Wii Fit Plus

There's also a Calorie Count feature which presents you with a list of foods, ranging from herbal tea (2 calories) to sausage and chips (920 calories), so you can work out how much exercise you need to do to burn off your dinner. The example Wii Fit Plus gives is that a person weighing 9 stone 6lbs would need to play Super Hula Hoop for 30 minutes to burn off 126 calories. That's roughly equivalent to two boiled eggs, depressingly.

The list isn't very extensive (what no pork scratchings?) and you can't enter data for the amounts of food you're eating, so the calorie counting feature is more of a novelty than a serious tool. If you're after the latter you could try an online or iPhone app like Shape Up, which lets you set portion sizes and access a huge database of different foods.

Another new addition is the introduction of Wii Fit Plus routines. You start by choosing which area of the body you want to work on (tummy or arms, for example) or the effect you want to achieve (relaxation, better posture, etc.). You're assigned a set of exercises accordingly. If you want to relax, for example, you get given two yoga exercises and a game of Rhythm Parade. The addition of these routines does give Wii Fit Plus an advantage over its predecessor as exercise sessions are structured and aren't punctuated with menu screens. Plus, it's more motivating to feel you're working towards a specific goal.

The new My Routine feature lets you customise your own workout, choosing which exercises to do and the order to do them in. However, you can only select from the yoga and muscle exercises - there's no option to throw in a bit of skateboarding, say, just to liven things up a bit. This seems like an odd decision, especially as the preset routines include plenty of balance games. Why limit users as to what they can choose?

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about Wii Fit Plus isn't to do with what's new, but what's been left in. You may recall the controversy which kicked off last year over Wii Fit allegedly labelling children as fat. In Wii Fit Plus, adults can still be told they're "obese" according to the BMI index. Which can't be too much fun in a room of family and friends, even if you're a grown-up.

When the data entered indicates the user is a child, the ratings only go so far as "overweight". However, regardless of age, WFP adjusts the physical appearance of each user's Mii according to the results of their body test. So if the Wii decides you're fatter than you thought, you have to watch your Mii being inflated to potentially Father Christmas proportions. You then have to play all the games as what looks like a caricature of an overweight person, all big round belly and little stick legs. This can't do much for a child's body image - or an adult's, for that matter.

The question of how much this sort of thing will bother you comes down to individual sensibilities, and only you know the answer. So putting that to one side, let's deal with this question: is Wii Fit worth investing in?

Yes, if you've already got a balance board, enjoyed the first title and think 20 quid is a reasonable price to pay for a few new features and some more mini-games. The selection here is great, offering plenty of gems, few duds and lots of variation. Despite the limitations, the new multiplayer mode and the switch player option make WFP a better party experience than its predecessor.

Think more carefully if you don't already own Wii Fit. With a suggested retail price of 90 quid (more likely 80 quid if you shop around), the Plus bundle is still at least as expensive as the previous iteration. This seems a bit excessive considering the price of hardware components is likely to have come down in the last 18 months. In terms of software, that price doesn't get you an awful lot of new content, and what's new isn't enough to ensure you'll still be switching on that balance board once the novelty has worn off.