Why You Can Trust CNET NewU: Fitness First Personal Trainer review: NewU: Fitness First Personal Trainer
NewU combines fitness and nutrition in a well balanced combination, although it would benefit from better on-screen feedback.
If you're going to buy a fitness game for the Wii, it would seem to make a certain amount of sense to buy one backed by a fitness brand. That's obviously been the thinking behind NewU: Fitness First Personal Trainer, a fitness program for the Wii with the Fitness First brand slapped onto it. It also comes with a complementary voucher for a seven-day guest pass within it, although given how often those seem to be given out in shopping malls, we're not sure that's a great inducement to purchase.
NewU: Fitness First Personal Trainer
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
As with every other fitness package for the Wii, the first step in setting up NewU is in creating a profile. This includes a profile name, gender, body type, activity level, the choice of metric or imperial measurements, which foods you do or don't eat and a primary and secondary fitness goal from a choice of 25 very broad categories. You then choose a trainer from a choice of four options, each with their own specialities, and finally a location for your workouts. The health club makes sense, as does the meadow to a certain extent, but we're not sure how many people really do sit ups on the peaks of Alpine Mountains or tropical beaches.
NewU's interface is very slick indeed, with a style ripped straight from the Xbox 360 dashboard interface. It's a nice change from the rather cartoony low resolution interfaces most other fitness titles for the Wii tend to sport. That slickness extends to the in-game personal trainer. Unlike competing titles, you're not dealing with an oddly rendered virtual trainer, and instead you get a full motion video trainer to show you all of your exercises. The price you pay for that is that you don't get an on-screen avatar to represent you. Instead a set of on-screen resistance indicators and a beat indicator to keep you in time with each exercise. You do get feedback in terms of repetitions counted, a colour-coded orb that goes red if you're really stuffing things up and a beat counter at the top of the screen, but it's really only at the end of each exercise that you'll get an idea of how well you've actually done.
Full motion video helps guide you through the steps
(Credit: BlackBean)
NewU is Wii Fit Balance Board compatible, and this includes some floor-based exercises. This is where it also falls (if you'll pardon the pun) flat, as you're lying on the ground and can't see the scant feedback the on-screen display gives you. You're either going to have to get it straight away from the tutorial, or hope you're doing it right and check once it tells you to stop.
NewU also gives you a timed countdown before each exercise starts. We're torn as to whether this is a good idea or not. On the one hand it forces you into the next exercise without delay, but on the other hand if you've got to get into position, or grab the Wiimote or Balance Board you're left scrambling a bit.
NewU's entirely exercise focused, so unlike Wii Fit or EA Sports Active you're not given "games" with a fitness core to distract you. The range of exercises on tap is pretty impressive, and like pretty much any fitness title if you stick with the exercises and perform them properly, you'll gain some fitness benefits.
NewU pays more attention to nutrition than competing titles. It'll generate a choice of healthy recipes for you, including shopping lists, but there's no way to get those lists off the Wii. You'd have to jot them down from the screen to a notepad, which feels odd in a tech product. Even being able to email them to yourself for printing or save them to an SD card would have been a killer feature.
NewU's attention to nutrition and detail in terms of the type of workout is impressive. There's not much in the way of "games" here, as there are in Wii Fit and EA Active, and the lack of an on-screen avatar to track your movements means you're more at the mercy of how the game measures you once you've finished a routine than you really should be.