Videogames> Wii Fit

E365 -- One of the main problems with exercise, apart from the troublesome "no pain, no gain" mantra, is that there is seldom enough motivation to get up off the couch and head down to the gym. Working out is hard work, and it just isn't fun. Enter Wii Fit, the latest lifestyle "game" from Nintendo, and its peripheral, the Balance Board.

Grouped into four different categories, Wii Fit's daily challenges see you training through various games and charting you progress with the all-important Body Test. It's a simple enough premise that belies its charmingly addictive nature.

To start off, you first have to take your very first Body Test - a thoroughly depressing process whereby you enter your birth date and height, and the Balance Board measures your weight to calculate your Body Mass Index, happily proclaiming you Underweight, Ideal, Overweight or Obese.

Once your BMI has been recorded, you take a series of balance tests, which has you doing things like shifting your weight left or right on the board to stay within markers on the screen, or trying to keep your balance steady while standing on one leg. Once you've done this, your BMI, age and balance test are combined to determine your Wii Fit Age.

From the get-go, it's clear that the Balance Board, while incredibly sensitive and accurate when it comes to measuring weight distribution and your centre of balance, tends towards spitting out some fairly arbitrary numbers at you. My Wii Fit Age, for example, happily oscillated between 42 (I'm 25) and 21 (nice!) in the week I tested the game.

The four groups of exercises - Yoga, Muscle Workouts, Aerobic Exercises and Balance Games - are designed to improve your posture, tone, burn fat and improve your balance respectively, and, for the most part, they're engaging and rewarding.

The first two exercise groups see you aided by helpful instructors that bend you into improbable positions and set you into cramp-inducing lunges. It's these two groups that feel most like a traditional gym, and the fun factor is dialled right down. Despite this, there is a palpable sense that you’re getting the full benefit of a regimented exercise regime, and the fact that there isn’t a audience to witness your fledgling attempts at yoga is a distinct bonus.

The Aerobic Exercises and Balance Games, on the other hand, are a great deal of fun, and allow you the use of your Mii. With activities that include dancing, hula-hoops, and the pleasingly realistic snowboarding, these groups are far closer to typical games - so much so, in fact, that many of these activities make excellent party games.

As you work out, Wii Fit tracks your progress and rewards you by unlocking new activities. The unlocks range from extra repetitions (weee!) to more challenging yoga poses, and while they might not really be "rewards" as such, they do inspire a sense of achievement, and work well as a mechanism for upping the anti.

Detractors will surely point out that Wii Fit panders to the rather gimmicky gameplay that Nintendo has made a mainstay, and to an extent they will be right. No doubt there will be a raft of gamers who buy this game, only to relegate it to the back of their collection before too long. But, like "real" exercise, those that stay with it with reap the rewards.

Happily, there are more than enough reasons to keep at it. What Wii Fit does well is make exercising both accessible and fun, and its tracking system instils a sense of progression and purpose.

Like many Wii games, this is definitely a title to be played with the curtains closed, and when it comes down to it, you just can't shake the feeling that you shouldn't have to buy a game to get some exercise in. But Wii Fit has an undeniably addictive quality to it. Even with the more challenging workouts unlocked, Wii Fit is not going to result in massive changes to your physique or fitness levels, but there is no denying that it helps. And let's face it; anything that makes exercise fun and keeps you coming back for more is surely no bad thing.

TITLE: Wii Fit
PLATFORM: Wii
GENRE: Sports
PRICE: £69.99 (including Balance Board)
RATING: 8/10