is your first time playing and you don’t understand the test, it will not be nice. There’s no levels to the tests so they’re all the same level of difficulty. It takes practice to learn how these things work, so the name of the game is “git good or your self esteem takes a plunge”. This sort of thing is what makes first time gamers not even bother to keep playing long enough to get the hang of it. Once the game raises your base age 10 years, it goes in the garbage.

The exercises themselves are pretty accurate in terms of form and how they work, but the methods of making them register into the system are flawed. When I am breathing deeply, it shouldn’t be calling me a trainee for moving. Newsflash: the belly moves a little when you expand it. Thus, your weight may shift as you stand in place. It can clearly detect when the person falls off the board, but it punishes them for it rather than offering alternatives. Sure, you can grab something when you are on one leg, but there is no room to make that change once you start and realize your mistake. It is also a slightly exploitable system. What is to stop me from just pressing as hard as I can with each foot and standing there during some of these exercises, aside from my own pride?

Now this doesn’t pertain to the game’s difficulty, but it is still important to point out: the multiplayer sucks. There’s no good way for two Nintendo accounts to get scores while in the same room. Half the fun of exercise is doing it with someone and Nintendo is supposed to promote family fun, but where is the fun in doing exercises twice or separately for two or more people to get the credit?

Bottom line, this game is hard in the sense that it is so precise and unforgiving, there is almost no way to win. There’s no accomplishment in getting a move right because it will still tell you that your leg shook that one time, so you are a piece of shit and will never amount to anything in life. Not that it matters, since you’re fat no matter what your body type is.

I have to question the demographic this game was marketed to. People who like exercise wouldn’t buy this game. They already have gym memberships that pay off more than the $50 used for the game + however much they need for remotes and Wii Boards. They have scales that are much more accurate. Is this targeted for kids? What kids want to exercise MORE than what they get in gym class? Moms, maybe. I’m sure there are moms of people who own Wiis that like having personalized gyms in their homes without shelling out hundreds for treadmills that turn into coat hangers.

Honestly? I’d go for the over-glorified coat hangers. Hell, I’d settle for a scale and a cheap pedometer. It would help lose weight much more efficiently than the Wii Fit. Instead, I have a game taking up space on my shelf and a little pedometer. Thanks, Nintendo.

Rating: 6/10