[Rant] Unlocking My Life With Wii Fit

It’s been about two weeks since I started my daily “training” with Nintendo’s Wii Fit and, like all of the other training games, my novel interest has already faded. I went in knowing fully that Wii Fit is not going to change my life in any significant way (other than having less money to play with). But I was a bit disappointed by some of the design choices in the game.

First of all, I hate unlockables. I don’t mind it too much when the unlockables adds useless content like a change of costume or different decorations. But when unlockables hide the core game content, that should not be forgiven as a design choice. Going into Wii Fit, I immediately see that 75% of the core exercises were LOCKED. And the only way to unlock them was to play the same exercises repeatedly. I quickly got tired, both literally and figuratively, of trying to unlock anything.

Another thing about the Wii Fit unlockables is that it is uniquely tied to each user profile. That means when someone else wants to play Wii Fit, they can’t have access to the content that I unlocked. This immediately chucks out Wii Fit as a party pleaser. That and the fact Wii Fit likes to call everyone fat.

My last significant reason for getting bored so quickly is my discipline, or lack thereof. Wii Fit assumes the player is disciplined enough to make their own training choices. Normally, I could masochistically torture myself in playing if it could mask the “work” with something fun. But when a game becomes more like a job than a game(I am also looking at you MMOs), I lose interest. Wii Fit certainly falls into that category.

Luckily, there was a solution that could have solved Wii Fit’s unlockable problem and make it more fun to play. The premise of Wii Fit is a daily training tool. There is also a trainer to help you. Then why not let the trainer help you make your daily training choices? Give the player a choice of how long they want to train for and the trainer, either systematically or randomly, picks different exercises for you. And at the end of each daily training session, introduce a new exercise. This adds incentive and excitement of unlocking a new surprise everyday. Nintendo’s other training game, Brain Age, did that. So why didn’t that happen here in Wii Fit? Of course this unlocking solution is going to be a slow method for some people. But combining this solution with Wii Fit’s current unlocking system could appease many types of players.

Now that I have freed myself from Wii Fit, I am left wondering what to do with the balance board. Ubisoft’s new Raving Rabbids game will certainly make interesting use of the balance board. but that’s still in the world of mini-games. Using the balance board replicate real sports may also be interesting, but playing those sports in real life should be more appealing. How about making it simulate pressure peddles in a giant mech simulator? Go Gundam Go!