My Weight Loss Coach might be looked at as a bit of a gimmick, and in some ways it certainly is. There's no doubt that a change in diet and exercise is going to make you lose weight -- I just recently finished the Wii Fit Challenge on our IGN blogs, and using Wii Fit and changing my diet up scored me 20 lbs of lost weight, so a lifestyle change done right will in fact impact you pretty quickly. Rather than going the scale/monitoring route, Ubisoft's pedometer instead tracks your level of fitness when away from the DS. For $39.99 (a bit steep) you get the game, and the step counter, which will plug into a DS or DS Lite, and is an integral part of the game.
The experience is very similar to My Word Coach, with a cute little note pad avatar speaking to you and hopping all around the screen. The graphical presentation is simple, but clean, and the interface is easy to use and very inviting; perfect for the casual DS user. There's nothing mind-blowing in the graphical department, but the animation has a nice hand-drawn look to it, and it's all very simple and fluid.
As for the actual "game" itself, there isn't much outside of monitoring and educating the player; which of course is the reason to pick it up in the first place. Don't expect a whole mountain of mini-games or deep, "game-like" replay value, because it isn't there. Instead, you'll get daily challenges from the game which tell you to eat the right foods or do an exercise or two, and you can pick specifically which challenges you want to complete. Finish them in a matter of minutes or over the course of a 24 hour period, and you'll progress the program a bit further.
What the game doesn't have, however, is a great way to really monitor your progress outside of the pedometer itself. It'll require you to walk a certain distance, and of course it can check that, since the step counter interacts with the system, but all weight loss and personal info comes from you, so if you don't have a scale handy (and you won't; you'll be on the go, with your DS) you won't have the info it'll ask for on hand. With something like Wii Fit -- a more serious exercise experience, obviously -- the game can track and give you feedback on your actual exercise. My Weight Loss Coach feels like a nice addition to something like that, but it won't be enough in and of itself. The most you'll get here is a request to do a few dozen jumping jacks, or walk up a couple flights of stairs on your way to work/school the next day. If you say you did them, the game takes your word for it, and pats you on the back.
If you do commit to working with the program as intended, it'll of course help you get on your way to a healthier life, but it's still pretty basic stuff. Like Wii Fit, this isn't some magical substitute for a stronger, guided workout, but it will have some basic tools and educational software that help you get in the right mindset. Mini-games (if you can even call them that) come in the form of personality tests, trivia, and iconic "which food doesn't belong" tests, but even that can get people thinking about fats, vitamins, calorie intake, and the like. It's just one part of it all, but in that sense the game works for what it is. Things like the monitoring software for weight and BMI (body mass index), however, feel useless to me, as you're going to need additional equipment to do it, so the game itself isn't much more than a glorified stat tracker. Everyone has a scale, but if you're a Nintendo fan, Wii Fit is the better workout software hands-down. Of course, you'll pay for it too, at $250 for a Wii, and another $80 for Wii Fit.