Did someone order a sad attempt at a fitness game?
Fitness games usually have a bad reputation, but there are some really good ones out there. I use Wii Fit U and Your Shape every so often and have never regretted purchasing either. But then, there are those that try to do new things and miss the mark pretty much entirely. This is the fate of Fit Music on Wii U, which, honestly, has sound ideas, but suffers from terrible execution.
Fit Music for Wii U does not start on a very entertaining note as bleak, white menus and static pictures greet the player. The warm up modes are not scored, which kind of defeats the purpose of playing the game.
While that is not a very engaging start, it gets worse when you actually have to hold a controller in your hands. The training mode continues this trend by barely engaging the player. The vague guide causes confusion as you constantly have to pay attention while moving as the various elements are presented in a half hearted Just Dance fashion.
The controls aren't great either as you will have to perform most of the moves with a Wii Remote. Even on the lowest difficulty with the simplest of moves, I was still getting bad ratings all over the place, even in places where it does not even make sense. I had to jump or tilt my head around at times and the game was saying that I did not perform to their standards. The Wii Balance Board is used in a few instances, but don't think too highly of that either. In one of the exercises I just constantly moved one foot away from the Balance Board and it kept giving me positive ratings. The controls are so unpredictable, and doubly so in Fit Dance mode.
In Fit Dance, you can choose from 15 tunes that mostly consist of Euro dance and groovy disco songs. You will be putting the moves you have learned in the training to the test in some long winded, boring challenges. When I stopped played in a middle of a song, I noticed something interesting. I continued to not touch the controller during a number of songs and the result was that I got incredibly high scores by doing nothing. At least in Just Dance they have the decency to auto-mark it as a mistake, but Fit Music simply does not care.
The game’s visuals are lackluster as well. There are simple backgrounds at various locations to give the game some life, but it never becomes too impressive. The major issue though can be found with trainer Patrizia Salviato, who moves in some poorly edited green screen. It looks like the chroma keying has not been properly applied, giving her a fuzzy outline.
Fit Music for Wii U is a terrible game. It fails at being both a fitness game and an entertaining experience. The controls are utterly wonky and it makes no effort to engage the player. It is a confusing mess and one that Wii U owners should stay away from.