Wiifit – Fitness Post #1

I have a confession to make, I have, lets call it a little bit of a Nintendo belly. There is just like 8 lbs. more of Mii than there should be. So I decided to use Wiifit to try and slim down the extra of Mii.

So I get Wiifit on release day (you pretty much know by now that I get Wii games that I really care about on it’s release), come home and get started. I am so excited about this, which makes me think that the folks at Nintendo are true geniuses to get gamers excited about exercising.

First off, I stand on the board not having any idea what it was going to feel like, but I did not expect what it did feel like, it felt like a regular floor. It wasn’t springy, bouncing, flimsy. It was really solid. It felt so cool just standing on it. So I begin, locate my wii, put in some height, clothing weight and age information and it begins to ’scan’ your body for your first BMI (body mass index) and weight. It finds your center of balance and measures your agility. It then tells you scores and then you ‘discuss’ your weight/BMI goals with a animated balance board. Mine is 8 lbs. by August, my birthday. It tells me that’s a reasonable goal if I’m dedicated, etc. Hmmm, me dedicated to a video game, I don’t think that will be a problem.

Training begins. You pick your trainer. I picked the guy (I would’ve picked my marathon training aunt if I could) and then the animated balance board gives you a fitness bank where you earn credits to unlock new exercises. There is four categories to choose from: Balance, Aerobics, Yoga, and Strength. There is also a fifth category called favorites where you can store the exercises you do the most. I start training with a skiing game. Awesome. This balance board feels your slightest motion as you ’ski’ down a mountain, going through gates. Next up I tried ‘hoola-hoop’ – Dad, don’t ever show that video! Very funny. Twirling my hips around to catch and keep up stacks of hoola-hoops.

It’s now day 5, I’ve exercised everyday. It’s hard and fun, once again, genius! So far, besides skiing and hoola-hoop I’ve done jogging (not on the board but with the wiimote in your hand), a marble balance game, soccer heading, penguin slide, basic step, tight rope walking, yoga (very hard), push-ups and more.

I’ll post again on my progress. Wish me luck.

• Play Ability 10 stars **********
• Graphics 8 stars ********
• Wiimote Usage 8 stars ********
• Longevity 9 stars *********
• Sound 7 stars *******
• Wii Accessory (wii board) 10 stars **********
• Overall 9 stars ******** (if I lose 8 lbs. – I’ll bump it up a star!)
  

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is a lot of fun. It’s great rocking out to songs like “Rock and Roll All Night,” and “School’s Out for Summer.” Although the button combinations get a little old after awhile, it still a great way to rock. This may be a weird complaint, but the characters all look ugly or dorky, and some just plain freaky. I would love it if we could play as our own Mii characters. That would be awesome. Two player would be a lot of fun… if they had come out with a second controller when the game was first released! Just now I am starting to find companies releasing 2nd guitars, but they’re pretty expensive.

You can play Guitar Hero without a guitar. It has advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is that you don’t have to strum so you can focus more on blazing through button combinations. A disadvantage is it’s hard to remember which buttons are which for notes and it’s just not as much fun as having a guitar in your hands.

Each stage you have four songs to choose from. If you do a song well, you also have encores. Each time you unlock a new stage (not only a new stage as in level, but an actual new ’stage’ to rock on), you get another four songs. Through career mode, you unlock songs and money. You can use your money to go buy new gear. I think it’s hilarious when they’re giving you little virtual slips of paper with bills that total money earned less all your expenses from life on the road, like when you get billed for trashing a hotel. I would love in the next Guitar Hero if you could virtually trash the hotel your getting billed for.

The one design flaw I found was, that unlike the new Wii Wheel for Mario Kart, you really have to either grab another controller, if you have one, or take the controller out of the guitar to easily use the Wii Menu. It does have a toggle but you have to be holding the guitar at just the right angle for it to work.

I want to review Wii online play, but, due to technical difficulties with my cousins Wii in Arizona, we only got to rock out for a few seconds – BUT THOSE SECONDS WERE AWESOME!!! Hopefully we’ll figure out the glitch and go through our gaming selection, play all the games with Wi-Fi and do a separate review.

My Dad is a guitar player, spent years at school studying music. Let me tell you, in no way does this give him an advantage over me who cannot play the ‘real’ guitar at all. My Uncle, who is an original geek, can kick my dad’s butt on Guitar Hero. Even when my Dad’s on Medium level of Hardness and my Uncle is on Expert. Dad, I’d still rather know how to play the real guitar if I could, don’t worry.

If you’re a hardcore rocker, or a music lover of any kind (like me who likes to play air-guitar), I would buy this in a heart-beat.

• Play Ability 8 stars ********
• Graphics 7 stars *******
• Wiimote Usage 4 stars ****
• Longevity 8 stars ********
• Sound 10 stars **********
• Overall 8 stars ********

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Marvel Ultimate Alliance is fun playing just because is houses such a huge database of characters, but, unfortunately, that comes at a price. First of all, the camera is always zoomed out really far. It’s a bit annoying and it just gets boring beating up robots and such. All the power-ups are real confusing as well. One plus, is that each character has it’s own set of abilities, such as the Silver Surfer can ride his board through the skies while Spiderman can swing web to web. My dad and I are pretty big comic store geeks, so we had high hopes for this game. The game play is fun in multi-player mode, it’s just a little strange because your character looks so tiny (even with our giant tv). The movies within the game, strangely, are the best graphics I’ve seen and the best part of the game. In my opinion, the graphics on Marvel Ultimate Alliance Wii are better than the graphics on Zelda, Twilight Princess. Funny, they seem to have spent all their money and time making the graphics for the stories awesome and then they skimped on the graphics in the actual game. I’d like to tell endless details about every level, but to be honest, after beating up robots and stuff, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, well I got pretty bored. Especially since Marvel Ultimate Alliance had to fight with my time against so many other awesome Wii games. If you are really into getting this game because it Marvel, then fine, but otherwise, if your looking for a similar style game, then go for the far superior, Smash Bros. Brawl.

Story and Story Graphics 9 ********* Game and Game Graphics 3 ***