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Nintendo have really pushed the lifestyle angle of their software library since launching the Nintendo DS and Wii, and I'm sure many readers will be picking up Wii Fit Plus this week even if they've stopped using the original version of Wii Fit. After all, the new release gives a good reason to force yourself back into a regime of exercising, even if it is dressed up as a "lifestyle product" or "game". But over the past month or so I've been investigating one of Nintendo's many overlooked Nintendo DS lifestyle products, one which promises to help you think about exercising in a less forced fashion.

 I'm talking about Personal Trainer: Walking.  I can't guarantee that you're even aware that this title came out, as it seemed to sneak out onto shelves, but it's a unique title and one with a pretty interesting selling point. First up, it's a piece of software that's there to help you understand and improve how much you're walking each day, but second of all in the box you get two--not just one--pedometers. It's a really nice touch, as it means the game is very much orientated towards sharing the experience of walking more with someone else. After all, going for walks is more fun with others!

There's a really cute touch too, in that if you have a dog you can attach the second pedometer to your pet and see how much your dog walks compared to you. I'd be really interested to find that kind of information out if I had a dog!

Using the software is pretty easy. You just do your best to keep the pedometer on you at all times (you don't have to do anything to get it to work, just wear it and forget about it--it's worth noting that the pedometers are small and not conspicuous) and then, whenever you feel like it, you simply turn on your DS and use its infrared sensor to read what the pedometer has to tell it. Then the software simply keeps you up to date on how far you're walking each day and if you're reaching your own built in goals.

So far, so not-especially-interesting. And yes, it's strange in a way that Personal Trainer: Walking's strength is also its flaw. You can simply attach the pedometer and forget about it, so it's easy to forget to check if you're reaching your daily goals unless you're forcing yourself to think about it! In the end, perhaps it is really no more passive than Wii Fit.

It's an important point, because what keeps (or is supposed to keep you) coming back to Wii Fit is the games they include. Particularly Wii Fit Plus includes lots of amusing minigames which are fun in short bursts. However, this is where Personal Trainer: Walking falls down completely. After logging in and finding out how well you did for the day (you're supposed to check each day) you can view your records in a variety of graphs (only so interesting) or "play" with your records by spending your steps in a variety of ways.

 
This sounds potentially great. I quite like the idea of a mini RPG where your steps are experience points and you level up allowing you to fight monsters, or something like that. Unfortunately, in Personal Trainer: Walking you simply use your steps to "walk the world" which means drawing 100 items from around the world, each with a picture and description. So for 15,000 steps you might get a picture of a diaper (seriously) and a short blurb about how they were invented in Sweden. Educational, I guess, but not much of a reward. The other ways to play with your records are even less interesting--you can illuminate a house using the current day's power, which seems to have no point, or go online and combine your total steps with all the players in the world to see how far everyone has walked into space. Cute, but they feel utterly pointless.

 As a result, Personal Trainer: Walking really offers absolutely no drive to walk more than you usually would. It's nice to know how much I'm walking, but it doesn't really help me understand if how much I'm walking is good for me or not (is 3,000 steps a day a good average? I don't know!) doesn't seem to care if I spend all my steps going up a mountain rather than along a road (much more tiring!) and doesn't offer me anything more fun than simply the pleasure of walking.

All in all the title is rather hard to recommend over another commercially available pedometer, which probably offers a similar amount of functionality, if you're walking on your own. Having said that, one of the most important things about Personal Trainer: Walking is that it comes with two pedometers, and sharing the experience is likely to make the title more fun, but in the way where you make your own fun rather than it being provided. In some cases that's fine, but when it comes to exercise, I'm sure most of us would enjoy a more structured experience, one which uses game design as a strength, instead.

Message Edited by MathewKumar on 10-07-2009 07:37 PM