Developed for the Nintendo Wii by Namco Bandai

Rated “E” for Everyone due to Mild Cartoon Violence

Wireless Balance Board sold separately.

The first non-fitness title to be released for use with the Balance Board included with Wii Fit, We Ski has you holding the Wii remote and nun-chuck controllers as your ski poles while shifting your weight back and forth to steer as you descend mountain slopes and moguls in a virtual resort built around races, scavenger hunts, aerial stunts, and orienteering challenges. Its surprising how well the game does capture the many sophisticated movements of the winter sport; the tucks, the snow plows, the WedeIn parallel turns, and strange that it ultimately disappoints in its ability to simulate powdered snow and a sense of speed, two elements that should have come easy to a video game of today.

Although the Balance Board is optional (and only sold as part of Wii Fit), We Ski would be a very lackluster game without it. Most of the fun comes from the physical act of weaving, bobbing, crouching, and swishing in your living room. As you might guess, skiing is far more complicated than performing yoga poses or strength training exercises and to that end the virtual resort offers a ski school to take you thorough them all.

The basic movement involves pushing your ski poles (Wii remote and nun-chuck) downwards on either side of your body to skate while shifting your weight back and forth on the balance board to steer. To side-step up a mountain you need to first point yourself sideways and then move your poles up and down repeatedly. If you hold down the “C” button, your skis will point inwards and you can then snow plow gently to reduce speed or even come to a full stop.

In real life, stopping is the hardest part of skiing for beginners and here they have thankfully bent the rules by making it a simple task. You can either plow slowly to a stop or simply pull back on the nun-chuck’s directional stick for a quick finish.

Should you become unbalanced as you ski, you can move your ski poles up and down to try to recover or, ultimately if you don’t, to stand yourself back up after a tumble.

Moguls and slaloms require quick, parallel turns called WedeIn that you perform by holding down the “B” and “Z” buttons on your ski poles and then quickly shifting your weight back and forth in a kind of snow bunny boogie.

My favorite part of the controls is the tuck. Here you physically crouch and turn your ski poles, the Wii Remote and nun-chuck controllers in your hands, inwards and roll them up against your ribs as you would in real life. Bent over in front of your television, your on-screen character will speed up and rocket past the other characters. You can barely turn when you do this, but it’s the best way to win races.

Several of the slopes feature ramps and when you hit them and soar through the air momentarily, you can perform a number of air tricks by moving your arms into different positions. Flaying your arms behind you will activate a Spread Eagle while swinging them alternately activates a Daffy. There are front flips and back flips, various grabs and spins that all help you score points in the game’s various events.

The events are structured around a virtual resort. You can take the chair lift up to a wide variety of slopes, each named after a different animal to represent different difficulties – rabbit and fox slopes for beginners, elephant and lion slopes for advanced users. As you ski down these slopes, you’ll pass other skiers with bubbles over their heads that can be activated for different activities. Some will challenge you to a race or a test of your ability to make difficult turns, others will ask to look for lost items or join in on an orienteering game where you must follow a series of clues to discover other players hidden about the resort. All of the different challenges are fun, although geared towards a young audience, and certainly prevent the boredom of repetition that often sits in with winter sports games. There’s only so many times you can ski down the same slopes again and again. As you succeed in these tasks, you’ll be awarded points which you can use to unlock new clothing and ski gear for your on-screen character.

Where We Ski falters is in its lack of exhilaration. Although the variety of slopes is there, with designs created around thick snow, icy snow, twisting turns, jumps or moguls, even the hardest trails are easy to ski down on your first try. When you perform a tuck on the fastest tracks, you can never quite reach a dangerous speed. There are “speed lines” that appear on the screen to show acceleration, but the landscape doesn’t move fast enough to make you feel like you might lose control. The game was certainly designed for a younger, pre-teen audience and that might explain its lack of adventure. It’s always a clear day, it never snows, and the trails never seem to go too steep or lead off into rough terrain. The hardest trails should inspire and healthy amount of fear, you should find yourself leaving a Cliffside suddenly, that sort of thing, but you don’t. It’s just too reserved, too lacking in adventure, something I think younger players will actually be more disappointed with. The closest the game comes to offering a heightened sense of skiing is a night time mode where you can hit the slopes in the dark, with trails illuminated with lantern lights that offer an otherworldly glow. A little more of that kind of fun might make this a title worth buying, instead I recommend you to rent it merely, for the innovative experience, and the few days of fun it offers.