GameWit

This week's games

Spend a few minutes downhill skiing on "Wii Fit's" balance board, and you'll quickly realize Nintendo finally has a worthy successor to "Wii Sports."

As successful as "Super Mario Galaxy" and "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" have been, Nintendo hasn't really put out another game that's delivered on the "get up off your butt and game" buzz that accompanied the Wii's launch. "Wii Fit" comes bundled with one balance board, which players stand on. The balance board functions as a scale, and the game can put you through a variety of exercises and yoga-type activities. Whether you'll lose much weight playing a video game remains to be seen, and Nintendo emphasizes that the game shouldn't function as a stand-alone workout regimen. In any case, a number of the exercises are actually pretty fun, stand-alone minigames, like leaning on the balance board to keep soccer balls from going into a net. It's tailor-made for casual gamers who bought a Wii mainly for "Wii Sports" and want to scratch that same itch.

Don't get too excited, though. "Wii Fit" preorders have sold like gangbusters, so there's a good chance the game will be harder to find than the Wii itself. From my limited experience with the game, it's not worth paying much over the $90 retail price.

Over on the PlayStation 3, "Haze" is a highly touted, gritty first-person shooter about a futuristic soldier-for-hire. The game's story, set in 2048, has you playing through a South American war on both sides of the conflict. It's from Free Radical, the developers behind the "Timesplitters" series, one of the last generation of consoles' underrated franchises.

Not much going on the Xbox 360 this week, although the Web-comic-based game, "Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One" is a hybrid role-playing/adventure game that should appeal to fans of the world's most popular video game comic. The $20 downloadable title should hit Xbox Live Arcade early Wednesday.

For the PC, "Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures" is a massively multiplayer online game set in the world of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." No, not really.

WiiWare launch

The Wii got its answer to Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Store with last week's launch of WiiWare. Sure, Nintendo already has scores of old-school titles from previous game systems on the Virtual Console, but WiiWare is different. Its games are brand new, and many are from smaller development houses.

As with games on the Virtual Console, you can download WiiWare titles using the Wii's built-in Wi-Fi capabilities. (This is as good a time as any to point out that if you have a broadband Internet connection and haven't gotten your Wii, Xbox 360 or PS3 online, you're missing out on a world of gaming.)

The six launch titles range in price from $5 to $15, with "Lost Winds" ($10) and "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King" ($15) looking like the two standouts. "Lost Winds," for which there's already reportedly a sequel in the works, is a side-scrolling adventure game in which you use the Wii remote to control the wind and solve a variety of puzzles. "My Life as a King" departs from the "Final Fantasy" series' roots. Instead of turn-based Japanese role-playing goodness, it offers up "Sims"-type gameplay. You play as a newly anointed boy king who's tasked with building a castle from scratch.

The remaining four titles don't look anywhere as deep. "TV Show King" is a nice enough looking family quiz game, but if you enjoy it, you might wish you'd held out for a full-fledged, deeper title. "Defend Your Castle" ($5) is a conversion of a popular Flash Internet browser game. In "Pop" ($7), you use the remote to pop bubbles at a frenetic pace. The only dud of the bunch looks to be "VIP Casino Blackjack" ($7). Let's face it, blackjack isn't exactly the most complicated of card games, and a Wired magazine preview of "VIP" said the dealer in the game alternates between about five different phrases when he talks. Sounds like a recipe for irritating your spouse.

You can reach Staff Writer Eric Wittmershaus at 521-5433 or eric.wittmershaus@

pressdemocrat.com.