I was conned by the other half into buying him a Wii for Christmas. Mainly by the mention that we could get Wii Fit and that Wii Sports would be great fun for everyone! He was actually right for once! It took a couple of months for me to get round to forking out a further £70 for the Wii Fit package.

What you get for your money:
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The Wii balance board, lead to charge it and the game itself.
The balance board is fairly lightweight but does have the disadvantage of having to be stored. We have bought a protective cover for ours to make it a bit more durable. The board can be charged up by attaching the lead from the board to the console itself. This can be a bit inconvenient if you are wanting to use it as it restricts moving it around. Fortunately it keeps its charge for a while and so this isn't a problem very often.

What is Wii Fit?
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The idea is that you create a profile for yourself, set yourself goals and it keeps a track of your progress. The body test measures your BMI, weight and then gives you a Wii Fit age. This is calculated on your actual age and the results from a few 'tests'. These are all based around balance an example of which is standing on one leg! Not really sure how accurate this is as a test of your fitness age but its more a bit of fun.

The game also records how much time you spend using the game and your progress against any goals. It is quite personal, remembers your name, when you last used it, gives you tips etc. It can be a bit of a pain when it tells you off for not being around for a while!

The Games:
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For the first two sections you need a personal trainer to show you how to do the exercises. You can choose from a male or female trainer. They talk you through it and can get a bit repetitive.

**Yoga**
The first section is Yoga and this was the main reason I was interested in buying this. When you first enter the section only a few of the exercises are available to you and it always makes you watch the tutorial if you've not done an exercise before. The first few are fairly simple but it doesn't take long for all of the exercises to be added. I did all the exercises once today and it took about half an hour.

When you start an exercise it tells you which part of the body it will work on. When you finish an exercise it gives you a percentage mark depending on how well you did. This is all assessed by your weight distribution on the balance board. I find this a bit unreliable to be fair. I can think I've done pretty rubbish and get a high percentage or be really pleased and it tells me I'm pants! Some of the more advanced exercises are done without the balance board and so you don't get assessed on these.

At the end of every exercise it banks your minutes and shows you the top ten leader board. This is where you can see whether you are better than the rest of the family or they are klcking your butt!

**Muscle exercises**
This is the section I use the least so I'm not going to go into a great deal of detail. It works the same way as the yoga section only the exercises are more traditional. The good thing about both the yoga and muscle sections is it links exercises together that will work on a certain area and lets you know when you've completed a set. Good if you are wanting to concentrate on toning a certain part of your body.

**Aerobic**
This section is a bit more fun than the first two. It has 2 levels of hula hoops, 3 of step aerobics, 3 jogging and a boxercise.

Again, you don't get all the options initially, these are built up over time but you do get one of each type of exercise to start you off.

The hula hoop options are good for making you look a bit stupid if anyone else is watching as you are hula hooping without a hula hoop and its hard work! I enjoy doing the step aerobics, the first two to options to become available are set routines and then the 3rd is a free-step option. This can be done whilst watching normal tv and you keep time by the Wii remote. You can choose how long you want to do step for and it will alert you when your time is up.

The jogging works similar to the step except you don't use the board at all for this. You have 2 set distances to run along with other people and then you can free-jog along to the tv.

The boxercise is my personal favourite in this section and starts with a 3 minute beginner routine. Once you've done that a couple of times you can opt for a more advanced level. This is the only part of the game that requires the use of the nunchuck so it can measure the force and quality of your punch on both hands.

**Balance**
This section is where you will find the most entertaining games that are made with the intention of improving your balance and eventually your Wii Fit age. I don't use this section too often as I feel as though I'm not really doing anything towards getting fit! All the games work in a similar way getting you to move from side to side, back to front etc to make something happen on the screen. There is table tilt, heading footballs, skiing, snowboarding, tightrope walking and a penguin flipping game. The final game is zazen which is basically sitting very still!

**Favourites**
If you select this section it has your most frequently used games together to choose from.

Overall opinion
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We've had this for about 5 months now and the novelty has certainly worn off for everyone else in the family. I am still using it as I do want to lose some weight. However, I can't get myself motivated to use it often enough for this to happen. Like everything else, if you have got willpower you could probably successfully shape up using this. But if you prefer to watch Coronation Street of an evening its not going to do you any good, unless you use the free-step or jogging options of course.

You do need quite a bit of space available to use this. Some of the exercises involve stepping on and off the board in every direction and some only putting you hands or feet on the board with the rest of your body on the floor. With the boxercise you need to ensure you keep your distance from the tv as punching the screen with a Wii remote would probably not be the best idea.

Although the game recommends that you warm up before exercising, ther is no warm up section to the game. I tend to get round this by doing some yoga or muscle exercises before attempting anything aerobic.

I did think that at £70 this was an expensive purchase but I guess if you compare that to gym membership or paying to exercise it is only a one off cost. So I would say that if you are serious about getting fit its a good purchase. If you are just wanting this for a bit of fun then you will get bored of it once you've opened all the games and there are cheaper options available. On the plus side, the balance board can be used by some other games on the Wii although these are few and far between at the moment.