It's no secret that I've been incredibly disappointed with the Wii, although it's understandable if this comes as a surprise - I almost never think about it, so I almost never talk about it. It took me almost a year after its release before I was able to get my hands on one, and then, after the initial rush of Super Mario Galaxy wore off, I hardly touched it because there really wasn't anything that compelling to play on it. Eventually I started to accept that as a 33-year-old male hard-core gamer, I was no longer anywhere near Nintendo's target demographic.
Except that as a 33-year-old male hard-core gamer, I'm a bit out of shape. And I knew that if I was going to get up off the couch, I was probably going to need to trick myself into doing it. So I bought Wii Fit a couple weeks ago, with my wife's blessing, and we've been using it for the past month.
To be perfectly honest, I wasn't really ever fully convinced of Wii Fit's ability to get me to lose weight and get in shape, and the results spoke for themselves - after 3 or 4 weeks, I hadn't lost any weight. Frankly, it was rare if I even broke a sweat. The boxing and hula-hoop "exercises" were the only activities that seemed to raise my heart rate, but they got awfully repetitive (and the sound/music in the boxing activity is just plain awful). And the lack of structure makes it hard for someone like me to stay motivated; it's too easy to slack.
So when the reviews started trickling in for EA Sports Active, I took notice. And this morning, I finished my first workout.
Wow.
Yes, I broke a sweat. Yes, I worked my ass off. I feel like I burned more calories during this morning's 20-minute session than I did for the entire month I used Wii Fit. The workouts are structured, guided, varied, engaging, and - most importantly - fun. My only real complaint is with the little leg strap that you use to store the nunchuck - it kept sliding off my shorts, and eventually I had to strap it on to my bare thigh. Other than that, though, it looks to be exactly what I needed to get back in shape - I'm very happy I picked it up.
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Actually had some substantial game time this weekend, for what felt like the first time in ages. Spent a short time with the InFamous PS3 demo, and I'm definitely looking forward to it; spent an even shorter amount of time with the Tiger Woods 10 demo, which doesn't really seem all that different from the 09 iteration (with the notable exception of in-game scoring, which is a nice touch). Still, a PGA season in Tiger is a nice way to fill in idle hours during the summer.
But most of my time was spent trawling through Sacred 2. I'm now halfway between level 34 and 35; I probably should have written down my stats before writing this up, but I can at least say that I got the achievement for finishing 40% of the side quests (I think that's the achievement that helped me break 44,000) and I'm probably pretty close to getting the Junior Cartographer achievement (see 30% of the map).
I said last time that the voice acting was horrible, and it eventually became so bad that I ended up turing the sound all the way down. This doesn't dramatically affect gameplay, however - I've put in 15-20 hours by now and I couldn't possibly tell you what's going on or why I'm doing what I'm doing. I don't really care, either. To paraphrase Private Joker in "Full Metal Jacket", I'm enjoying meeting interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and killing them. The environments have indeed become more varied - they're a bit obvious (swamp, desert, jungle, underground/volcano, etc.) but it still makes for a refreshing change of pace. There are weird glitches from time to time, but nothing game-breaking. The biggest bummer that's affected my experience is the loot management - my carrying capacity is rather small, and because there's no way to stop time in the game, it can be difficult to clear out inventory space without getting jacked by dudes.
So, again - I can't really come right out and recommend it; compared to stuff like Mass Effect and Fallout and Oblivion, it's not even in the same league. But it's also kinda nice to not have to make any moral choices; it's refreshing to simply focus on button mashing and keeping your inventory stocked with good equipment. If you can tolerate that kind of experience, you'll probably enjoy your time with Sacred 2.
2 comments:
have you used the strength exercises? If you do the push up, plank and sit ups I guarantee you'll be sore. Its not perfect yet but the next generation of Wii Fit Pro should be outstanding. I lost 10 lbs using it.
I did some of the strength exercises, but not much. To be fair, though, I was more interested in cardio work; I wanted to lose weight before I started turning it into muscle. And the cardio in Wii Fit wasn't really doing it for me.
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