I knew I recognized that font! My Weight Loss Coach is part of a series, along with My Word Coach, My French Coach (Oh la la!), and My Spanish Coach (Hey, pendejos!), all for the Nintendo DS. And, believe it or not, My Life Coach is on the way. How far behind can My My Coach Cult Coach be?

I actually played My Weight Loss Coach. Well, sort of. More like I used it. Sort of. Actually, I…well, just read the review after the jump.

Firstly, I just want to say this thing beats the lard out of Wii Fit when it comes to actual fitness. I kind of wish Ubisoft had called it DS Fit just to make the point. My Weight Loss Coach, when used properly, is going to make you lose weight, especially if you're new to losing weight. Wii Fit, on the other hand, is going to make you look stupid while you're perched on a Balance Board in the middle of your living room. Maybe it'll strengthen your ankles.

My Weight Loss Coach starts off very gradually. "Baby steps", gradually. Almost literally. The first thing you do is walk 500 steps. From there, it presents you with challenges. These start out very easy. "Drink a glass of water with your next meal" is a gimme. You do your challenge, then you report back and get a stamp. It eventually progresses to exercise challenges, gradually ramping up in difficulty. You control the strenuousness of My Weight Loss Coach by accepting as many or as few challenges as you like.

But it doesn't stop there. My Weight Loss Coach embraces the simple fact of physics that the weight you gain is a matter of the food you eat, minus the energy you burn. I think that's one of the laws of thermodynamics or something, right after the one about the apple falling on your head. It's represented here by dragging little icons of different types of food into a chatty stick man's mouth. Precious, yes, but it makes you conscious of the food you eat. That's an important step, isn't it, Wii Fit? Oh, Wii Fit isn't listening. It's playing a tightrope walking mingame instead.

Exercise is tracked by My Weight Loss Coach's included gimmick, a pedometer. You wear it to track how far you've gone when you walk, and then you plug it into the DS, which automatically downloads the data and credits you accordingly. You can also manually enter other types and intensities of exercise, so the pedometer isn't the centerpiece so much as a helpful tool. Did you hear that, Wii Fit?

My Weight Loss Coach is very chatty at first. The little stick man simply will not shut up. To be fair, he's awfully encouraging, and the little fella just oozes positive reinforcement. Every day, you log in for a daily session, reporting what you've eaten, your exercise, and your progress on challenges. And every day, that little guy is there, tracking your progress as a theoretical distance from your starting point.

So I messed around with it for a little while before getting fed up with how slowly it was progressing. I threw it back in the box and then had a realization: this is for people who want to lose weight. It says so right there in the title. It's not for the tanned trim couple on the cover of the box, neither of whom is even bothering to wear the pedometer. Those people no longer have a need for Their Weight Loss Coach. Ubisoft is presenting the game by showing you people for whom it's utterly obsolete. I see what you did there, Ubisoft.

Instead, this is a perfectly simple and effective program for people who don't have their own thing going yet. It's an alternative for people who can't quite muster the energy to do that "Couch to 5k" thing. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper and better than Wii Fit. Which is now avoiding me by pretending it's going to be useful when Shaun White Snowboarding comes out this winter.