Yoga for Wii

jen struggles to find her centre

Yoga is all about achieving physical and mental enlightenment through various exercises which strengthen and align the body. As well as this, it aims to promote blood flow to all the body's organs and offers breathing techniques which help quiet, calm and discipline the mind. All very lofty ambitions I'm sure you'll agree. So just how well does this translate to the world of games? In the case of the simply titled Yoga, not very well unfortunately. So poorly in fact that I found myself more inclined to be stressed-out, thanks to the many faults that Yoga presented me with.

At first I wondered if perhaps I was just expecting too much and nitpicking. Sure the graphics looked like something that even the PlayStation 1 would have been slightly embarrassed by and the voice acting was of an appalling quality and sounded incredibly muffled, but I was here for the Yoga, not a traditional gaming experience. I really wanted to like this and to learn from it, I could certainly do with learning to manage stress and to improve my flexibility. The problem is I just don't see how this is worth the extra cost compared to signing up to a Yoga class or just buying a Yoga exercise DVD.

The core of the title is centred on the Story Mode, which sounds a bit grandiose for what it actually is. It's actually an on rails tour of a temple. Guided around this temple by your chosen trainer, you can't fail to notice just how badly designed Yoga is. The fact that there doesn't seem to be any way of changing your path other than when your trainer asks you if you want to change floors or try a pose, is intensely annoying as time goes on. The fact that everything moves at such a sluggish pace gradually becomes more and more irritating as well. It's not all entirely bad here as at least there are some basic overviews as to the history behind various poses and Chakras and I did learn a fair amount behind the concepts of Yoga. I also 'learnt' from one particular Guru that eating stale food is bad for me, who would have thought it?

Unfortunately the descriptive segments are rather badly implemented. Frequently after being told the advantages of a certain concept, I wanted to go straight into trying the pose, but the opportunity never presents itself. Instead you have to wait for the trainer to guide you to the relevant room at a later moment. Throughout the Story Mode, I just never felt in control of anything. Nor did I ever get a huge amount of chances to try out poses and actually do Yoga. When I did get the odd opportunity to try a pose, it still all felt rather detached. Each pose room offers one badly digitised trainer who demonstrates the move then gives you the chance to try it. This would be fine if it wasn't for the fact the game doesn't do anything to guide your progress. The Wii Remote doesn't seem to affect anything and the game simply sits back and waits a set amount of time until it assumes you must have done the move correctly. There aren't even any oral instructions to explain how to do it, making some moves particularly awkward to do if you're also trying to look at the TV screen to ensure you've got it right.

Besides the rather peculiar Story Mode, there are also Routine and Training modes. Training mode allows the player to choose an individual pose to practice. A shame to see that there's no difficulty rating assigned to each move as it would have been nice to ascertain at a glance what poses were ideal for beginners and so forth. The Routine mode is a little more complex offering a number of pre-assigned routines to partake in. Some of these are aimed at helping certain conditions such as arthritis, obesity or the common cold, while others focus on helping specific parts of your body such as your back, abdomen and heart. It's a nice concept but having had personal experience of arthritis, I'm somewhat unsure of how wise it would be to do the arthritis routine considering the complexity of some of the poses. As was the case with the other modes, Yoga suffers badly from its lack of spoken instructions. Try doing the downward facing dog while still keeping your eye in the screen and you'll realise quickly how useful spoken instructions would have been! The fact that you can't create your own routines is a sorely missed opportunity as well. No doubt a number of yoga students purchasing this game would have liked to have been able to set up their own routines in line with possibly other forms of learning such as classes or books.

Unfortunately, there just isn't really much point to Yoga. It doesn't offer anything worthwhile that a yoga DVD wouldn't already offer for less than half the price. Even ignoring the shockingly poor graphics and sound quality, the lack of real instruction is a huge downfall for this product. It makes getting to grips with the various poses far too awkward and complicated. Ultimately Yoga just doesn't feel very rewarding at all and I wouldn't really trust it to teach you the basics of yoga correctly. There's not even much of cover model Anya Rubik to be seen. She seems more than happy to occasionally present a video but not actually demonstrate any of the poses herself. Excluding the informative history lessons on yoga which the game provides, there just isn't anything worth recommending here. If you're desperate for a Yoga game stick with Wii Fit. It might not be focused solely on Yoga but even the small section available is miles better than the standards presented here.

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By Jennifer Allen