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Walk It Out!
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Graphics & Sound:
There are a whole lot of fitness games on the market, especially for the Wii. Most of them seem to be marketed a bit more towards adults though. Walk It Out! is a new exercise game, but to me it feels much more kid-friendly than any of the others I've played.
Graphically, Walk It Out! reminds me of a lot of Wii games that I have played. The characters are a bit cartoonish. I did find it funny that the male and female characters look exactly the same other than hair cut and pant lengths. But nevertheless, you really don't look at your character much, other than the back of their head, so I guess that's no big deal. You can change your character's hair color, skin color, and several clothing options if you really want to.
Music is a very big part of Walk It Out!. The whole point of the game is to step to the beat, so you had better enjoy the music. There is a lot of music for you to choose from. With 120 songs total, that's at least 40 more songs that any other music game I've seen lately. It's mostly current popular music as well. There are songs like "When I Grow Up" by the Pussycat Dolls, "La La Land" by Demi Lovato, and "Boom Boom Pow" from the Black Eyed Peas that are the original artist's master recordings. There's also more classic songs that are covered like "Walking On Sunshine" & "What is Love." For yet even more songs, there are a whole lot of Konami originals that you would expect to hear in a Dance Dance Revolution game. That's plenty of music for you to enjoy! A really nice bonus is that you can read all the lyrics to the songs as they're playing. It just makes it easier to sing along that way. |
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Gameplay:
So the basic concept of Walk It Out! is that you walk around town. If it were just that though, you might get a bit bored. But as you're going around the town, you also get to build it. At first, you'll only see the major buildings, grass, and pathways. But along the paths are different capsules. The ones that have a house on them will allow you to build the town, everything from trees, to street lights and even buildings later on. The capsules that are records are going to be the music that you can unlock. There are also magical clock capsules that will allow you to change the time. You might wonder why you'd want to change the time, but personally I play mostly at night so the town is dark. I'd like to see the town during daylight. The sunlight in the town matches whatever time it is in real life unless you use the magical clock to change it. There are also constellation capsules to make the 12 zodiac constellations appear and rainbows capsules that you can potentially find seven of daily to unlock a new rainbow each day. If you hover over the capsule, you'll see exactly what that one unlocks and how much it costs. The cost is based on the tokens that you have earned for each step that you take. You can only buffer three capsules at once, so if you run out of steps buffered to pay for the capsule, make sure to only put the ones in the buffer that you want or you'll have to go back around to find them again.
While you're walking around, you are listening to music. You'll unlock songs as you go on and you can unlock them by buying their capsule. You can make your own playlists for the music, so if there are songs you don't like, you never have to hear them, and if there are songs that you like more, you can play them more. Personally, I just let it go on random but sometimes that does confuse things. You are walking to the beat. Some songs are quite a bit faster than others, so if you go from a slower one to a faster one, you might miss a few steps if you're not careful. Each step you miss will cause you to lose a token, so you don't want to miss any if possible! The further you walk, the bigger you'll be able to build your city!
When you get tired of just taking a walk, Walk It Out! also provides mini-games for you to play. These games are quite simple to play, but they provide a different entertainment. Psycolo lets you use your brain while you're stepping. Whack-a-Slack is a bit more like Dance Dance Revolution in that you will need to step on a corresponding arrow to step on the "Slackies." Then there's Smash 'n' Run! where you'll be chasing those "Slackies" and hitting them with a hammer! They're all fun and provide a bit of a different challenge from walking around. |
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Difficulty:
Walk It Out! is a relatively easy game to play. There's no difficulty setting like in Dance Dance Revolution as all you're doing is walking. But it's not as easy as it sounds! While you're walking, you must stick to the rhythm of the song. You can see a tempo meter in the top left corner that tells you exactly when you need to step. But you really don't want to be watching this meter all the time as you really need to be looking around the city to see where you want to go and what you want to unlock. You can make the game easier by changing the settings so that you only need every other step to not be counted as missing. If you do that though, you'll find that it's going to take you longer to build your city as your steps are your currency.
You can also play Walk It Out! with a friend. Granted, this doesn't make the game easier or harder, but it does make it more fun to play. It's really like you're just talking a walk in the park with your friend, so it is a really great way to exercise that keeps you going.
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Game Mechanics:
I really like the fact that Walk It Out! gives you plenty of choices to play. You can play solely with the Wii-mote and Nunchuk if you don't have a balance board or dance pad, which means that you don't have to have any extra equipment to play. But if you own either the balance board or a dance pad, you can use them to play with, making it a lot more like real walking. Personally I found that it was easier to play on the dance pad. It doesn't matter which button you step on, arrows or symbols. They'll all register as a step, so you can turn it into a dance game if you want. On the balance board, you aren't supposed to actually step. You are supposed to simply lift up your heels and step the back down, making it feel more like a stair climber machine than walking. But either way, you will get a good work out eventually. I found it fun to alternate them since the dance pad and the balance board do provide a workout of different muscles because of the way that you step. You will have to save and quit to change from one controller to the other though.
Walk It Out! is meant to be an exercise game, and as such, it will help you track how many calories you burn and how far you go. At the end of each session, the game will show you your workout results, complete with how far you walked, how long you walked for, how many calories you burned, and a history of how much you unlocked. You can also edit anything on your profile daily if you want, so it's easy to change your weight each day.
With as many exercise games as are out there, it's hard to convince yourself to try yet another one. To be honest, I didn't think that just walking would be as much fun as it is, but getting to build the city as you go makes you feel like you can take a walk in the park, listen to good music, and play Simcity at the same time. Walk It Out! turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected. Given that you don't have to buy a balance board or dance pad to play, it makes it much easier to just pick it up and try it. Especially if you have kids that you want to play with, I recommend that you give it a try because I think you'll enjoy it like I did! |
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-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl |
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