Bob was a big guy. Manly. Six foot four and full of muscles, or so the song goes. He doesn’t really “get” what Nintendo is trying to do with the whole “Blue Ocean” strategy. He owns a Wii, though, and has enjoyed it so far. When he saw the shrinking stack of WiiFit boxes at a local retailer Wednesday, he plunked down some money to buy one.

Bob and I got to talking at a pub last night before a screening of the atrociously, almost offensively awful Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and eventually the conversation drifted away from local microbrews and onto WiiFit.

“You know what? It kinda just works,” he told me. He said the line like he was shocked his mouth uttered the words so openly. He and his wife, both mid to late 20’s, had spent the previous evening going through the initial set up of Wii Fit, and ended up “playing” the title well past whatever hour they had arbitrarily deemed acceptable for a video game.

I’ve also spent the last 48 hours “playing” and dissecting WiiFit. Amazon dropped it off on Wednesday, and being the geek that I am I had it torn open and battery-packed before I got through the door. I did some yoga. I balanced myself *almost* perfectly. I noticed a little sweat starting to form on my brow.

And you know what? I was also surprised. WiiFit and the Balance Board works, it turns out, just fine indeed. (more…)

Kotaku’s Mark Wilson perceptively describes the current and outdated state of video game reviews.

If there is no such thing as a perfect game, then why are you scoring out of 100?… Movie reviewers solved this problem a long time ago. That’s why most adopted a simpler rating system in which a 4-star movie didn’t imply “perfection” but supreme excellence.

The star classification system (preferably four over five) just works better. It would allow gamers to quickly gauge a game’s quality while paying more attention to the actual review, all without taking the review score too seriously. One star is “poor.” Two stars “mediocre.” Three stars “good,” and four stars “excellent” (never perfect).

Then again, Metacritic would just convert the score to a 10-point scale, but at least you’re doing your part.