The Biggest Loser
Score: 84% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: THQ Developer: Blitz Games Media: DVD/1 Players: 2 Genre: Health and Exercise
Graphics & Sound: So to start with, I'm going to let you know that I have never actually seen the TV show, so I can't compare the two. I have heard some about it, though. The graphics in The Biggest Loser are pretty good for an exercise game. I've just gotten used to exercise characters scaring me. In this case though, they did a pretty good job of making them look human. They also use real videos for the introduction, which is nice. I did find the characters a little lacking, however. I've gotten used to being able to create my own characters in games. Now, I do realize that this might be more difficult in this game because the character slims down with you as you lose weight, but they still could have had more of a selection. You get to choose from 8 previous contestants on the show, four men and four women. You are allowed to choose the color of their shirt. The background music is very hard to describe. It's not really upbeat enough for me, but it's not distracting either, so I guess it works. I would have liked the option to change music though, especially when you're doing something like yoga that is calming. The music really doesn't fit for yoga! Sometimes the trainers repeat the same phrase twice in a row, which seems odd. One I heard "it's all about getting your heart rate up" 3 times in a row, literally one after the other. They needed some more phrases as well. I think I heard "Think how proud you'll be when you get this right" way too many times overall! I would have preferred not to be distracted by hearing the same things over and over from the trainer. I can understand motivating you, but in this case, it was just distracting.
Gameplay: The first thing you probably want to do is start a new game. When you select New Game, you are prompted to enter your name, birth date, height, and you can either enter weight or use the Wii Balance Board to weight in (if you told it you were playing with the Wii-mote and Balance Board). You have to choose one of the previous contestants available. Then you choose a trainer, either Bob or Jillian. Personally, I chose Bob as Jillian scares me. Then you tell it what you want to achieve. You can choose from Improve Health, Lose a Little Weight, or Lose a Lot of Weight. If you tell it Lose a Little, you can only set it for a certain amount of pounds lost, not as many as you might want. If you want to set it to more, hit (B) to go back and select Lose a Lot of Weight. You can edit any of the settings at the end, so don't worry if you make a mistake and want to change it. The Fitness Program gives you three levels of difficulty to choose from: Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert. Then you tell it how many weeks you want to do: 4, 8, or 12. It will adapt your personal goal depending on the length of time you select. Once you've set a personal goal, you can't change it during the program, so make sure that it is what you want from this point or you'll have to start over if you change your mind later. After you finalize the settings, it creates a calendar for you of how many calories you should eat, and what training you should do, and a weigh-in on certain days as well. You'll need to play the game every day and do what it tells you to! So calorie entry is going to be an important process of this. But you really can't get specific on exactly what you ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks. You can either enter a manual total of calories for the meal or you can select light, medium, or large and then edit the calories in that range. Personally, I prefer to log every single food and all of the nutritional content as well, not just the calories, but that's really not available here. Health and Lifestyle has Healty Recipes, Tips and Advice, and even a Calorie Counter that tells you how many calories you should eat in a day based on your stats. There's a whole lot of information in there to help you meet the goal. Under Exercise Routines, you can choose from Full Body, Upper Body, Core (Abs and such), Lower Body, Yoga, and Custom Routine. This way you can choose workouts to meet what you want to work on. Challenge events are a fun way to exercise. Basically you're given an exercise and how well you perform it decides whether or not you beat the challenge. Finally, there's Single Exercises, which allow you to select a specific exercise to work on. It's quite useful if you're having trouble getting the hang of a specific thing. Under settings, you can edit your player or create a new one.
Difficulty: The Biggest Loser does a wonderful job of providing difficult levels for everyone from a true novice to a master at working out. They have exercises that cover all ranges of people, and they make it very easy for you to know which exercises are right for you. I really like how they divide the exercises up. Their opinions on which ones are harder are pretty precise in my opinion. You really don't want to try the ones listed as Intense until you've had a good bit of practice! Sometimes, I have found that exercise games that use the balance board really don't use it well. You can follow the instructions on-screen and they never register. Luckily, The Biggest Loser doesn't suffer from this problem at all. So far, I haven't found any of the exercises that I couldn't get the board to read. The game also makes it very clear which exercises you're supposed to use the Balance Board for and which ones that you don't use it on. Make sure that you wear clothing with pockets on both sides though! I found it very difficult the first time I played when they said put the Wii-mote in your pocket. Tucking it into the waist of your pants just doesn't work well!
Game Mechanics: When you first start the game, make sure to disconnect a Nunchuk if you have one hooked up. The game really doesn't like it and won't start until you disconnect it! You can choose to play The Biggest Loser with just the Wii-mote or with the Balance Board as well. Personally, I recommend using the Balance Board as it gives you a much wider range of exercises and make them easier to do. The exercises are pretty good, though. I didn't have any trouble getting them to be read correctly by the game. The trainer describes what you're supposed to do and you also get a demonstration on the screen of where you're supposed to have your feet on the Balance Board. This makes it really easy to get the hang of it! You can go faster than the trainer is demonstrating if you want, but I recommend staying with him. On some things, it'll read without you doing anything, like the plank. You can sit in a chair and it thinks you're doing the exercise. The game keeps track of how many calories you've burned as you go, so that's always a good thing to keep you motivated. After you're done with a circuit of exercises, you're given the option of a Cool Down. You can skip it if you'd like. Then it records your calories burned and sometimes gives you a diet challenge that you can either accept or choose a different one. You can also add in your own custom workout calories burned. So if you go running every day, you can manually enter the calories burned from it as well. Once you start a workout, if you want to end it early, or just pause it, hit the (+) button. Overall, The Biggest Loser is probably the most motivating of the exercise games that I have reviewed. It gives you an overall view of everything you need to do to lose the weight, including proper eating habits. The exercises are quite a bit of fun as well. If you're looking for something to help you shed those extra pounds, you might want to check out The Biggest Loser. It has the potential to really help you, if you follow it!
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
Camp Pete Thexder NEO