Daisy Fuentes Pilates Video Game Review for Nintendo Wii

Daisy Fuentes Pilates Video Game Review for Nintendo Wii
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Daisy Fuentes Pilates

Pilates was created by Joseph H. Pilates as a useful form of physical exercise and strength training. Similar in some ways to Yoga, Pilates is designed to elongate the muscles, rather than shorten them. Pilates has been used by ballet dancers, acrobats, and movie stars to improve their physical well being. Wii gamers can also take advantage of the benefits of Pilates by playing Daisy Fuentes Pilates, improve their physical well being and have some fun. The exercises of Pilates can be pretty intense and if you’re not in the best of shape, so you should take it easy at first. Once you get the motions down and get use to exercising you can always increase your workout.

Gameplay and Features (3 out of 5)

Daisy Fuentes Pilates improves your motivation to exercise

Daisy Fuentes Pilates includes ten different exercises in 3 difficulty levels: beginner, intermediate and challenging. They all implement the Wii Balance Board and Wii Remote. The ten exercises are bicycle, double leg circle, toe taps, pelvic bridge, side leg work, hundred, mermaid, neck pull, roll up and saw. You’ll find that some of the included exercises are the same in all the difficulty settings.

You start by entering your age, name, height, weight and gender on the Balance Board. If you don’t have the Balance Board you can still do exercises, but you just won’t be scored on all of the exercises. Once this is done, you can head into the Workout Center, Daisy’s Office, Guest Hut or Help Desk. The Workout Center is where you change the difficulty setting and participate in the included modes of Resort Tour mode, Single Exercise mode, and Workout Set mode.

Resort Tour mode isn’t very much fun or useful to play. You click on random parts of the resort and perform a specific exercise. This mode was difficult to understand and became a jumbled mess that was pretty lame. The Single Exercise mode has you do 5 repetitions of an exercise of your choice. The first five exercises make use of the Wii Balance Board, while the other five use the Wii Remote. This mode was much easier to use and the best of the three included modes. The Workout Set mode is for more experienced Pilates athletes. They don’t provide an explanation on how to execute the exercises, so if you don’t know anything about Pilates this mode is very difficult and even frustrating. They included 5 pre-set workouts with 5 different exercises for you to try in this mode. Classic Moves, Hardcore and Resort Veteran, Wii Balance Board exercises and Wii Remote exercises are included. This title looks good in theory and could have been one of the 5 best Wii games for couples with better executed game play.

Graphics (3 out of 5)

Daisy Fuentes Pilates has an average graphical presentation that does the job but doesn’t add any visual elements that stand out. This video game isn’t going to be included on the list of 5 best Wii games period. The included exercise scenes are a little fuzzy at times and Daisy Fuentes doesn’t look anything like the person I have seen in pictures. The included environments are pretty simple in construction, with very little in the way of detail in Daisy’s Office or the Guest Hut. They did just enough to make it playable as an exercise video game. The animations are all smooth and functional and it’s easy enough to follow along using the included exercise scenes.

Sounds (3 out of 5)

Daisy Fuentes Pilates has average sound quality that does the job but isn’t designed to be a top quality audible production. The sound track is perfect for exercising and helps keep your energy high and keep you involved in the exercises you’re doing. The voice acting of Daisy is clear and she’ll tell you when you aren’t doing very well, so it’s nice to feel like you have a coach present.

Controls (2 out of 5)

This game uses the Wii Balance Board and Wii Remote as controllers to help you do the exercises in ways that are supposed to be more engaging and immersive. They didn’t implement the Wii MotionPlus in this video game. The use of the Wii Balance Board and Wii Remote is good in theory but it’s more distracting in this video game than useful. You’ll spend more time focusing on using the controls, rather than the exercise or your breathing. Unfortunately, the execution of the control system is below average and doesn’t work well enough to make this video game useful and satisfying as an exercise video game. The Balance Board is a lot more difficult to use in this video game than Wii Fit and it makes the Toe Taps exercise almost impossible to do. The Wii Remote is also not precise enough to allow for you to use it in a satisfying and useful way. Wii Remote accidents are possible with this video game, so be careful.

Overall Rating (2 out of 5)

Daisy Fuentes Pilates is an average exercise program that can provide you with a few minutes of energetic exercise, but this video game wasn’t any fun to play. If you need to get some exercise, you should probably stick to your exercise videos. The control system doesn’t work well enough to allow you to play this video game at a level that is useful and entertaining. They do include a nice variety of exercises and modes. They just didn’t do a good enough job making this video game for me to recommend it for anybody. You’d be much better off using the Wii Fit.

References

Images courtesy of Sega and Nintendo