My housemate bought the Wii Fit game for her Nintendo Wii last year when it first came out, but after an initial few minutes play, I discarded it as ineffectual and a little boring. Recently, I decided to reassess my views on Wii Fit and give it another chance.

The first thing I would say is that, since raising my fitness levels from playing it initially, I have taken a lot more from the game. The Yoga and Muscle exercises are certainly the most effective challenges for working out. Yoga moves include things like deep breathing, sun salutation and downward-facing dog – and ones progress at each of them is cleverly assessed by the Wii Fit Balance Board. 20 minutes playing the Wii Fit Yoga games is certainly a great way to warm up or warm down before or after ‘proper’ exercise.

It’s the muscle work-outs which burn genuine calories. Rowing squats, push-ups, and torso-twists are some of the things to expect from the Wii Fit Muscle workouts. Almost all of the muscle workouts do seem effective and will get you to sweat. They’re not as much fun as the Balance games, but are probably the most effective as weight-loss exercise.

It’d be wrong to entirely discount the Aerobic exercises; certainly the three Step games are fun and if you play them for a while, will get the heart pumping. The Rythm Boxing game is poorly executed – the nunchuk / Wii remote combining with the balance board is unreliable and shaky – and it’s possible to get points for poorly executing moves, and no points for perfect interpretations. I also find the Hula Hoop challenges a bit shaky, but that may just be me, as a lot of my friends enjoy this game.

The balance games are loads of fun – and after playing them for a period of weeks you get better and seem to have more defined balance, though this could just be due to practice with the games themselves. I love Table Tilt and Ski Slalom. They’re both totally addictive, but can be very frustrating when things don’t go your way! While the balance games don’t really require much of a workout, they do subtely make a difference but with the added bonus of it being fun. It’s the kind of exercise which doesn’t feel like exercise.

Apart from the games, Wii Fit offers a Body Test which assesses your centre of gravity, weight, BMI, and ‘Wii Fit Age’. It’s quite nice to be able to stamp your progress on a daily basis and check how your doing. One of the problems is that, as it encourages daily usage, the obvious fluctuations in weigh-ins can be a little disconcerting if it doesn’t swing in your favour. The Wii Fit age is based on your centre of gravity and and a couple of other balance / posture challenges. It’s pretty similar to the Wii Sports test, but ultimately less rewarding.

The challenge of Wii Fit is what keeps it playable over a period of time. It is satisfying trying to achieve higher positions in the rankings amongst your friends and family. Though, whether or not playing Wii Fit without other people using the same console is much fun, I don’t know.

To conclude, Wii Fit is a good overall experience. I lost 7lbs in just over a week according to Wii Fit, and that was with little extra exercise other than work and with a low-calorie diet alongside it. I think that Wii Fit should definitely be taken with a pinch of salt, and should only be used as a supplement to your regular weight-loss exercise, but there’s no doubt that it’s a lot better for your body to be playing Wii Fit than most other video games out there. Gears of War doesn’t improve the posture, does it?!