The Plus

The Plus of the Wii Fit Plus

It should be noted that when you continue to get one-star ratings, the music sounds as if it’s being played on a xylophone, and that it sounds like the love scene from a Lifetime movie (of which there are mostly the opposite). I just got two stars on “Soccer Heading” which is again, just a line-up of people aiming to hit you with not just soccer balls, but teddy bears and shoes and…panda heads. Apparently the heroic fanfare I get at two stars is for being an “amateur.”

Okay then there’s this one where you have to sit. Still. Sit still and watch a candle melt. The idea is that if you are focused, the flame will stay still. Otherwise it will shake. It may not come as a surprise to find that I was exceptionally “unbalanced” (one star) at this. My boyfriend Sean—here on out referred to simply as ‘Sean’ because I’m not trying to be all ‘may boyfreh’—sits down on the thing and gets ‘Champion’ (four stars) on his first try. The fanfare was overly exuberant. And let me just s ay that while he was on his way to getting this fanfare, the screen was black with only the candle and the light emitting from it, and then there are just footsteps. Just ghosts or something. Whatever they are, these unseen characters walk in, clear their throat—seemingly uncomfortably—and then they leave. Then this moth flutters around. But besides that, nothing much happens.

Sean is not doing quite as well on everything else Wii Balance Games have to offer. The lifetime music just played for him on the ski jump game (which makes him crouch and then extend his knees), and I heard him say, “Okay, I get it, I can do better.” Then he tries again, only gets 61 meters, and goes, “Oh come—are you serious?”

“I hate all these things,” he just muttered. 

And by the way, let’s talk about besides the balance games. No not the strength training, I’ve gone nowhere near that yet. Just when the little tiny sneaky-sounding voice tells you to ‘step on!’ to the board, and you do, it acts surprised by how incredibly fat you are, but like it’s trying to be polite—kind of an: “Oh...” 

I don’t know why. It’s not explained, nor clear.

He’s doing strength training now. Not interesting. I just know that the woman training him (don’t ask me why he selected the woman) just said “press down on the control panel to view me from the back” while she was on all fours. I’m just saying. 

Wii Are Not Fit, Plus We Look Idiotic

Wii Fit  Plus—A New & Improved Opportunity to Look Idiotic, and Have it Confirmed by a Mildly Snarky Balance Board and Hurtful Scoring.

    I’ll start with the fact that there is a balance game included that is based solely on flapping your arms to get from bulls eye to bulls eye. So not only do you have to flap your arms—wings—and lean from side to side, but you are provided with the sparkling opportunity to see that not only is it possible to fall off of a Wii Balance Board, but that it might actually strain your muscles. For me anyway. I have pipe-cleaner arms. This is not to say that they are attractively skinny, just that they can support just about as much weight as a pipe-cleaner.

Worse than all of this is the fact that a whispered “dammit!” involuntarily emitted from my gritted teeth when I didn’t land where I wanted to. I realized it was time to try another balance game within WF+. 

Yes, my ‘work-out’ is more about things like simulated snowball fights and less about ‘real exercise’ and ‘running.’

Onto the snowball fighting. This is the one where you get to stand in the shivering cold snowy environment so perfect for snowball fighting, without ever having to leave your room/apartment/dorm/house. Video games are providing me with the ski-lodge vs. slopes equivalent of exercise. 

With this snowball fighting, I get to stand in pretend-shivery-cold and basically get bullied. Not by kids or, yes, real people, but by Miis that vary in age from fat little Chinese kids in sunglasses to old, bearded white men that look like that fisherman guy. All of these pretend-people have ganged up on me, and left me to repeatedly lose consciousness from icy snowball hits to the middle of my face. This exercise, which awards me the loss of three calories or something, according to the aptly chosen piggy bank, allows me to feel insulted and even a little shamefully irritated by all of these people, young and old, who won’t stop trying to hurl sharp cold balls at my face. 

Best of all with these is that when you are abominable at the games, as I have been, it plays this dopey music that only emphasizes your imperfection in the Wii World. As your Mii drops to his or her knees in broken self-loathing and shakes their white-knuckled fists at the heavens, you get to listen to the type of music that usually indicates that Goofy is about to tumble down the ski slopes. 

When it rates you with one star—something that you get the feeling is sort of a grudging participation ribbon—it gives you a low-level adjective in keeping with the theme of the game. For example, this game called “Perfect Ten” or something unassuming like that. You have to do this little hip-bumping thing where you swivel your hips unattractively into the mushrooms on the screen in order to add the numbers on top of the ‘shrooms to equal ten. This taught me one thing: I’m still bad at math. Especially when negatives become involved. When I got a 1 star on this one, after a descending of dopey musical notes (the kind that simultaneously joins with a camera zooming in on a character who shrugs and makes that Debbie Downer face), it announced that I was ‘Abacus’ at this game. Fantastic. 

On this tilty-table thing, I got a one-star and was told I was, “Unbalanced.” I realize it is a balance game. But I think that’s still a little harsh. 

When you get two stars, it’s almost worse. You jump up in the air to victorious music, practically a look of rapture on your little Mii face. This is worse than dropping to your knees, a broken Mii, because…biicause…the fact that being just only marginally better gets such a heroic fanfare seems only insulting. It’s like the Sympathetic Smile Score. 

I’ll (possibly) get back to you on what happens when I know what happens for three and four stars.