Before the fattening

[Every week, from early November through the end of 2013, I'll report on my use of Wii Fit U and how it benefits my health.]

Read Week 1's weigh-in here.

If this Wii?? Fit U weekly weigh-in accomplishes only one thing, I want?? it to be a clear measure of just how much weight I'll gain Thanksgiving week. It's going to be gross, folks.

The plot thickens. My waistline thickens.

As you can see, I already gained weight this week. A lot. I blame Microsoft and Sony for making me sit at a desk for 12 or more hours a day for a week or two. I like the PS4 and the Xbox One, but I don't like what it did to my health and stress level. I didn't sleep much most nights, and I ate a lot of junk while working, including cookies, pie, and ramen. I know I'll never get sympathy for having to play a lot of great new games for a living, but I still want to ??say that last week was hell on me, and my health clearly suffered. 

Wii Fit U Weekly Weigh-in Week 3:

Weight: 157.9 lbs (up 3.4 lbs!)

BMI: 22.60 (ugh)

Goal: BMI of 22 -- FAILED! 

Since I failed that goal, I set another two-week one, this time picking a weight goal over a BMI goal. I want to get a couple of pounds off in two weeks. We all know that's not happening with Thanksgiving coming, but it'll be fun to see me fai??l at least.

Today I did a couple more of the dance routines to make up for eating cake pops for breakfast. The hula one i??s adorable, though I only burned about 4 calories through its hip swaying. The jazz one gets you moving, but the moves are so dorky that I feel weird doing them.

I love the Nintendo-branded drum kit!

Time to hit the walking trails again to make up for being stuck in the office ?all last week. It's probably a good idea with turkey day coming up.

The post Wii Fit U weekly weigh-in: Week 3 appeared first on Destructoid.

Moving forward one step at a time

When Wii Fit launched, it kicked off the fitness craze in gaming for better or worse. Soon the Nintendo innovation (much like many of its other innovations) was being duplicated and improved upon everywhere. As motion controls became prevalent on every system so did fitness games. Nintendo attempted to keep up with Wii Fit Plus, which took the now embarrassingly bare bones Wii Fit and at least let you piece together a work out. It didn't really push Wii Fit up to the level of the fitness g?ames arou??nd it, though.

Part of this was, of course, the fact that Wii Fit's idea of fitness is a lot more relaxed -- it focuses on stretching, balance, and core instead of working up a sweat and toning your biceps into Popeye levels of muscularity. The other part, however, was the fact that the game, for all its mini-game fun, just wasn't that robust in its overall fitness features. Wii Fit U aims to change that. 

Wii Fit U (Wii U)
Developer: Nintendo EAD Group No. 5, Ganbarion
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: November 1, 2013
MSRP: Free for one month ($19.99 for full game with Fit Meter)

Things are much improved from the previous Wii Fit iterations with more workouts, a dance mode, a personal trainer mode, improved games, more focus on mental fitness, GamePad incorporation, and the Fit Meter. That final object might come as a bit of a surprise to some who haven't been keeping track of Wii Fit U (or Dale's weekly updates), but the game incorporates a little doodad that tracks your daily movement like a Nike Fuel Band or a Jawbone Up. This alone is a sign at how much Nintendo was actually trying to push Wii Fit into a legitimate healthy lifestyle platform, but it definitely isn't the only sign considering just how much more robust Wii Fit U is. 

Of course, being more robust than something that could be used to define a lack of robustness doesn't actually make you truly robust so let's start with what's lacking: there aren't many new yoga or strength training exercises. Almost every one of these exercises is from the previous games so there will be very little shake up in your workout in that department. Thankfully, you can transfer your data from Wii Fit and thus not have to be locked into redoing all the beginner level stuff. For some reason it does occasionally make you go back through the workout explanation, but everything is skipable so it's never a pain. It will be familiar though. Other than a slight redesign to the trainers and the admittedly helpful highlight of targeted body parts almost all of the voice work and actions are exactly the same.? Nintendo did almost no advancement in these sections.

That's probably because they were advancing almost every other part of the game. The most welcome addition if you're using the game for exercise or stretching is the Personal Trainer mode. Probably the biggest gap in the previous games was that they gave you a bunch of exercises and mini-games and then just basically told you to figure it out for yourself. Plus featur?ed some structured exercise, but not much. Personal Trainer changes this, allowing you to choose the amount of calories you want to burn or the length of your exercise. Then, using the types of workouts you've told it you want, the system will put together a routine for you. The routines are always unique (or have been so far) and g?ive you plenty of variety.  

Then there's the Fit Meter. This circular gadget clips onto your waist band and is really nothing more than a pedometer and altimeter. For 20 bucks, it isn't a very good one at that. You can easily fake it out by shaking the device back and forth to garner more steps and the altimeter seemed wonky at best. However, if you don't already have a nicer pedometer it will do the trick and even if it isn't the most accurate altimeter it is cool to see how far you've moved up and down. The data your Fit Meter collects can be imported to Wii Fit U and then your calories ?burned are tracked and you can see your activity graphed pretty nicely. More importantly, though, you can use your steps and gained height to unlock th??ings!

Of course, as gamers, we all have the uncontrollable urge to unlock everything ever so it's a solid motivation to get moving or at least shake your Fit Meter back and forth quickly (cheater). You unlock these things through the Fit Meter Challenge, which has you walking famous distances (the Great Wall of China) and climbing famous objects (the Statue of Liberty) with the stats you import. Sadly, all you get to see are some crappy world map graphics as you do this despite the fact that Wii U has a really fantastic Google Maps built in that could have made the walks actually something interest??ing to do other than seeing your Mii hop around a map.

But maybe you aren't buying Wii Fit U for fitness. Maybe you're buying it to play games. Well, that's kind of dumb, but we'll run with it. There just aren't that many new mini-games this time around if you exclude the dancing portion. Notable letdowns are th??e rowing game, which as a rower, I can tell you officially sucks, and the luge game, which has you sitting the board and hurting your back and abs trying to steer. Highlights include a racquetball game that involves both movement and strategy and the surprisingly addicting trampoline game where?? all you do is time ever-higher jumps and lean back and forth to make sure you hit the center of the target. Seriously, it sounds idiotic, but you'll just keep on doing it until you actually jump off the board in excitement of landing your Mii dead center and the game kicks you out (that board is damn sensitive). 

The online aspects of Wii Fit U should also be mentioned even though their robustness is, well, it's on level with most of Nitnendo's online offerings. You can join Gyms, which are groups of Wii Fit U users. Doing this populates ?your screen with Miis in that group and you can check out their stats while also seeing the group's overall stats. You can also join one of the big national gyms or, if you have friends, create one of your own. It's possible to share every single detail of your workout on Miiverse pretty easily as well, which is actually a nice feature if you want to brag a bit. 

Since it is such a big new part of the game, the dancing modes should be mentioned, but they are almost relentlessly worthless to anyone who has played any other da??nce game on any other platform. While they do ge?t more challenging as you unlock higher modes there's no licensed music, no dance moves you'll recognize, and very little in actual enjoyment or fitness to get out of them. At the sake of full disclosure I will admit to being a rhythm-less white nerd, but I've enjoyed other dancing games despite sucking at them completely so I can safely say it wasn't just my lack of ability to find a beat. On top of this, if you want to fully use the dance mode you'll need to have four controllers at the ready (Balance Board, 2 Wiimotes, GamePad). That's eight AA batteries!

So a major addition to the game just isn't that good, but it's OK because that really isn't the star of Wii Fit U. The new exercises, mini-games, and Fit Meter aren't either. The best thing about th??e game is its simplest new feature: the fact that you can do almost everything while watching TV.

Sure, this is easily achievable with a tablet, an app, and your television, but then you're cutting out the motion controls and balance board that make videogame fitness a different beast from an app. You can also use the GamePad as a camera in mirror mode. With this you set it up in its stand pointing at you and then you can see yourself (embarrassingly) on TV. While you might realize just how much of an idiot you ?look like it's particularly helpful for knowing if you're ke??eping your form correct.

In fact you could probably say that for almost every aspect of Wii Fit U Plus. There's almost always a better product out there that does one element of what this can do in a far superior manner, but nothing else that has the whole package. Considering that right now you can download the game for free and simply buy the Wii Fit U Fit Meter for $19.99, it's a pretty cheap package at that. Buying all the separate, but better, items that would do what Wii Fit U does would definitely start ??to run you up into hundreds of dollars.

Applying a score here is a little tough. If Wii Fit U gets you motivated, moving, and helps you lose weight then it's easily a 10 out of 10. That's the goal and if it works then it works. As the next game in the franchise, Wii Fit U definitely moves the series forward about a million steps, but it's a million steps that have already been taken elsewhere. Wii Fit U brings the series up to date as a ?fi??tness game, but doesn't push it any further.

Meanwhile Wii Fit U's mini-games are fun, but still suffer from being single-player/non-simultaneous multiplayer and there just isn't that much new stuff. If you're looking for something that will keep you motivated and get you moving, it could definitely work and the Fit Meter is an extra level of motivation, but if Wii Fit didn't do it before then I'm not sure it will work for you now. The good part is that the game is free until the end of the month so you can f?ind out for yourself. 

The post Review: Wii Fit U appeared first on Destructoid.

Walk it off

[Every week, from early November through the end of 2013, I'll report on my use of Wii Fit U and how it benefits my health.]

Read Week 1's weigh-in here.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I'm always on the quest for good food. I'm one of those a-holes that tweets pictures of his food all day. After one post earlier this wee??k, one of my followers asked me if I ever ate anything healthy. I told him that I ?wouldn't want to waste my life doing that.

But now I look at my stomach... 

I was in New York all week, covering the PS4 launch as well as meeting with Microsoft on Xbox One. I'm in the city about 5 or 6 times a year, and when I'm there I eat a lot. So this week'?s weigh-in should be interesting.

This week's weigh-in will show the usefulness of the Wii Fit U program when for times when you can't perform a daily body check. Being out of town, I only had my Wii Fit Meter with me. I hoped that all of the running around to cover these next-gen launches would burn some calories, but as I've found tracking steps at other conventions, you don't end up walking nearly as much as you think you ??do. It's just that your feet hurt.

What's neat is that the Wii Fit Meter has enough memory to hold multiple days of tracked data. When I returned home on Friday, I just ha??d to sync to send over the week's walking number?s. Nice!

To make u??p for the lack of exercise, and as a sort of break, I took Wednesday off to do three of the things I love doing most: walking, shopping, and eating. Though the cold wind pushed back, I kept on, hitting all of my favorite places in NYC that day. At the end of the day, my Wii Fit Meter said that I walked about 9.5 miles. I took that as an excuse to order a huge rice bowl for dinner.

Speaking of New York and walking, I really like Wii Fit U's walking challenges. They use the step data from the Wii Fit Meter to simulate walking courses from all over the world. I've conquered the New?? York walk, and have done about a third of the Chicago one. I like that you're given little travel tips a??nd trivia blurbs when you reach checkpoints on the map.

Wii Fit U Weekly Weigh-in Week 2:

Weight: 154.5 lbs (down 2.3 lbs)

BMI: 22.12 (down just a bit)

Goal: BMI of 22 -- getting there!

I lost weight? How? I ate so many hamburgers last week. One evening I drank myself into oblivion, and then pas?sed out for much of the next day, missing one important wor??k appointment. I'm the worst!

Even with all of that walking, after weighing in later in the week, Wii Fit U says it's going to be hard to hit my goal with how little I'm moving. It asked if I'd like to try to increase the number of daily calories burned to help try to meet my goal. When I said yes, Wii Fit U told me that the required number would be over ?2,000 calories a day. The so?ftware told me that this would be pretty difficult. The charts show that I'm not even close. 

So I'm going to hit it hard next week, getting back into Wii Fit U routines. I still want to try flamenco dancing!

See you next week.

The post Wii Fit U weekly weigh-in: Week 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

In worse shape than I thought

[Every week, from early November through the end of 2013, I'll report on my use of Wii Fit U and how it benefits my health.]

This year, being the?? biggest console laun??ch year in a decade, has been really busy for me. I normally travel over 80,000 miles a year for Destructoid, but this year has me nearly doubling that, and it's not over yet. 

I eat well everywhere I go. It has become sort of a goal to find the best food I can in every city I visit. So I leave home for a week, pig out, come home stuffed, stressed, sometimes hung over, and  always la?cking rest, doing this every two wee?ks or so.

I looked down at m??y stomach last week. And on the floor, just past my bulging gut, I saw the Wii Fit Balance Board...&nbs??p;

Wii Fit U is available now as a free download from the Nintendo eShop. You're free to ?try it out for a month, and the purchase and syncing of Nintendo's Wii Fit Meter ($19.99) lets you keep the game foreve??r. 

The Wii Fit Meter is a pedometer that has the ability to synch with the Wii U, sending along your daily step count, elevation climbed, and an estimate of the calories b??urned. This small, smooth device clips on your belt or waistband, and its little screen can display all of the data it tracks. It also shows a cute pixel version of your Mii's face. It nicely ties in with Wii Fit U's Body Check evaluation system. All of its data ??is included with a Balance Board weigh-in and then tracked in Wii Fit U. This is the data I'm willing to share in my weekly weigh-ins.

Wii Fit U Weekly Weigh-in Week 1:

Weight: 156.8 lbs 

BMI: 22.44 -- Wii Fit U calls this 'normal.' Thanks?

Goal: BMI of 22 -- Wii Fit U said that I am he??althy and asked me what I wanted to do. I didn't know. So it suggested that I shoot for an even 22 BMI, working to shave off the little more than a half a point I have above that in the next month, which comes out to about 3.9 lbs. I think I can do it.  

I'm just getting the hang of this thing after using it for three or four days. In initial tests, Wii Fit U says that m??y balance is terrible. I found out the hard way going through the game's Yoga exercise routines. Seeing the charts and graphs that display my balance, I think of seismic readouts after a large tremor. They're never not funny to me.

I like the soft, calming voice of the in-game Yoga instructor, but I think I hear a sneer in her prompts to stop shaking. She keeps telling me that I'm not great in th??e nicest way. 

I checked my home for hidden cameras before jumping into Wii Fit U's Hop Hop dancing exercise routine. I'm really glad that no one saw my moves on the evening I first tried, though I'm not ashamed of the swe??at I broke. Both the hip hop and pop?-and-lock routines were pretty fun, and the visuals are adorable. The music wouldn't top any charts, but it's still fun and catchy.

The dance routines use the Bal??ance Board along with two Wii Remote Plus controllers to track your steps. 

I'm not the best at any kind of exercise. I think it's a coordination thing. Because the routines are fun, I'm willing to try more over the next week. I hear there's f??lamenco dancing -- I'll definitely be checking for hidden cameras before trying that one.

I'll be honest and s?ay that I don't regularly exercise outside of walking. I really love walking,  usually putting in 3 to 5 miles a day. The Fit Meter is a perfect companion for me, then. I've been too busy lately, working h??ard on putting together our coverage of the next-gen system launches. But I aim to put the Fit Meter to good use this next week.

I'll report back next Saturday.

The post Wii Fit U weekly weigh-in: Week 1 appeared first on Destructoid.

Maybe that's why... nevermind

During their financial briefing, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that, according to their research, that hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are still playing either Wii Fit or Wii Fit Plus. They're hoping the trend continues with Wii Fit U. A free trial version of the game is their hook.

Their survey shows that, in Japan, 500,000 people are still using their wii Balance Boards on a daily basis. They're hoping that these users will be tempted to try the Wii Fit U trial. 

Just writ??ing this ma??kes me feel like a fat ass. 

Nintendo: Half a million Japanese people still play Wii Fit daily [Gamasutra]

The post Half a million people still play ?Wii? Fit daily in Japan appeared first on Destructoid.

You can buy a Fit Meter for $20 to keep it after that

Well this is certainly interesting. Remember Wii Fit U? Well Nintendo just announced that beginning November 1st, you'll be able to download the game for free, with a one month trial in tow. After the trial period you can buy a Fit Meter accessory for $20 and sync it to your system to keep the game forever. The accessory keeps track of your steps, elev??ation, ?and intensity, so it's not a simple pedometer.

A retail package will hit on December 13th, and after February 1st of next year you'll be able to buy the game digitally. Lighting hardly ever strikes twice, and I'm not sure if Wii Fit U is going to do as well as the first. I remember the retail blitz for the original ?as I was working in Target electronics at the t??ime, and people would go crazy for those things -- but then they would come back months later and tell me how they collected dust for months on end.

This holiday season will be very interesting and telling for the Wii U, that's for? sure!

Wii Fit U [Nintendo]

The post Wii Fit U will come with a free trial month appeared first on Destructoid.

Flamenco!

If you're growing impatient over the release of fitness game Wii Fit U, know that it's still on track for a 2013 release. Satoru Iwata gave the game a ??quick blurb in this morning's Nintendo Direct presentation to let us know that it's still in the works.

The only real news to come out of his short segment is that there will be 77 different training events included in Wii Fit U. The presentation video showed rowing, sledding and even flamenco dancing. I want to try ?the latter to see my Mii i??n a dress.

It also showed the included pedometer, the Fit Meter, in use.?? This little device will track your steps and calories burned, and will sync with the Wii U's GamePad to track your fitness progress.

The post Wii Fit U to include 77 training events, coming?? 2013 appeared first on Destructoid.

Rest assured, dear reader, that Lara Croft isn't the only one grunting and moaning at E3 this year. Jonathan Holmes got his hands (bum?) on Wii Fit U at the Nintendo booth and mad??e a variety of interesting sounds as he worked his core with the publisher's upcoming high-definition fitness title.

As if spending long days hiking around the Los Angeles Convention Center weren't torturous enough, Nintendo put Holmes' body to the test with a luge mini-game? that resembles a prolonged sit-up. The expression on the plucky Destructoid editor's face certainly screamed something, but it sure didn't look like it was fun.

The post E3: Wii Fit U and Holmes’ best Lara Croft impression appeared first on Destructoid.