Worst Wii Fitness Games

The Wii Fitness Game market is growing incredibly rapidly. The good news is, this brings us a lot of terrific games such as the ones highlighted on the Top Ten Best Wii Exercise Games and the Best of the Rest lists.

 

Unfortunately, this also means there are a lot of cases where game publishers, in their desperation to "cash in" on the craze, will release games that fall short in quality. Maybe they don’t take enough time to design the game right. Maybe in their haste to get the game to market they don’t spend adequate time in product design or quality assurance. In many cases I’ve seen, they’ll sign on a celebrity and get lazy, banking on the celebrity’s name to bring in sales rather than the quality of their game.

 

This list is based on my own experience, as well as the aggregation of multiple review sites. With so many other great exercise games to choose from, these should be avoided.

 


Wii Fitness Games to Avoid

 

Jumpstart Get Moving Family Fitness

Jumpstart is a producer of educational titles for the PC and the Wii. Jumpstart Get Moving Family Fitness Wii was their first attempt at a Wii fitness game for kids. Unfortunately, the activities are poor copies of fitness exercises already found in other games, most of the games don’t even provide very good fitness, and the controls are frustratingly inconsistent. For an alternative family title, I’d recommend the excellent Active Life Explorer or Nickeodeon Fit.


Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatim 2011

Poor Jillian has the ignominious distinction of being on this list twice, for the disastrous Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009 and this one. Now published by D3 Publisher and not Ubisoft, Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2011 is an exercise in frustration. The premise is not bad–they wrapped all the exercises around a story where you exercise by smashing down walls, and navigating around warehouses. But some exercises are hard to follow, whch results you in "failing your mission" and having to start 20 minutes of exercise from scratch. If you’re a die-hard Jillian fan, you may appreciate the effort, but for everyone else your time is best avoided with this one.


Dreamcatcher Yoga

Yoga by Dreamcatcher touts itself as the “first 100% experience”. It promised to be a step above Wii Fit Yoga, with in-game Yoga gurus acting as your personal trainer, guiding step-by-step through various Yoga exercises, making suggestions to you based on measurements of movements and shifts in weight from the Wii Balance Board. There will be three game modes; one where you start as a beginning and try to become a Yoga master; one where you learn new posts and techniques, and one where you go through a variety of routines.

 

Many people who practice Yoga were looking forward to this game as an "advanced" version of the Yoga found in Wii Fit Plus. Unfortunately, the wide consensus is that the game fails in many ways. One of the worst offenses is that during the exercises, you’re constantly having to look up to see if you’re doing it right, which of course completely defeats the purpose (Wii Fit Plus, of course, gives a pretty good tutorial and then has exercises which you can do while glancing at the screen). The game doesn’t make good use of the Balance Board or the Wii’s abilities. Worst of all, it looks like the publisher, in a vain attempt to fool people into buying their flawed product, is posting fake 5-star reviews on Amazon. This one was a good idea, but don’t waste your time and money; stick with Wii Fit Plus until they can make their improvments.


 

Tony Hawk Ride

Tony Hawk: Ride was a valiant attempt by Activision to get into the exergaming genre. Like Konami did with its DDR Dance Pad, Namco-Bandai did with its Active Life Outdoor Mat, and Nintendo did with its Wii Balance Board, Activision tried to introduce an brand new peripheral to the world. On the outside it looks impressive: it’s a replica of an actual skateboard, reportedly designed with the help of Tony Hawk himself.The consensus seems to be that the controller itself is well designed and has a lot of potential for future skateboarding and snowboarding type games.

 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of reviews from critics and users alike agree that the graphics of the game itself are subpar, the controls on the "easy" setting are far too easy and on the "expert" setting are far too difficult. Hopefully Activision can correct its problems in future games that use this peripheral. If you’re willing to put up with a very steep learning curve or are an avid Tony Hawk fan, you might consider this one.


 

Daisy Fuentes Pilates

On August 4, 2009 Sega released a Pilates game for the Wii. Daisy Fuentes leads the exercises, which use the Wii’s motion controls to check progress. Reviews of this title are overwhelmingly poor, with users reporting that controls are not responsive, gameplay is buggy, and the "game" is really nothing more than a glorified exercise video made worse by the poor execution.

 

If you are an avid fan of Daisy Fuentes and are willing to put up with the game’s shortcomings, you can order your copy of Daisy Fuentes Pilates for Wii. Otherwise, you’re still better off buying a Pilates DVD or taking a class.


 

wii balance board

Jillian Michaels’ Fitness Ultimatum 2009

Jillian Michaels of The Biggest Loser fame released one of the early Wii Fitness games back in 2008. Unfortuantely, reviews for this game have been universally negative. The consensus is that controls are unresponsive, and graphics are extremely poor. If you’re a Jillian Michaels fan, I would recommend waiting for Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010 to be released. Hopefully Majesco (which ordinarily releases high quality games, which makes this failure surprising) has taken notes and will be making improvements in the next version.

Your Comments

Do you have your own Wii Workout experience you’d like to share? Can you think of any games I missed, or do you know of new games coming out? Add a comment here to share with the world!

 

 

 


1 Comment

  • Reply
    Darlene
    Sep 12, 2014 4:48 am

    As an keen gaming fan, I just needed tto post you a brief wor
    or two to say thanks forr placing this grea info up.

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