I love the Wii Fit, but since moving back with parents to save money, my partner took ownership of the Wii and I miss it. I've solved the Mario Kart withdrawal but getting to DS version which is amazing, and now I have Walk with Me for the DS. So is this the DS trying to get to the Wii Fit market?

Walk with me, is exactly that. All you do is walk, and the DS monitors this. It's really a high tech pedometer and the DS records the stats.

In the Walk with me pack, you get two activity meters, one white one black, the DS cartridge and a hefty instruction manual, which contains instructions in a million different languages.

The bit I like about Walk with me the most is that you have your own mii. I've not seen a game on the DS where you can have a mii yet. There are all the facilities you would have on the wii to make one- changing the eyes, hair, eyebrows, mouth, shape of the face, favourite colour etc. Sad, I know but I miss my little mii as I don't see her as much as I used to. There is the facility to import your mii from your wii to your DS, but I had changed my hair since my last mii was made so I made a new one, plus I just love building miis. We've got miis of people on the wii that have never even used it but I just like building them, a game in itself! There are probably already more, but this is the first time I've had a game that interacts with the wii like this, and I'm sure in time Nintendo will use this a lot more to cross the DS and wii (which will of course encourage everyone to own both of their best selling consoles.)

After you've made you mii, it's time to set up your profile. It's important to make sure the clock on your DS is right, as this is what the activity meters set the time by. There is a prompt to change it if it's wrong. To transfer information from the DS to the activity meter or vice versa, the game card is infra red so you just need to hold them about 10cm apart and press the button on the meter for just a second. You need to do this every time you change settings on the DS, or when you want to transfer the step count from the meter to be saved on the DS.

To record your step data simply carry the tiny meter around with you all day, either in a pocket or bag, or there is a clip supplied for each meter that you can attach and clip onto your trousers for example.
At the end of the day, go into 'check my rhythm' on the Walk with me menu and use the button on the meter to transfer the data. There is a little cartoon version of the activity meter who talks you through the results and give you mini targets for each day. I think these are a bit pointless, such as 'try to walk as much as possible' and 'enjoy your meals.' In addition to this there is a step target to achieve which to begin with is set at 3,000. I found I was blitzing 3,000 every day, and found there was the ability it change it yourself. My average for the week was 11,000 so I set it at that. You can change this up or down as much as you like, meaning it's quite easy to manipulate. I would have thought it would be a lot better to have a more structured way as to when the target increases and by how much.

The data collected form the activity meter can be viewed in a number of different ways under. 'Records' on the Walk with me menu. The most helpful of these, I found, is rhythm graphs. This is like a little walking timeline for the day, which is colour coded in blocks, white for little or no movement, blue for steady walking around and red for active, non stop walking. It's very easy to see at which part of the day you are most active and for how long, you can compare this to other days too to see your walking rhythm. I work shifts and it's clear form mine I have no routine whatsoever.

Other graphs can show your walking rhythm in more detail, on which you can write notes to explain anomalies, or reminders for example. You can also view the number of steps taken on calendar. For each day to complete with Walk with me, you have a stamp on your calender, another detail borrowed from the wii fit. You can also check how the amount of steps taken differs every day in a simple 'steps against date' line graph.

As well as simply recording the data, you can 'Play with Records.'This I feel is the weakest section of the 'game.' There are two 'games' on here that use the amount of steps sone that day. The first is a world map on which there are 100 items to unlock based on the amount of steps you've done. This is interesting for the first couple of times, but I soon tired of this. Even less inventive is the 'Illuminate' feature which shows how much power you are generating based on your walking. You mii runs on a treadmill until the steps are used up and gives a results from table lamp to city at night. I got to city at night by the third day and it doesn't go any higher, so that soon lost it's novelty factor too.

The other way to play with your records is to use the DS wifi connection and see how high you rank with user all over the world. Also, you can combine the steps with others to see how far into space you've travelled. Clever ideas, but again I'm sure the novelty wears off after a while.

I've been using the Walk with me programme for a few weeks now and I must admit, I'm now contemplating leaving it alone now. It has been interesting to see my walking patterns and how they differ from day to day but there is not enough substance to the programme to keep interest. I thought this would encourage me to walk more by setting challenges for example but it doesn't, and the ability to change the step target whenever you feel like it makes it seem pointless having one at all.

The 'Play with records' section may as well not be there at all for all that it adds, and I do think Nintendo are missing a trick. The ability of the activity meter and DS to record data could be used to great effect, with many different games and keep fit regimes, but Walk with me just doesn't have enough substance. This could have been the Wii Fit phenomenon for the DS, but it seems to be destined for the bargain bin of game along with along of other poorly conceived titles.

I mentioned that there are two activity meters supplied, I've only used one but you can record two peoples data or even that of a dog. This would add a certain competitive side to the game, but only in that you can see who's done the most steps by looking at the records. Nintendo could have embellished on this competition side of it too.

Maybe this is just the warm up game to test the technology and there will be another game out to rival the Wii Fit, so we can all spend a little bit more money.

I spent £37.87 on this product from Tesco, which is fairly typical of the price you'll pay for this in most places. For this amount of money I was expecting a lot more from Walk with Me, it had the potential to be so much better.