games  anime  |  toys
Destructoid is gaming news, community, videos, and sometimes love. Take the tour or jump in with Facebook:

 



Easily my biggest surprise from Ubidays was My Weight Loss Coach for the Nintendo DS. When the game was first announced, I never gave it a second thought. I figured it was going to be some kind of quick and simple Brain Age meets Wii Fit type game.

As it turns out, there's a lot more to My Weight Loss Coach than I had originally assumed. The game isn't focusing on players to just go work out every day. It's about changing the little things in a your daily life to help create better habits for yourself. Hit the jump to learn more about this unique little title.

[Editor's note: Sorry for the lack of photos everyone. Something is screwing with the file Ubisoft provided. Best I could do was find this video preview of the game on YouTube. Don't let the wall of text scare you please.] 

I'm the kind of guy that likes to let stuff pile up until it gets to the point of being unbearable. I tend to let my laundry pile up on the ground right next to my laundry basket. Sometimes I don't bother cleaning my bathroom for a month ... or three. And don't even get me started on how disgusting my car is looking at the moment.

It doesn't help that laziness seems to be in my genes. If you were to ever meet my father's side of the family, you'd swear they were some of the laziest people around. At the same time, my mom's side of the family is filled with hard workers that are far from lazy. With me, I want to clean stuff up, but I'm just too damn lazy to act on my desire. Maybe I'm making excuses with the whole genes thing, but being stuck in this weird middle limbo is really annoying.

With something like My Weight Loss Coach, I could possibly turn my laziness completely around with enough dedication. The goal with this game is to get people into better habits. It wants you to get more physical exercise, eat healthier and change your general habits up on a daily basis. Ubisoft worked with specialist in various health fields to ensure that what you will do in this game will be easy and fun to do.

When you start up a new game, you simply need to enter your weight, height and age. From there, the game will calculate your Body Mass Index and will let you know whether you should loss weight, gain weight or just try and maintain where you're at. Things will hopefully change for you as you progress and you can change your weight details as needed.

At the start of the game, you want to go to the Daily Session section. In a day, you have to try and meet four challenges: Walk 6,000 steps, complete at least one of the game challenges, do 30 minutes of exercise and have a perfect balance with the food you eat during your day. The game will come with a pedometer that you can actually plug into the GBA slot of your Nintendo DS. You don't have to use this specific pedometer and you can always enter your data manually. The game will track how many steps you take throughout your play through and will reward you with real life milestones. One example is the Great Wall of China milestone where your total walking distance has become what it would take to walk the Great Wall of China.

One of the requirements for the Daily Session is doing a challenge. You can do a max of six challenges a day and you will have over 700 challenges to do in the game. These challenges are little life tasks such as cleaning your car, cleaning out your fridge, and so on. Once you accept a challenge, you'll have 24 hours to complete it.

When you do the physical exercise requirement, you will need to input into the game what you did during the day (such as swimming, martial arts, etc) and for how long you did it. The game will have this cute little animation representing the information you just entered such as having the character in the game swim in a pool. 

The final part of the Daily Session has you telling the game what you ate throughout the day. The game has a big selection of foods to choose from and it will automatically calculate the calories for you. You can also input the data in directly; you just need to know the calorie number.

The second section to the game is called the Backpack. The Backpack will have all the tools needed to help you out in your Daily Session, divided up into a few categories.

In the Coaching session, the game will ask you about all of your daily habits to see what kind exercise the game should be giving you. So if you're the type of guy that's always behind a computer desk, it will suggest to you to do more physical activities.

The Backpack will also contain a trivia game with over 300 questions. It'll have questions such as what food doesn't belong to true and false style questions. All the questions can be reviewed afterwards for players to study. You'll also have a tips and facts page about foods and other health related things. There will be 160 of these all aimed at helping you to be a better person. There will also be a section with your weight and B.M.I. history, graphs of your progress, and a page of all of your milestone collections.

I will definitely be picking this game up once it comes out. It holds a lot of potential and it could be what I need to get myself onto a better path. My Weight Loss Coach will be out later this year and will retail for $29.99 with the pedometer attachment.  


Continue: More DS stories





prev next

12 comments | showing # 1 to 12

007's Avatar
007 at 05/28/2008 21:55
"I will definitely be picking this game up once it comes out. It holds a lot of potential and it could be what I need to get myself onto a better path."



...
A Humble Mr Perfect's Avatar
A Humble Mr Perfect at 05/28/2008 22:06
Yeah... YEAH!

Hamza, I am picking up what you are putting down here. and then my room.
bleep's Avatar
bleep at 05/28/2008 22:07
This is an interesting concept, but lets be honest with ourselves for a second CTZ, you just described the inborn level of laziness that you possess, and what type of environment you're willing to live in. So why should we believe that you won't succumb to the temptation of being lazy once you start a challenge and then get busy, or drunk, or tired or all three in that order. It seems to me that it would be easy to just enter in false info to make the game move along more quickly.... Course this game might be the life changing title that turns your life around! Wouldn't your Mom like that! The devs shouldn't let you enter any info in by hand, the pedometer should be mandatory to keep you from temptation.
A Humble Mr Perfect's Avatar
A Humble Mr Perfect at 05/28/2008 22:30
GODDAMN I LOVE THE WORD PEDOMETER!!

IT DOESN'T MEAN WHAT I THINK IT SHOULD MEAN
Jack8274's Avatar
Jack8274 at 05/28/2008 22:46
I KNOW, I JUST WANT TO TOUCH THE...

Okay, this game looks really promising but to bad the R4/M3 version doesn't come with the Pedometer.
Prince Ghidorah's Avatar
Prince Ghidorah at 05/28/2008 22:46
Japan gets all kinds of awesomely crazy DS games like "Lets Learn to Enjoy Wine Drinking" and "Sexy Witch Touching." What do we get? "Smoking is Bad" and "Long Walk Simulator."
Hamza CTZ Aziz's Avatar
Hamza CTZ Aziz at 05/28/2008 22:49
bleep: How about I blog about my experience weekly?
Respectable Gentleman's Avatar
Respectable Gentleman at 05/28/2008 22:55
@Jack

In other words: Too bad this game isn't free
Artemus's Avatar
Artemus at 05/28/2008 23:58
Like Wii Fit, it's a nifty, cool idea of a game... Just not for me.
mistic's Avatar
mistic at 05/29/2008 00:09
when I read the title I was like 'yeah right' but the gameplay sounds pretty awesome!

I've got that inborn level of laziness too, but the 'challenges' might be just what I need to get things done :-) Why would I clean my car? it just gets dirty again! but then it'll be 'shit gotta clean my car fast so my challenge-time goes down :-)

now I always take the elevator at work, then I'd want to get that great-wall-challenge asap, so I'd prolly start using the stairs more...

Challenges are great motivators!
bleep's Avatar
bleep at 05/29/2008 01:23
@ Hamza:

How about you make a video blog showing yourself cleaning out your refrigerator....that sounds REALLY ENTERTAINING RIGHT?!!?? hahaha

but seriously wouldn't the blog get in the way of the challenges? hehe
ToeKing's Avatar
ToeKing at 05/29/2008 11:13
This idea could probably combine pretty well with the wiifit thinger.
prev next

Comment with Facebook





Click connect and comment instantly!

Comment with Dtoid





New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds

Comments policy

Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?

Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!

 
New on Destructoid.TV play all videos

Loading
Loading Destructoid Videos




    Win this!
    Reminder: We're giving away six copies of Magnacarta 2!



    Dtoid Twitter    Got news?   tips@destructoid.com

    Reviews & Previews
    Mahjongg Artifacts 2 review
    Dragon Age: Origins review
    Lost Winds: The Winter of the Melodias review
    Osmos review
    Space Invaders Extreme 2 review
    Half-Minute Hero review
    JU-ON: The Grudge review
    Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble review
    Thexder Neo review
    Domino Rally review
    more reviews
    PS3's 256-player MAG
    Rooms The Main Building
    Skate 3
    Hudson's bringing back the Bonk
    James Cameron's Avatar
    Bomberman Battlefest
    Calling
    Bad Company 2's multiplayer
    Partying like it's 1959 in BioShock 2's multiplayer
    BioShock 2 through the eyes of Big Daddy
    more previews


    - The Dtoid Army is 49515 strong -

    Showing Cblogs with 3+ faps   show all

    Call for entries: do the wrong thing

    New to Dtoid? Read the survival guide




     Originals
    Jim Sterling: Ten 'classic' games that did not age well





















    More Destructoid Originals




     Popular now more
























    Destructoid's editorial lovefest is:
    Nick Chester
    Editor-in-Chief
    Jim Sterling
    Reviews Editor
    Dale North
    News Editor
    Hamza Aziz
    Community Manager
    Anthony Burch
    Features Editor
    Rey Gutierrez
    Video editor & director
    Niero
    Founder, publisher
    Letters to the editors
    tips@destructoid.com
    Associate Editors
    Ashley Davis Jonathan Holmes
    Brad Nicholson Jonathan Ross
    Brad Rice Jordan Devore
    Chad Concelmo Matthew Razak
    Colette Bennett Tom Fronczak
    Conrad Zimmerman Topher Cantler
    Dyson Samit Sarkar
    Contributors
    Adam Dork
    Ben Perlee
    Daniel Lingen
    Joseph Leray
    Joe Burling
    Mikey
    Will Maddock
    Stella Wong





     

     
      get involved

    register or login
    post a blog
    post a forum
    enter a contest
    contribute a news tip
    suggest a feature
    be a guest editor
    support

    new member's guide
    login assistance
    tech support
    report abuse
    email our editors
    read our dev blog
    nuclear crisis?
    keep in touch

    RSS feed
    Twitter
    Facebook
    Myspace
    Flickr
    Game nights
    Meetup+play online
    seriously

    about Destructoid
    advertising
    terms of use
    privacy policy
    jobs at MM
    buy our crap
    our network

    Tomopop
    Japanator
    Despingation?




    Destructoid is an independently-run publication forged by our love of video games and the gaming community's need of accountable enthusiast press
    living the dream since March 16, 2006