Finally got my Wii Fit today, and immediately did my first workout. First impression: too much damn exposition and confirmation. For example, if you press A to start a workout, you then have another screen after it for no good reason showing little Miis. Then you press A to go to another screen, where you stand there waiting to start. Then you press A to start AGAIN. This is two more button presses after you press the first button to start.
Press A.
Every time there is some message on the screen, it spells itself out letter by letter, then you press A to dismiss it.
Press A.
I did a 30 minute workout, and it took 59 minutes to accomplish it. This is a problem — it’s tough enough to devote time to workout, but when the preliminaries to actually doing it take as much time as the workout itself, well… that’s not motivating in the least.
Press A.
There’s also no way to tell it to skip all the silliness and the confetti and the top scores and just move on to the next exercise, which means you either have to exercise holding the remote in your hand, or do all the A button stuff and then put the remote down and retrieve it every time another A button needs to be pressed.
Press A.
There are too many steps for everything in the Wii interface, it shows a complete lack of machine intelligence. For instance, if only one player is registered for the Fit, why does it bother displaying the only player and then asking me to pick a player?
Press A.
Now, a complaint about yoga in general: you know that tree pose, where you bend your leg and put your foot against your thigh and your hands clasped above your head? What the hell do they think I am, a gecko? I don’t know about you, but my foot will not simply stay on my inner thigh unless I put some kind of glue on the sole.
Continue? Press A.
That said, I’m sweating after thirty minutes of exercise interspersed with twenty-nine minutes of Wii housekeeping. Let’s see how long I will keep this up, even if only to make the most of my investment — I bought it via an Amazon reseller, who charged an extortionist price (although still half that of the unscrupulous people selling USED Fits for THREE TIMES the retail price).
Return to Wii Fit Plaza. Press A.
