Walk It Out! has to be one of the most straightforward and aptly named titles that I have ever covered. In Konami’s new bid to get you moving, a bevy of tracks and unlockable items serve as the dangling carrots to get you and your on-screen avatar up and at it. Using the dance pad, nunchuk and remote, or balance board, your stroll will earn you the chips required to open item capsules that will fill out the play list and decorate your own virtual world, Rhythm Island.

To be honest, I’m surprised it has taken this long for a company to take on Wii Fit’s rudimentary offering. Walk It Out! seemed like the perfect alternative to aimlessly strolling about and waving at Miis by going the other direction and giving you a goal, the Herculean task of not just filling a 120-song soundtrack but of also making an entire island come to life. Each step is a step closer to something new, be it a song, an area, or an object to decorate the world. An ongoing progression that literally brings a world to life in front of your eyes is a great idea, and I can imagine few things as encouraging, but this approach also requires a staggering amount of worthwhile rewards.

Your avatar – male or female – is plopped down in a drab world filled with capsules to collect. With the nunchuk in your back pocket or the pad or board under your feet, you walk to the soundtrack’s beat to earn items stored within the capsules: signs, billboards, songs, lights, plants, constellations, and even routes. You can either store your chips and open a capsule right away, or you can queue up to three and gradually unlock them as you go about your routine. Queuing is actually the method I preferred, because the sheer volume of capsules was overwhelming and easily distracted me from keeping time with the beat. Keeping time is crucial, because, by default, each misstep results in a point being deducted from your total, even if your form was good. In a game with over 3,000 decorations alone, if you ever want to clear the clutter and get the island looking decent, you don’t want to misstep.

You are also assigned a rather unfortunately annoying assistant – again, male or female – who keeps you abreast on your progress. Information on how many Greats and Perfects you’ve earned, distance walked, and performance in relation to your previous sessions are delivered in mute-inducing voices, along with pop-up boxes. The pop-up boxes have an unfortunate side affect in that they also cover up capsules, making the process of selecting them even more difficult than it usually is; slowing down or stopping instead of struggling with the camera when using the remote, especially when there’s a large box taking up significant chunks of the screen, often results in a missed step. Regardless of your experience with games, it will take some time to for you to acclimate to the bewildering system. The seemingly ad hoc layout of Rhythm Island and unruly selection scheme gives the game a surprising – and rather awkward – learning curve.

Adding to the confusion is the rather weak manual and tutorial. Despite the instructions telling you to not take your foot completely off the balance board or to just move your leg up and down for the nunchuk to register contact, I often found myself having to adjust my walk to some weird bobbing wobble or hard step, much to the chagrin of my knees, to reregister motion after a misstep; and I often had to take my feet completely off the balance board for proper contact. The pace was also generally much faster than I had anticipated, with many of the up-tempo songs coming from popular artists in the DanceDance Revolution world and requiring a jog to keep pace. I find this to be a little off-putting, as the saccharine presentation is along the lines of a casual stroll and the setup really isn’t optimal for your body’s form or performance for such sessions.

The game does have a few extra features that are quite nice. A handful of mini games are included, one having absolutely nothing to do with walking, that are simple but a decent distraction; then again, I’ve never said no to a game of Whac-A-Mole. A plethora of stats are also tracked, which is very handy and I could see being a selling point for some: distance walked, calories burned, steps taken, as well as charts and graphs that track your weekly activity are included. If you’re dying to unlock the items and find the game a bit too demanding, you can set the capsules to cost a quarter less than normal (or double, for Very Hard), lower the timing window so you don’t have to be so precise, and take advantage of half stepping mode so you can miss a beat without suffering a negative penalty. Some detection problems still persist, and it doesn’t make the camera any less unwieldy when using the remote, but it does make it more accessible and enjoyable overall.

Walking has many benefits that could go a long way in helping a lot of people, but sometimes it’s not always the most engaging exercise.  An easy way to escape the doldrums of staring at a wall or from being at the mercy of cable is exactly what a lot of people are looking for, and you will find that here – to an extent. I’ve lost quite a bit of weight myself by walking and jogging, but the novelty of walking around Walk It Out!’s chaotic and bland world wore off after a few hours, and I never felt I got too much out of it. The haphazard design of dumping icons and items all over the place, without regard to control or movement recognition, was too off-putting; and I found the music and item selection lacking. Aside from making me walk to the Black Eyed Peas being downright cruel, unlocking a new streetlight was as uneventful the twentieth time as it was the tenth.

Overall: 5.5/10

Walk It Out! has an interesting design, but its novelty won’t last for everyone. The divisive nature of the game’s controls – awkward motion recognition, capsule selection, and camera controls – means your attention is focused more on the walking meter than the world itself, negating much of the excitement you might get from unlocking new items. The tracked stats are helpful though, and those finding it difficult to fit in some activity otherwise might find this to be a good way to get back into the swing of things – it seems many others have. But in the end, none of the control schemes provided for me the form or comfort I desires or what I could get from walking outside; and if I had to walk indoors, I would rather listen to my own music or watch a movie to get into a comfortable pace rather than try to match the beats of songs I’m not terribly fond of.

(This review is based on a copy provided by the publisher.)