Wiredglitz

“Wii Fit” is the only game I can think of that’s ever made my muscles burn, yet a research study finds that the popular game and its wireless balance board yield “underwhelming results” when it comes to burning calories.Gamasutra (via Kotaku) reports that researchers with the American Council on Exercise and the University of Wisconsin took a group of men and women aged 20-24 and put them through their paces with Wii Fit’s “most aerobically challenging activities,” including Free Run, Island Run, Free Step, Advanced Step, Super Hula Hoop, and Rhythm Boxing.

The results? According to the study, anyway, the test subjects got the best results while sweating through Free Run and Island Run, burning through about 165 calories in half an hour. After that came Rhythm Boxing, with players burning about 114 calories in 30 minutes, followed by Super Hula Hoop (111 calories), Advanced Step (108 calories), and Free Step (99).

That’s pretty good compared to a “sedentary video game,” the researchers say in the Gamasutra article. That said, you’ll burn “significantly higher” calories by getting up and going to the gym than you will taking a crack at Wii Fit’s “virtual approximation” of the various exercise, according to the study—a conclusion that’ll likely provoke either a “no duh!” or “say what?” reaction, depending on your expectations for the game (which Nintendo markets as “a fun way for you and your family to stay active together”).

The study even goes a step further, calling the tennis, boxing, golf, and bowling minigames in Wii Sports a “better option” than Wii Fit for “helping consumer meet minimum intensity guidelines for exercise.”

Should it come as a big surprise that a 30-minute spin class with a “take-no-prisoners” trainer makes for a tougher workout than taking a whirl with Wii Fit’s virtual hula hoop? Not really, although I am a bit surprised that the American Council on Exercise researchers think you’ll burn more calories playing Wii Sports than you will with Wii Fit, especially given the pain I experienced during my (brief) workout with Wii Fit’s yoga program.

So I ask you, Wii Fit gamers: Happy with the results you’re getting from Wii Fit? Did you buy the game thinking that it would replace or merely supplement “regular” exercise, such as running around the park or kickboxing at the gym? How would you compare your Wii Fit workout to a round of Wii Sports? And would you call the results of this study a case of “no duh!” or “say what”?

After gaining a reputation for its immersive first-person Call of Duty action video games based in World War II, game developer Infinity Ward‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′ : Creativity and controversy wanted to stretch its creative muscles with an original, contemporary game.

The result, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, won numerous awards as 2007′s best game and has sold more than 14 million units worldwide.

With the sequel, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (out today, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, rated M for ages 17-up, prices start at $60), Infinity Ward looks to test the boundaries of what is considered acceptable in video games. Players can choose to take part in a terrorist attack against civilians, and they defend a bombed-out nation’s capital.

“The coolest thing is you don’t exactly know who is going to win,” says creative director Jason West. “It’s actually scary. (A near-future setting) allows it to be more real and, I hope, resonate with people more than the rah-rah good vs. evil stuff of the past.”

In the first Modern Warfare, players hunted down power-hungry ultranationalist Russian leader Imran Zakhaev. Five years later, a new leader named Vladimir Makarov has risen to power, and an elite international task force (the player included) must pursue him.

Think 24 with terrorists threatening the USA and Jack Bauer forced to use any means necessary. Or Tom Clancy’s 1994 book Debt of Honor, in which the U.S. Capitol is destroyed during a joint session of Congress, killing the president and other officials.

To help pull off its thriller, Infinity Ward enlisted Hollywood hands including film composer Hans Zimmer and NCIS writer/executive producer Jesse Stern, both of whom were impressed. The game, Zimmer says, “takes you to lots of exotic locales and … has an emotional darkness to it, where sometimes you go, ‘I just can’t believe they are going to do this now,’ and then they do it. It’s full of those sort of moments where it just takes things further than anyone would expect. I think it is less a geographic journey than an emotional one.”

Click here for Discounts on COD.

In recent days, the game’s envelope-pushing campaign has had some hiccups. A viral video promoting the game was pulled off the Net because it used a homosexual slur (not from the game) as an acronym. And leaked video showing the player participating in the terrorist attack on civilians raised alarms.

Modern Warfare 2 is “not a play-it-safe game,” says Geoff Keighley, host of Spike’s GameTrailers TV. “The pace is really well-scripted and, like 24, you never know where it is going to go next. … I think they want to push buttons with this game.”

The controversy is probably not over, says Adam Sessler, co-host of cable channel G4 TV series X-Play. He expects the terrorist scene to ignite another wave of public furor. “But at least the game will be out, and that element can be addressed in the context of the game itself.”

In designing the game, the developers spent a lot of time figuring out how to best present that scene. (Note that players can skip it if they prefer.) “We knew it was going to be upsetting,” Stern says. “Particularly where it falls in the game, it gets you pretty twisted up. I hope it makes some people a little upset.”

An argument can be made that portraying terrorism in games is less appropriate because of the medium’s interactive nature. But that’s not fair to game creators, Sessler says.

“There is a helplessness for the player in that sequence and games, somehow, are not being allowed to go into that creative territory. It’s always somehow supposed to be typified as ‘fun.’ This will elicit a reaction and create a motivation for the successive events that happen in the rest of the game,” he says. “I’m not going to go so far as to say it is right or wrong. I feel that is really in the eyes of the beholder. What I do feel is defensible is it is within Infinity Ward’s right to be creative and move into kind of a taboo area for video games.”