Daisy Fuentes Pilates for Nintendo Wii

• Type: Exergame
• Platform: Nintendo Wii
• Equipment Needed: Wii Remote and optional Balance Board.
• Price: $29.99
• Fitness Level: Beg, Int, Adv

Getting Started

Your experience begins with a brief introduction from Daisy Fuentes, offering a unique Pilates experience at a relaxing island resort. You can check in as a visitor, which allows you exercise without having to enter personal information, or as a registered guest, which tracks your workouts.

Once you sign in, you're taken to the Resort Hub where you have several options:

• The Workout Center, where you can choose your workout, difficulty level and take a tour of the resort
• Daisy's Office, where you can hear a few basic tips about exercise and diet or to change the color of Daisy's outfit
• The Guest Hut, where you can view your profile or your score
• The Help Desk, where you can view video demonstrations of the exercises

The exercises are tracked using the Wii remote and the Balance Board. The timing bar on the screen follows the movement with circles that light up to show how you’re doing. A green light means good timing, a yellow light means you’re off and a red light means you’re not even close. What the controllers don't track is your body position, which is much more important than speed, and the Balance Board is barely used at all, which is disappointing.

• Resort Tour - From the resort menu you can choose from a variety of areas, each with their own scenery and music, to exercise. What's odd about this section is that you only do one exercise at each location (e.g., the Pelvic Bridge by the pool). Visiting all the different areas will allow you to try each exercise, but you can't choose to do full workouts from this part of the menu.
  
  
• Single Exercise – In this menu, you can choose a single move from the 10 exercises available: the Bicycle, Double Leg Circle, Toe Taps, Pelvic Bridge, Side Leg work, the Hundred, the Mermaid, the Neck Pull, the Roll Up and the Saw. You can also choose where to do the exercise (the pool, the fitness room, etc.) and view previews and tutorials of the exercises, something that might be helpful before you complete a full workout set, since tutorials aren't available there. This section does, however, seem like a repackaged version of the the Resort Tour, except that you can choose the exercise and the location. It would be nice to be able to do full workouts or to even put together your own exercises in this section.

• Workout Set – In this section, you can choose preset workouts (from 'Classic Moves' to a 'Wii Balance Board' workout), with anywhere from 3 to 10 exercises. You also have the option to create up to 5 of your own custom workouts, which is a nice feature.

  The workouts include 2 different warm up options - running in place in your bare feet (which I don't recommend) or a crazy-looking side to side stretch (which I also don't recommend). The warm ups last an unbelievably long 5 minutes, but you can skip them (which I do recommend) or any other exercise you don't want to do. You can't view tutorials of the moves and there's a pause between each exercise, so the moves don't flow as seamlessly as I would like. There's also no cueing or instruction, just virtual Daisy telling you when to move up, down or left and right.

Pros

• Detailed tutorials of the exercises
• Beautiful scenery and soothing music offer a relaxed atmosphere
• A variety of choices for different workouts
• May appeal to people who want basic workouts
• The ability to choose from beginner, intermediate and advanced levels

Cons

• Only 10 exercises - It's hard to get the full Pilates experience with so few moves
• Odd tracking - The most important aspects of Pilates, body position, breathing and a stable pelvic floor, are ignored in favor of tracking the speed of your movements, which doesn't do much to teach you the fundamentals of Pilates. The lack of true interaction and tracking was one of the biggest disappointments for me
• The silent treatment - Virtual Daisy barely speaks during the exercises or workouts
• Lame extras - While there are plenty of choices, Daisy's exercise and diet tips are basic (if not obvious) and the option to change her outfit is just silly (I won't even mention her cleavage, which is also distracting)
• Warm up exercises could cause an injury - Jogging in place for 5 minutes in bare feet and side to side stretches (with almost full splits in the middle) will not feel good on most bodies
• Pauses between moves - Having to press a button between the movements takes the flow out of the workouts

I wanted to like this game but there are just too many issues standing in the way and I'm afraid many exercisers will feel the same way. With the potential of Wii and the incredible benefits of Pilates, this seemed like a great match, but you might be better off taking a class or trying a video.