Entries Tagged 'Exercise with friends' ↓

If you haven’t yet entered for my favorite competition in the world, “Ruckus Nation“, by HopeLab, you better hop to it! The deadline for entry is only 5 short days away as I write this… but that still gives you until the 20th of November to think up something amazing. Remember, if you come up with that one great idea… you might just make $75,000 in 5 days, and help a ton of kids lose a ton of weight. And that would make anyone feel great, right?

Put on your thinking caps- I’m sure you can come up with something great if you expend a little brain power. I can even help you out on that hard part (the thinking) with an article I wrote, here. It can give you a head start on coming up with an idea, or it might even give you the edge to win a prize! Check it out, and all the best.

Oh, and before I forget, you can help out HopeLab and the Ruckus Nation competition organizers by becoming a judge if you don’t have your own idea. Your input might just help select the greatest weight loss aid for our kids we’ve seen in our lifetimes… that’ll make you feel pretty good I imagine! Enter as a judge, right here. I already have!

Ever since I bought my Nintendo Wii to look into its exercise potential, I’ve been struck by how much it reminds me of pianos. Thats right, pianos. Do you remember as a kid gathering around the piano with your family to sing songs and have fun bonding with them? No? Me either… but I saw it in a movie once and thought it looked boring. Welcome society’s new and vastly improved piano, the Nintendo Wii.

When this thought struck me, that Wii’s are like pianos, I questioned myself. Are they really? Aren’t they just the same as television, where we all gather around and stare like zombies at the “tube”? Aren’t they just promoting the often referred demise of the family unit by encouraging more of this behavior? Firstly, I don’t have a degree in social anthropology, but I believe the perception of the so called demise of the family unit is just that, a perception. What!? Its not just a perception, its a fact! You cry. Without rambling on about it, we get that perception from the media- its more interesting to hear about dysfunctional families than functional ones. I mean, someone please tell me what the difference is between a large concert full of people watching the opera, and millions of people watching a soap opera behind their t.v.’s with their families? There is none, it is our perception of it that’s different.

What’s this got to to do with the Wii? Well, my whole social anthropology spiel above is to make a point that the family isn’t dead or fundamentally wrong these days, it’s just changed so quickly that people perceive it to be worse than before. But you know, its all apples & oranges. Today’s family is very different to the classic 1950’s image of happy families. And the new society it lives in includes a culture which loves gadgets, things and toys, and loves entertainment. That leaves our piano out in the cold and the Nintendo Wii at the 21st century “fire place” that is the television.

Why do I keep referring to the Wii as the new piano? Because it’s sorta similar to the fireplace or television… you all gather around and talk, but there’s a bit more that makes the Wii a piano, its that it gets us interacting and bonding over a new shared activity.

Have you noticed how you’ll speak to your family while you watch the t.v. about what you’ve just watched? You discuss it, remark about how good or bad a sitcom is or about starving people in Africa, but you rarely ever share an experience like you do sitting around the piano. Everyone used to get involved around the piano- one person woud play while the rest would gather around and sing. Do you notice any similarities yet? Every time the Wii comes out in my house, whether it be friends or family that are around, a similar pattern emerges. A couple of us play and the rest gather around and talk about it. We instruct each other, we compete against each other and we enjoy a brand new experience together much like singing songs on a piano.

Nintendo Wii: The New Piano… Only more space friendly… and more Fun!

Wiiano, anyone?

The first Wii Workout Week comes to an end with a review of the thoroughly enjoyable release title for the Wii: Red Steel. We should have all heard plenty about this game, a familiar feeling shooter that also has samurai sword fighting as an interesting aside to the normal shoot em up game play. You won’t be able to call this one an exergaming title unfortunately, but at least it’ll get you off the couch and upright for some good bad guy blasting fun.

Fitness:

Its a pity Red Steel doesn’t make greater use of its sword fighting sections, I mean… The fighting sections are great, but I think we’d all like to be making sweeping slashing movements with a samurai sword to dispatch the enemy rather than merely making small flicks of our wrist. If only it was more like Wii Sports baseball, where you make large powerful strikes. Or perhaps I’m just being overly critical of the game, because I’d like to see everyone working a little harder when they play games..!

There’s no scope in Red Steel to get creative with our exercise either unfortunately- the game is non-stop action, but that action only has you making very small precise movements with your Wiimote. I’d love to see a shooter take a page out of Call of Duty’s book and use both a novel aiming solution, and a reloading mechanic which has the player mimic shot gun reloads with the nunchuck, or mimicking pushing the bolt forward in machine guns. Perhaps we’ll have to wait for the next generation of motion sensitive console.

Fun:

Despite the lack of exercise here, the game is great fun and follows a tried and tested first person shoot em up formula that has you wielding a variety of classic weapons such as the pistol, uzi and shotgun. The game has a good sense of desperation to it as you’re given objectives through out the game to save your fiancé, sometimes including time based objectives that really make you panic as you chase after the yakuza.

All the environments in the game are presented authentically, the level design makes you feel like you’re really in a high rise building and the sounds and atmosphere make good use of the Wii’s hardware capabilities.

You could probably call Red Steel a tad on the toned down side for violence, which is probably a good point if you don’t like your kids splattering enemy blood all over the walls, but not so good if you’re an adult who likes to indulge in a realistic shoot em up experience… so to speak!

Motivation:

Red Steel is a solid story based title, and if like most gamers you like a good story line and unlocking new weapons, this game will definitely keep you coming back for more. However, if you’re after a Wii title to get your heart rate elevated & limbs flailing, Red Steel isn’t it.

If my review hasn’t convinced you otherwise, support placeintheground.com’s fun fitness focus and buy Red Steel from Amazon, here.

That concludes our first Wii Workout Week! The majority of the games reviewed this week have been release titles, which means you can probably buy them quite cheaply today, and still get a workout out of them… at least in the case of Mario Strikers if you get creative, and Rayman Raving Rabbids for some furious arm pumping fun.

Speaking of Rayman Raving Rabbids, it scores our first Wii Workout Week title as best fitness game, followed by Mario Strikers if you follow our workout suggestions. In fact, you can get a better workout from Mario if you throw in our suggestions, but the aim of this week was to test out a few well known games to determine how effective they are without doing any tweaking. Struggling to fit a program around a game won’t appeal to many people, but fun will. Congrats Rayman!

If you enjoyed this series please let me know, and feel free to let me know of a game that you’d like reviewed for future Wii Workout Weeks. Until then, enjoy your Wii’s and look out for other fun workout ideas on placeintheground.com.

I would genuinely love to be able to give Wii Play a great Wii Workout Week score. Its another Wii title that offers good clean fun, especially when the family or friends gather around… Unfortunately, much like Wario on the fitness front, you’ll get absolutely zero out of it exercise-wise. Never mind, you’ll have a ball!

Fitness:

The list of mini games in Wii Play are more similar to Rayman Raving Rabbids than to Wario Ware. But they’re unfortunately more like Wario Ware than Rayman when it comes to fitness, which is a shame, but to be honest the title really doesn’t even try to offer anything remotely related to sport or fitness. Its just good clean fun.

None of the titles will get your heart rate above what standing still will, and hence it earns 1 tick. The title doesn’t offer any creative ways to fit a workout into its gameplay, so I can’t drag this good title up another tick no matter what I do. However, the old get into a squat, or on your back for some abs like I described in Mario Strikers can still be applied here if you’re conscious of trying to lose a few pounds.

Fun:

Wii Play comes out of the box with the same good feel that Rayman does. Everything about it is clean, happy and out to amuse you. For example, click on your Mii after the selection screen, and he’ll react differently depending on where you “poke” him.

Each of the mini games are an absolute ball with a group of friends over, old favorites like “Laser ball” (air hockey) even feel different using the Wiimote, and will keep you amused for quite a few hours.

The list of mini games on Wii Play is as follows:

• Shooting Range- an old fashioned point & shoot game. Take out normal targets, ducks, skeets and aliens trying to pick up a group of your Mii’s! Hilarious!
• Find Mii- I struggled with this one. Its like a where’s Wally type game where you have to use your powers of perception to pick similar or different looking Mii’s in different situations. Good luck!
• Table Tennis- A bit tough if you’re playing friends, as the board keeps spinning to a different perspective each round, but still a bit of mindless fun.
• Pose Mii- An absolute hoot if you’re out for some competitive fun with friends or family. This game alone could almost be called exergaming because it got my friends and I so fired up trying to beat each other. You basically have 4 different poses which can be changed by clicking the A or B button, you then twist the Wiimote to match your floating Mii’s shape to the shape of falling bubbles… Top marks for this game.
• Laser hockey- As I’ve said, just a retake on the old air hockey, but plenty of fun nonetheless.
• Billiards- A well implemented billiards game, but nothing out of the ordinary or especially fun about it.
• Fishing- This is a good one. Use the angle of your Wiimote and its distance from the screen to place a fishing hook next to different fish. This mini game also generated heated competition when friends came over to have a go.
• Charge- Not my favorite mini game, you need to guide your bull down a long course, knocking over scarecrows for maximum points. Also not so bad in multiplayer mode… needs a bit of something extra here though me thinks.
• Tanks- Guide your mini tanks over the map to destroy each other and the AI tanks. Plenty of fun again when friends are around, and a good bit of clean fun alone too.

Motivation:

Again I’m penalizing points here because while the game is really good fun, there’s just not an iota of fitness to be extracted from it. On the other hand, if you’re playing a few hours of Wii Play, rather than crowding around the Xbox, at least you’ll be standing and not all hunched up.

You’ll definitely keep coming back when friends and family are around, just not to break a sweat. Sorry Wii Play!

Wii Play comes bundled with a second controller for your Wii, making it a good option to try and find the bundle deal. Like I’ve said a bunch of times, exercising and gaming with friends and family is just a different experience to using the Nintendo on your lonesome, so I recommend grabbing a second controller if you can afford one.

If you’re in the market, support my site and buy one from Amazon, wontcha?

I feel as if I’ve just wasted an hour of my life and I’ll never get it back. Lucky my brother was there with me trying to steal the popcorn I was eating, otherwise I wouldn’t have had one once of amusement out of this game. Besides the game being far from enjoyable, there’s not a shred of fitness to be extracted from it. Sorry Wario, I don’t like you!

Fitness:

Wario is the absolute dunce of the Wii Workout Week for fitness, each of the mini games you play in Wario are so short lived, there’s really no time to break a sweat, not to mention none of the games has you doing anything but intricate and fine movements. If anything this game encourages you to lay out on the couch & wave the remote at the screen. I mean, I played it while eating a bag of hot popcorn. I didn’t even bother putting my hands around the remote in the fashion they suggested (I was eating popcorn, see?), it just wasn’t necessary, and if anything made it harder to complete the mini “games”.

I guess you could schedule a bodyweight workout to last for an hour in the living room, and while you’re recovering from each set of exercise you could play Wario… But why would you when there’s Rayman Raving Rabbids?

Fun:

Wario Ware is very similar to day four’s Rayman Raving Rabbids, so why didn’t I give it a higher score? Well, reason numero uno is that this game feels disjointed, fiddly, and completely unsatisfying. My brother would usually poke his head in on me playing Rayman and have a chuckle at a mini game, commenting that the game looks funny and interesting. Understandably, all Wario got was abuse.

Each mini game seems utterly pointless, follows no set graphical feel, and has no relation to any of the so called “stories” included in the game. Besides the fact the mini games are pointless, they’re also extremely brief, I mean, astonishingly brief- you can’t even tell what you need to do sometimes before the game is over. And the games will be things like, put a spot light on a man, balance a stick, swat a fly. Not, spotlight 20 men as they dash from cover to cover, attempting to avoid you, or, balance a stick while an amusing little Rabbid gets in your way, or, swat a huge swarm of flies over a minute to try and beat a top score. I mean, I honestly can’t find anything vaguely amusing about this game…

Its like Rayman only cataclysmically worse… though I’m not sure the word cataclysm is strong enough…

Or else…? What? You’ll have to do the mini game again…? Ok, I’m motivated!

Motivation:

I’m not sure I need to say much more, if anyone reading this likes Wario, and can explain to me what I’m missing, please feel free to flame me in my comments box! For each reader that can offer a decent explanation, I’ll do one-hundred push ups. I promise.

I’d include a link here and ask that if you like Wario, to buy it at Amazon, but really, you should probably invest in magic beans first.

At last! A game that can really get your heart rate up without having to supplement it with some creative thinking! Rayman Raving Rabbids is a quirky, amusing game that has you pumping the Wiimote furiously in a huge variety of games, and its a load of fun with friends.

Fitness:

Rayman scores the highest fitness rating so far (without tweaking the experience like we did with Mario Strikers) with a 3 on the fitness scale out of a total of 5 points. Rayman’s workout series of mini games will get your heart rate pumping after very short bursts of effort, and it’ll make you wake up the next day with sore arms guaranteed! Unfortunately, while we’re pumping our arms furiously, the rest of the upper body misses out. I’m not sure why Rayman’s creators didn’t incorporate some variation in their workout games. Our biceps may well be pumped, but the biceps are very small muscles in the scheme of things.

Wii Sports is lucky enough to incorporate a large range of sporting movements throughout many different games. There’s torso twisting in baseball, backhand and forearm swinging in tennis, and punching movements galore in boxing. Why didn’t Rayman attempt something similar? I don’t know. They should have… I’d gladly add another tick or two if Ray gave us some variety and a similar workout to the arm pumping exercises.

There is a but to the above. That is, if you’re willing to put your heart and soul into pumping those two Wiimotes up and down like it meant you were going to save the world, the rest of your body supports that effort. Anyone who’s familiar with how the body is interlinked will understand this, but simply put: to support such a furious pumping motion, your shoulder muscles are stabilizing your arms, your lattisimus dorsi or back muscles stop your shoulders flinging off your torso, and your abdominals and back muscles do a range of stabilization as you likely bend forward and place a foot outstretched to balance yourself.

With the above in mind, make a 2 player or greater game, choose any of the arm pumping mini games and get 10 minutes of what closely mimicks High Intensity Interval Training! Repeat these games at high speed and bring a towel for your sweat.

While not all of Rayman’s games involve pumping the Wiimote’s furiously, if you want to play the normal story line of this game you’ll feel satisfied after a few hours of playing that you’ve got a decent workout. Only the mini games amongst the workout section are any good for working out, leaving the other sections to shooter and puzzle games, which, while extremely entertaining, don’t do anything for your heart rate.

Fun:

Rayman Raving Rabbids is a good wholesome fun game… if you count shooting bunnies in the face with plungers and smashing them over the head with hammers wholesome. And I guess I do! This game really does ooze class; it has a vivid graphical feel and personality, great sound, and a massive amount of mini games which are almost all entertaining. My favorites are the music games where you use the remotes like mini drumsticks- like a mini DDR for your arms, the cow flinging, and skipping (which is hilarious when the Rabbids try and get in your way).

The game goes up another level, I guess like most games on the Wii do, when you have friends around to play with; everyone is having fun and laughing themselves silly in no time. I’m happy to give Rayman Raving Rabbids five ticks when your mates are around.

Motivation:

While I find Rayman great in small doses, unless I have friends over I don’t find myself wanting to play it so much. I think this is because the mini games are meant for a bit of a giggle and some mindless short lived fun, so I miss out on what I personally like, which is the depth games like Mario Strikers have. You can get a lot better at Mario after playing for a week, but with Rayman you just keep accruing points to upgrade your appearance or unlock stuff. Unlocks have never interested me at all, and the volume of play time you have to go through to get to them is just too much for me. Four ticks if you’re into unlocks, high scores and playing it frequently with friends. Three if you’re doing it solo and don’t like working towards unlocks and codes.

Rayman could have been the best, what with its heart racing arm pumping workout games. It’s certainly the best game as is for working out in our Wii Workout Week, but it could have been so, so much better with a few Wii Sports style movements.

But I guess the game wasn’t developed for that! Rats. I mean… Rabbids!

Support my raving and I guess rabbid site and buy Rayman Raving Rabbids through Amazon.

After a few hours behind the controls of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, I was both happy and unhappy. Ultimate Alliance gives your right arm a solid workout, and after a few hours play you’re going to start feeling like you might have the biggest right bicep in the known world. I’m unhappy because the game unfortunately leaves the left arm almost completely unused. Ultimate Alliance is plenty of fun, and playing with a few friends at home, or playing against them really intensifies the experience, if not the lop-sided workout.

Fitness:

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance scores a 2 on fitness for the relatively vigorous workout you get on your right arm. It might have inspired me to give a 3 if the workout was spread over both arms, but as it is, you’ll develop some pretty bad imbalances if you play this game with a mind to get fit from it.

You’re also severely limited in what else you can do while you play this game. Unlike Mario Strikers, you can’t fit a workout into the game mechanics, leaving you with the old faithfuls such as squats and ab curls while you play. Check out the big list of exercises I came up with for Mario Strikers.

I could suggest you take each of the Wiimote movements and over exaggerate them, making them sweeping forceful movements that mimic a real fight, and that would really build a good sweat if it weren’t for the absence of left hand movement. Use this advice for better suited games like the current fitness king, Wii Sports Boxing.

Fun:

The fun rating will always be biased, and being a gamer thats been around since the Commodore 64 I feel like I’ve played this game too many times before. If you’re new to beat em up games you could rate this a 4; its a solid game after all. The basic premise has you and 3 of your hand picked super hero mates go stomping bad guys with all the special abilities you see from the movies- Wolverine with his slashing claw attacks, Spiderman shooting bolts of web, and the Human Torch can surround himself with flames which burn his enemies. The game has some cool role playing elements too, so you can watch your heroes slowly progress to superhuman powerhouses as the game progresses.

Motivation:

I don’t see this game appealing to many adults, but it might motivate plenty of kids to come back and continue the journey of their superheroes against Doc Doom. Given this game isn’t good for exercise I’m going to penalize it’s motivation score by a point. If you buy & play this game its less time you’ll spend playing games that you can get a much better workout with!

A suggestion for any developers creating games which involve continuous Wiimote movement, please, make both controllers equally useful. We don’t want a generation of half Arnie, half Steve Urkels roaming the streets… right?

Check out other games I’ve reviewed at “Wii Workout Week“, or if my review hasn’t convinced you otherwise yet, you can pick up Marvel: Ultimate Alliance at Amazon.

I know I called Madden 2007 for the Wii “mediocre”, I know its rude. It’s also not 100% accurate. Madden 2007 like its predecessors is a very deep game that football fans the world over will love, but that doesn’t save it from a beat down in the “Wii Workout Week” article series. I like Madden 2007 on the Wii, my friends like Madden, rumor has it Santa Claus likes Madden, but there just isn’t much in the way of exercise I can extract from it. Remember, the point of this article series is to run some popular games through their paces to determine if we can fit a workout in around the game. Madden 2007 flops in this department.

Fitness:

Madden 2007 has some great control schemes that get you flinging your limbs around when you need to, unfortunately, you just don’t have the opportunity often enough or with enough force. Here’s a quick incomplete rundown of the common Wiimote movements you can perform:

• Push both controllers forward to do a power tackle
• Waggle the nunchuk to the left or right to juke
• Move the Wiimote left or right to stiff arm an opponent
• Pump both controllers up and down to break out of a tackle
• Swing both controllers up to catch
• Swing the Wiimote down to swat

The controls are a great addition to the game, but aren’t used with enough frequency to get your heart rate up at all. As anyone would know from being at a football game, a lot of the game is tactics and strategy, broken up by short aggressive plays. This is the main reason I’m rating Madden 2007 as a 1 tick, because I can’t work anything interesting in amongst the game play, and the already mentioned control scheme doesn’t get me working hard.

You can still do a few things like I suggested in “Get Soccer Slim with Mario Strikers” such as bouncing, and some isometric squats. However, due to the fact that the down time in this game is when you need to be thinking about what plays to implement, you can’t weave a workout into your game like yesterday’s game.

Fun:

I think I’ve said enough about how good this game is. If you like football, you’ll love Madden 2007 on the Wii. The control inputs add something extra the previous games haven’t seen, and make the experience just a bit more gratifying.

Multiplayer is great fun for Madden too, it seems the Wii is the master of the group experience- I think its something about needing to actually move around a bit to make things happen, it just excites people.

Motivation:

The full season mode will get you immersed in Madden 2007 for a long, long time. The career mode has an ocean of options for the beginner right through to people that have been playing Madden since its first appearance (I’ve no idea when that was… yearrrrs ago though). However, given this isn’t a game I’d recommend you’d play for fitness, the motivation rating here suffers as a result. 5 ticks if you just want to play football, 2 if you’re deluded enough to consider it part of your exercise routine.

While I don’t recommend you purchase Madden 2007 for your workouts, Madden 07 is almost a year old now, so you can pick it up pretty cheap at Amazon.

Look out for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, tomorrow.

Lets do it. It’s time to get some ideas together on how to really have some fun with the popular Wii games and get a workout at the same time. Its not going to be an easy stroll in the park, you’ll have to use some will power here and want to actually work yourself. Our review structure for Wii games is basic and effective and is the same system I’ll be using to review every game here.

Day One of the first “Wii Workout Week” is a review of Mario Strikers Charged Football.

Fitness:

I picked this one up on a whim yesterday, thinking maybe there would be something vaguely exercise related that I could do with a Wii soccer game. I was right and wrong; the game intrinsically has no real exercise value, unless you include a bit of arm waggling to knock down your opponents. However, the game can definitely be played by an exerciser to shed kilos or stay fit. The game would receive a miserable 1 tick if you’re just going to stand up and play it normally, but picks up an extra 2 ticks because you can workout around the game fairly effectively.

For fitness, I strongly recommend playing a best of 5 series, splitting up different workout ideas that I list below into different games in the series. I’ll include a sample workout at the end of this article to show what I mean.

Here’s how:

• Bouncing. Ever seen a boxer bouncing around the ring? Add this simple motion to your Mario Strikers game to get your heart rate up.
• Jumping. Every time you win a goal jump as high as you can for as many goals as you score, plus the total score. For example, you just scored 1 goal, but the total goals in the game is 5- jump 6 times.
• The point above is the best part of this game if you have friends around and you’re a little competitive. Each time your opponent scores, you jump the number of total goals scored. Work your friends in to a sweating heap on the floor with your Mario skills!
• Alternatively, jump, and keep jumping for as long as it takes for the replay to play out, without any skipping ahead.
• Push-ups. Every time a goal is scored, get down and bust out push-ups to the game goal total. Or, if playing friends, your friend gets down and pumps them out.
• Tons of push-ups. Don’t just pump out push-ups every time a goal is scored, do them every time there’s a delay in the game; goals, replays, super strikes while the computer/your friend defends your shots, and so on.
• Work your Abs. Get down on your back and play with the Wiimote through your legs. Keep your abs contracted to sit up well enough to see the screen (probably depends on your t.v. setup).
• Super abs. Do crunches constantly while the opponent has possession of the ball, play ‘keep away’ with friends to burn their abs into aching piles of lactic acid.
• Planks! You can get down and do some planks for as long as you can handle it while you play- you can still waggle that Wiimote from your wrists! Throw in side planks to change it up.
• Squats. Take the same game technique from push-ups and apply it for a great body weight squat workout
• Extended squats. I once had a karate class when my instructors told us to get our backs to the wall, and squat down until our thighs burned furiously from the lactic acid build up. I’ve never forgotten that torture, and now pass it on to you, my poor readers. Get down in a squat position while you play and stay there for as long as you can. Once you give up, let yourself rest until you think you can take a little more and repeat.
• Power shots. If you’re particularly fit, competitive, or maybe a little silly, while you play with friends take the extended squats option & make it a game breaker. Get down and squat until you can squat no more, whoever breaks first lets his opponent have a free power shot with his captain.
• Boxing. One of my favorite things about this game is the beat down you can give friends. Rather than waggling the Wiimote like a sissy to make your players knock each other down, break out massive punches. It’ll work your biceps and back so well you’ll feel it the next day (just like Wii Sports Boxing!). For an even better workout ban slide tackles, its beat down time!
• Choose teams with the lowest defense rating so that more goals are scored, or alternatively, just set your level of difficulty by doubling, tripling or quadrupling the repetitions you do to number of goals scored. For example, a super strike by a captain lands 3 goals, the game total is 2 goals, that makes it 5. Double that, and you’re doing 10 push ups.

Example workout:

• Game 1: Start with a whole game of bouncing to get warmed up and ready for the more serious exercise
• Game 2: Push ups on goals
• Game 3: Jumps on goals
• Game 4: Squats on goals
• Game 5: Abdominal planks and crunches

Set your difficulty higher by doubling or tripling jumps/push-ups/etc if you need to, or just set arbitrary numbers of repetitions per goal scored. Remember, the whole idea behind this is to get a workout in while you enjoy yourself.

Fun:

The fun side of this game is huge. There’s nothing about this game that would make me consider bringing it out of the 5 tick class.

Lots of kudos to the game designers, there’s a variety of balanced, interesting ways to make an offensive play, from passing it around to power the ball up, defensive jinks, sprinting to break away from defenders, and my personal favorite, dishing out multiple player beat downs before making a quick break back towards your opponents half with your full 4 man team to their 2.

Defense is fun too, again, beating players up and throwing them against the electric fence is great for a laugh, but leaves the ball rolling away free, while slide tackling can let you come away with possession of the ball immediately. There’s pros and cons to each way of tackling, and different teams are better at different options.

Continuing from my last point, another game play aspect I like in Mario Strikers is the difference between team captains. If you like fast nimble teams you can go with speedy captains, or if you like slow juggernauts who can lay the smack down, go with that- it offers great re playability and a unique feel for each match up.

Online mode can be great too, giving you the ability to play multi player when you’re home alone, however about the only black mark I can give this game is that I can’t play someone of lower skill level (I could hardly believe how high the skill level was online).

Motivation:

Mario Strikers, like most good games is very addictive, and will have you coming back game after game. Motivation drops a bit for me when I’m playing alone, but is much higher if I’m playing friends where we can get competitive, and rub victories in each other’s faces.

I’m a big believer in fun being the biggest motivator, so if you can integrate these workout ideas into your Mario Striker’s games, you’re already half way there.

I hope you enjoyed day one of the Wii Workout Week. If you’d like to support my web site, and like the sound of Mario Strikers, buy it here at Amazon.

Look out for Madden 2007, tomorrow.

You’ve read the blogs by the guys and girls who are losing weight with the Wii. Good on ‘em. Unfortunately, its all about Wii Sports. I love using the Wii as a workout tool, but I need more variety than just Wii Sports to get me on my Wii regularly. Other games are a ton of fun (as I found out yesterday) and its prompted me to come up with my first week long project, “Wii Workout Week, Worthless or Worthy?”

The project will review 7 games, 1 game a day, and will show you which titles are worthy of using as a workout, and which ones are worthless.

Day 1: Get Soccer Slim with Mario Strikers

Day 2: Mediocre Madden 2007

Day 3: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Day 4: Rayman Raving Rabbids

Day 5: Wario Ware Smooth Moves

Day 6: Wii Play

Day 7: Red Steel

This project won’t just be me sitting on the couch playing games, enjoying myself while I convince my girlfriend that I’m actually working. I’ll be pushing some workout limits, being creative, and coming up with as many ways as I can to use these Wii games to break a sweat.

And before you ask, no, I won’t be tracking my weight (this web site isn’t just for people losing weight), however if anyone wants to use these tips to create their own weight loss record, share their success, or just to let people know how they’re going, please join my traineo.com group, “Wii Workout Week“. Or if you’re not a member of traineo, simply let us know via comments at the bottom of this page.

If you have any requests on which games you’d like to see reviewed, please ask! I will be running other Wii Workout Weeks in the future.