Shawn Johnson Gymnastics for the Wii
Reviewed by Nutwiisystem on January 8, 2011 .
Summary: Not a workout game per se, but a surprisingly enjoyable and realistic simulation of competitive gymnastics.

The bulk of the market for Wii fitness games are female. Being male, it sometimes gets just a tad awkward for me to review some of these fitness games. Trying to emulate an 11 year old girl dancing to Dance Sensation was an excrutiating experience where I had to make sure the room was clear and all the blinds were closed before I could start. I had a similar experience when I reviewed We Cheer 2 and had to pretend to be a blue-haired tween cheerleader. Oh, the things we do for our art. And no, I didn’t have a ton of fun perfecting the moves to Miley Cyrus’s “Girls Night Out”. No, really, I didn’t…ahem.

Moving on, I decided to review the new game Shawn Johnson Gymnastics for the Wii. There are actually a lot of similarities between this game and the two I mentioned above. All three are obviously designed for little girls, I’d say between ages 7 and 13. In all three games, the on-screen animated characters you control do “authentic” dance steps, cheerleading routines, and gymnastic moves respectively. But in all three of the games, the player is controlling the action just by following on-screen cues with their Wii remote and/or their balance board.The game starts out with a greeting from an animated Shawn Johnson. The animated character really doesn’t look too much like the real thing. She’s not quite real, not quite a cartoon, with a shiny face that looks a bit like a creepy talking egg (as you know, the real Shawn Johnson is a very lovely young lady, so some artist at Zoo Games really needs to be smacked). But it is her real voice welcoming you to the game, which puts a smile on your face and helps your maintain your suspension of disbelief.

The first step, as with most games like this, is to design your player. Your character has to be a girl, and you can choose basic things like hair style, hair color, and clothes.

There are a series of “tutorials” which teach you how to play the game. As in real gymnastics, you have several events to choose from. You can do practice the vault, a floor routine, the balance beam, the uneven bars, or compulsories, which are a combination of all of them.
Throughout the tutorial, Shawn will instruct you on actual terminology and strategies relating to gymnastics, like a real gymnastics coach.

But of course you don’t really do gymnastics moves. The way it works is, every specific “move” done by the on-screen gymnast’s is represented by a specific series of controller moves, whether it’s mashing a series of buttons, moving or flicking the Wii remote, moving the nunchuk joystick, or (if you’ve enabled the balance board) appling pressure using your feet to match on-screen cues. The faster you react to the cues, the better your score is. Miss a cue, and your on-screen character stumbles.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of the moves, you can proceed to the competitions. You compete against seven other virtual gymnasts, and the competition can get intense–just like in the Olympics or the World Championships, you need to keep an eye on your score and everyone else’s score, and both you and your competition will be stronger at some events and weaker in others.

Me rocking the compulsories

Like in real gymnastics, in compulsories your routine is defined for you, while for free exercises you can build your own routines by stringing together a series of moves. . As a real gymnast does, you can create routines of varying degrees of difficulty depending on your skill level and the score you need to win a competition. And as a real gymnast, you can “memorize” the sequences over time, which will help you improve your score.

You move through the competition by designing progressively more complex routines (in terms of both the on-line gymnast as well as your working of the controllers) and winning competitions. Each competition you will unlock other levels as well as rewards like new moves, trophies, new outfits, and photos and videos of Shawn Johnson.

Creating an uneven bars routine

As with Dance Sensation, I wouldn’t say this is a workout game by any stretch of the imagination, even though in some circles it’s being touted as one. As Dance Sensation was a “dance simulation”, I’d say that this is a “gymnastics simulator”. You really don’t get the physical workout you’d get with real gymnastics, but you do learn a lot about what it’s like being a gymnast. The realism of going through competitions and creating routines is phenomenal. You can see that Ms. Johnson really played a big part in creating the game.

Unfortunately, the developers at Zoo Games could have played their part a little better. As I said, the graphics are definitely average-to-subpar for a Wii game. The controller responsiveness was decent for the most part, except for certain moves where you had to move your Wii remote. At times I’d do it right, but the system would completely miss it, making my poor on-screen character fall on her face. The system tries to tell you hints like “if a move is not registering, don’t keep doing it, but try it a little differently” or “don’t make large moves, just make compact moves”, but other games seem to handle motion control without making the user compensate for it. There are also some user interface glitches with the menus and navigation that there’s really no excuse for in this day and age.

To sum up, while I wouldn’t recommend this as an exercise game, if there’s a young girl in your life who loves gymnastics, I would highly recommend it as a fun and engaging way for her to learn about gymnastics and experience what it’s like to be a gymnast, especially as we get closer to London 2012.

I also applaud Shawn Johnson for her business acumen, and I hope this game does well for her. After she achieved so much success in Beijing in 2008, I’m impressed by the way she has continued to be a real role model for young people at a time where there seem to be fewer and fewer of them. Instead of hearing stories about her in getting arrested for DUI or smoking bongs or whatnot, you see her winning Dancing with the Stars and doing a ton of charity work. Here’s wishing her luck for her comeback in 2012!

Rating:
4 of 5

NewU Fitness First Mind Body Yoga & Pilates Workout
Reviewed by Nutwiisystem on December 16 .
Summary: The best yoga and Pilates workout title in an admittedly lackluster field.

It’s been a long and hard road for those looking for good Yoga and Pilates programs on the Wii. Wii Fit provided some Yoga exercises which by most accounts, while a decent demonstration of the potential of the Wii balance board, were a bit rudimentary and disjointed. The first “pure Yoga” title for the Wii, Dreamcatcher Yoga, was an unmitigated disaster both from a Yoga perspective and a technical perspective. The first “pure Pilates” title, Daisy Fuentes Pilates, didn’t fare much better.New U Fitness First Yoga and Pilates is actually the second “NewU” fitness game developed by Lightning Fish games to hit the US Market. The first was a game originally released in Europe as “NewU: Fitness First Personal Trainer”. However, when Ubisoft (the US publisher) brought the game to the US they inexplicably changed its name “My Fitness Coach 2” (In a boneheaded move, they apparently attempted to cash in on the huge success of the original “My Fitness Coach”, but ended up alienating fans of the original My Fitness Coach and short-circuiting any possible interest in the NewU title, which was a decent workout title on its own merits). Anyway, I’m happy to see that the new publisher, Deep silver, was wise enough to keep the original name for NewU Fitness First Yoga & Pilates.

In any case, if you have My Fitness Coach 2, you’ll see similarities between that game and this game, most notably the “swooshing” 3-D menus and the cheeky reaction of the trainers after you’ve done something well.

When you start NewU Fitness First Yoga and Pilates, you first create a profile. You’ll enter your name, sex, your “build” (skinny, average, or overweight), and you’ll also select your experience level with yoga and Pilates (a complete beginner, someone who’s taken a few classes, or an expert). You then enter your date of birth, height, handedness, and then choose from one of 10 goals (ranging from weight loss to relieving back pain to improving posture to de-stress; women will also see an option for post-natal exercise).

You then choose one of three “teachers” (all female) each with different personalities and styles who will take you through all the exercises. They tried to make the teacher selection as realistic as possible–you can even read each teacher’s bio and hear a taped introduction from each of them. Finally, you choose a location (relaxing nature vistas ranging from a mountain valley to a beachfront), and then have the Wii balance board calculate your weight. By the way, the balance board is not required for this game, but it definitely does augment most of the exercises.

You then see a series of menus:

Toning – This is where you can do your daily classes, each of which is basically a string of yoga or Pilates exercises put together one after the other for about 30 minutes. You can have the system select a class for you, if you’re in a hurry you can choose a “quick class”, or if there are certain exercises you like you can create a custom class.

From here, you can also practice exercises, perform Pilates Core Skills (Water Tilt, Zip Up, and Drawing In), or try some Challenges which really do test your endurance (e.g. Pilates 100, Side Plank, Crescent Moon Standing, Tree Pose, or Perfect Warrior III). Here’s a video of the Pilates 100, Crescent Moon Standing, and Perfect Warrior (note in the Perfect Warrior the moment I fall flat on my face).

Meditation – This is a very interesting part of the program where you can try different meditation techniques, such as Healing, Let Go, Third Eye, Energizing, and Calming. After a particularly stressful week, I did try the “Let Go” exercises and I have to say it helped. The instructor will calmly say instructions to you, calm images will appear on the screen, and peaceful music will play. You can choose Meditation any time from this menu, or you’ll be given the option to meditate after a workout.

As for the workouts themselves, they are typical yoga and Pilates moves (weighted more on the yoga side), such as airplane, dancer’s pose, dog tilt, crescent moon standing, and sun salutation (I counted 30 moves total under the “Advanced” setting; other settings will have fewer). As you perform each, you’ll see a video image of your instructor in front of the vista you selected (the teacher was basically filmed in front of a blue screen and is superimposed over a picture of your environment).

I do like the fact that they used video, because you can see exactly what the instructor is doing. In addition, before each exercise, you can select “show me first” where the teacher will literally talk you through a step-by-step tutorial. You can also view an ‘About this Exercise’ blurb which explains the goal of the exercise.

I’m a total novice when it comes to yoga, so I chose the beginner’s path. The exercises were just right for my level, not too complex, not too strenuous. At the more advanced levels, the instructor goes much faster, and there’s a presumption that you know the moves already (she’ll yell out instructions like “step back into a downward dog” or “lower chest down into a baby cobra”).

I asked my girlfriend, who has taken both yoga and Pilates classes, to go through a class at the “advanced” level and let me know her opinion. She did, and afterwards told me she did get a pretty good workout, comparable to a class. She said the moves were indeed accurate and that exercises like the “Sun Salutation” sequence were challenging in a very good way.

On the negative side, she said the instructors at times seemed a little “robotic” and dry in their explanations–they’ll shout out literal instructions, whereas the best “real” instructors would have put a little more personality and creativity into them. Also, some of the sequences were much too fast, and at times it was a bit awkward to have to look up at the screen while performing the move (this is where more descriptive vocal commands would have helped). Still, after a few rounds of practice, she got the moves down and was doing them naturally. And she did like details such as the instructors telling her how to breathe, as she did the relaxing music.

The controls are decent. The system makes good use of both the balance board (to check how much in balance your forearms or feet are as you perform certain exercises) and the Wii MotionPlus (to check how steady your hand is for certain exercises where you need to stretch your hands). An indicator in the upper left-hand corner will show how steady and centered you are. While most exercises are intuitive, there are some where no matter how “correctly” you think you’re doing the exercises, the system will tell you you’re not–and will not tell you what’s wrong. That, of course, is a frustration many of us have gotten used to with Wii games.

Overall, I’d say if you’re interested in “Western Style” fitness, your best bet is EA Sports Active 2, Biggest Loser Challenge or Zumba Fitness. However, if you’re interested in “Eastern Style” fitness, this one is clearly the best choice to date, although admittedly there wasn’t a very high bar set. While it’s no substitute for a real class, it’s a great way to get a decent yoga and Pilates workout in the privacy of your own home when you just don’t feel like going out.
Rating:
4 of 5