Jillian Michael’s Fitness Ultimatum 2009 Review

I took a departure from Wii Fit recently and tried Jillian Michael’s Fitness Ultimatum 2009. What a pile of crap. You can read my full review here, but it boils down to this. It pretty much stinks, but it could be worse I guess.

We Ski Review

When I've not been playing Rock Band 2 the last couple weeks I've been goofing around in We Ski. We Ski is just what the title says, as skiing game for the Wii. I picked it up because it supports 4 players as well as the Wii Balance Board. The graphics are pretty much what you expect from a Wii game...nothing to fancy, but not bad.

The game is pretty simple. You make a character and then ski down the mountain. You can either just ski wherever you want and relax or do various events that are scattered around the slopes. The events fall into a few categories: racing moguls, slalom, or freestyle, find missing people, deliver food, do trick, and others. While I don't mind doing some of the events what I really enjoy about We Ski is just relaxing and skiing down the slopes. Each slope gives you a rating for speed, turning, and other categories, but it is very unobtrusive. I find it really relaxing to just start at the top of the mountain and ski all the way to the bottom hitting whatever jumps I can find.

I tried playing both with and without the balance board. I found that for the most part I prefer to play without the balance board. The game is much easier to control without the balance board. This is mostly because when you use the balance board you still have to use the Wiimote and Nunchuk. So, you're trying to control your skiing direction with the board, but do all your tricks with the wiimote/nunchuk. Don't get me wrong the balance board is fun for a while, but for playing more than 5 minutes I did not use it.

Overall I like We Ski. It is like $30 and is pretty fun and relaxing.

Boom Blox Review

I decided for one of the first games I play on my new Wii I should trust a name that I know. Since Stephen Spielburg is pretty much a household game I decided I'd try Boom Blox. Boom Blox is essentially a series of puzzle games that involve. There are at least 8 or 9 different types of puzzle games included with each one having multiple variations. There is both a single player porting and a multiplayer portion to the game. The single player is basically just working through each type of puzzle with increasing difficulties to unlock the next set of puzzles. I'm having fun with the single player, but not as much fun as I'm having with the multiplayer.

The mutiplayer has both a competitive and a cooperative section. The competitive section puts you against 1 to 3 of your friends to see who can do the best solving the puzzles and in some cases attacking each other's puzzles. The vs matches are mostly just paly until someone wins and then pick a new one type rounds. The cooperative game types are layed out similar to the single player where beating easier puzzles unlocks the harder ones. My wife and I have been playing almost every night for over a week now on the co-op puzzles and we've been having a lot of fun. Some of the co-op puzzles you take turns on and other you have to work at the same time to finish puzzles as quick as possible.

Overall I'd highly recommend hecking out Boom Blox. You may want to rent it because once you complete all the puzzles I don't see a ton of replay value in the vs modes, but it is still well worht playing through once.

Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy Stinks

So a friend of mine recommended I try Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy for the Wii. So, I added it to my GameFly queue and I got it yesterday. I decided to check it out today at lunch. To put it simply it sucks. I like the idea of the game. You shoot down enemy planes and then you can attach their weapons to your plane for more fire power. I realize that Wii games will not look as great as stuff on the 360, but the graphics look like they were made for the original NES. Ignoring the graphics the game was just not fun to play. The controls are easy enough, but they make it virtually impossible to get through sections without dying. After 30 minutes I gave up and sent it back to GameFly.

Misc Gaming Today

I played some Big Beach Games on the Wii the last couple days. It is pretty fun. My wife likes the Frisbee Gold and Boccie Ball. I'm liking pretty much all of the games in it. Those two just have the easiest controls which is why she likes them I think.

We also got Wii Fit. I'm pretty happy since my Fit Age is 26 and I turn 30 next month. Still, it has some fun games. I'm more looking forward to what other games get released for the balance board.

I also tried out the Pure demo in Xbox Live Marketplace today. It is the first racing game since Full Auto that I think I can definitely win some races in. I really like the simple arcadey controls and how doing tricks fills up your special/turbo meter. It is nice that you can either pull bigger tricks or use the boost to go faster with the same meter.

Finally, I checked out this weeks Xbox Live Arcade games. Shred Nebula is not my kind of game. I don't like how you control the ship. I just can't get use to it. Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball was not that great either. From what I understand the full version has some other game modes that are suppose to be better, but the one int he trial stunk.

Over all a fun day playing so far. I'm headed off to try some more stuff in Wii Fit and probably some Too Human.