If I could do it again I’d probably do it the same

I haven’t owned Wii Fit Plus for even six hours yet, and I’m already smitten with it. I haven’t even played any of the new games, which are mostly what I bought it for. You might think that I’ve finally snapped, but wait a couple paragraphs before you pass judgement.

The original Wii Fit was a neat little application that definitely made me want to work out a little and improve my overall health, but it was very directionless. My only real goal, besides making sure to play every once in a while, was to achieve a number of Fit Credits at the end of the day that ended in a 5 or a 0, to keep my tally even. Having to choose a few random exercises a day was not super-motivating, as it didn’t really give me a great idea of what I was even working toward. To that end, my goal of playing every day or two quickly fell flat, and I only picked it up for a handful of days at a time every couple months.

Where Wii Fit Plus really shines is not in all the fancy new screens or games or that wonderful feeling of playing a new game for the first time (though that was really nice!), but rather that it lets you customize a workout of your own that you can easily repeat each day to target specific parts of your body. The game even has a reasonably-sized selection of pre-made workout routines that only take a couple minutes to complete and make it easy to figure out what you want to use the game for. This alone is worth the $20 expansion pack. Also nice is that the game imports all of your Wii Fit data so that you don’t have to start from scratch. This was kind of a no-brainer, but we’ve seen many games omit much more obvious/necessary features.

This is not only great for giving yourself a focused goal, but it also makes the game a million times more convenient. Making a workout routine saves a huge amount of time by not forcing you to navigate the menus every time you do something. Not to mention you don’t have to sit and consider what you want to do next. That was my biggest issue. I could never decide what yoga pose/workout/game I wanted to do once I was finished with my rhythmic boxing.

In other gaming news, I finished Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story last week, and could not have been more satisfied. The battles seem to last a little longer than I’m totally comfortable with, but they never got tedious or boring, as the active battle system forces you to be on your toes and paying attention at all times. And now that I’m done with that, it’s back to burning my way through Final Fantasy VIII, which I think I’ve definitely broken.

Now that I’ve taken the time to really obsess over the mechanics of the game, my characters are much more powerful than they probably should be. When I got the Tonberry King GF on my first run through the game several years ago, it was an extremely long and dangerous process, but this time it was… really easy. The King, with his hundreds of thousands of HPs, stood against me for over half an hour last time, but this time I struck him down in about ten minutes. Funny what a few years and a lot of experimentation with the junction system can do for you. Of course, this miraculous victory was also a product of hours of grinding to max out my strongest magics and earning enemy cards which I could refine into useful and/or rare items. But I totally broke it and now the game is mine to simply coast to the end of. Also, that’s exactly why I wanted to replay the game in the first place, so yeah. I’m awesome.