It's heavier and larger than expected.

The hardware is certainly interesting, but the software is not especially compelling. I mean, I guess I'll play it. You'd think it would do more to encourage regular bootups, in a fashion similar to Brain Age or Animal Crossing. Or maybe Brain Age and Wii Fit are identical and it's just the exercise that's breaking it for me.

When we first fired it up, Clark and I each made character accounts. It classified Clark as pretty severely underweight, so I doubt it has any idea what to do with the ten-and-under set. My guess is that Nintendo had to tune it towards one end of the scale, and they chose to make it more accurate for people who might actually care about their weight.

On my initial weigh-in, my BMI ranked right at the top of "normal," so I am clearly a problem. There's probably an alert flashing on Miyamoto's computer right now. Let's check his Twitter...

Dammit!

OK, so then you do an introductory balance test. Balancing seems to be the main way the game judges you. It is kinda neat to see how your Center of Balance sways even when you think you're standing still, but not every day neat. It compares your balance to your weight and your age and then declares your Wii Fit Age, which my initial scan put me at 48. The next day I had it at 31, and the day after that it was 36. So who knows.

I don't know how BMI is calculated, but it seems to me it probably involves more than a person's weight, age, and how well they stand on one foot.

Yep, the game rudely animates your Mii towards fat or towards skinny depending on your actual weight/BMI, but these deformations are not seen anywhere but on the select menus. Your newly "realistic" body shapes will not appear in the minigames or in any other Wii games. Wii Fit doesn't ruin your Mii Channel, is what I'm saying.

Clark's balance charts are always hilarious, because there's no way he's standing still for that long. Even when he tries, it's all over the place.

I have unlocked half of the minigames. Once you get a feel for how minute your movements must be, things seem to fall into place. The soccer ball game that was famously failed onstage at one of Nintendo's E3 presentations is not that bad. I scored in the triple digits almost right away. The Ski Jump is easy. Ski Slalom is harder, mainly because your leaning needs to be super precise to make the turns without oversteering. The human Monkey Ball game is pretty fiendish, as is the tightrope walking game.

That's the "balance" games; the other minigames are classified as "aerobic." I'm writing off Hula Hoop because I've never been able to do that anyway. The baby version of DDR is OK, once you realize that you're really doing step exercises and not really doing anything fun like DDR.

I like the Basic Run quite a bit, where you just put the Remote in your pocket and jog in place at a speed set by a partner "guide" jogger Mii. Although I'm most likely laboring under the delusion that I will unlock lots of other running paths through that cute little Mii park area Nintendo has created. I have the initial short run, the long run, and a 15-min run... I hope there's a ton more to find. There's a bit where you run through a pack of wild Mii dogs and if you run ahead of your guide and follow a dog, the dog leads you into different areas. I want a lot of that.

The yoga and exercise portions seem like a huge bust. It is so time-consuming. You have to select the move you want, then click past all this talky-talky from the onscreen instructor. You do your reps and then the instructor tosses some more inspirational bullshit at you, you see your ranking (?)... and then it's back to the menu screen. How about being able to link a dozen moves together into one seamless routine? What a missed opportunity! That's like, the way humans exercise and Wii Fit does not deliver.

All in all, it's pretty bare bones. I was expecting more. It's probably no prediction at all to suggest that Nintendo should ready a Wii Fit 2, allow two-player Balance Board activities and the ability to customize workouts.