Battle of the Bands

Aug. 11, 2008

Today I decided to go for a Wii game. That is, one that is decidedly for the Wii and no other platform. Being a rythm game player, I was drawn to Battle of the Bands like a flame to a moth. Wait... Nevermind.

Category

Battle Rythm Game

Pros

• The game is very easy to pick up quickly. I ran through the tutorial first thing, expecting it to take me 10-20 minutes to get through it (like on Guitar Hero). Not so - it only took a few minutes at most.
• Hearing a pop song juxtaposed into multiple genres is hilarious. I picked the marching band to play with, though I regret it now because I missed the singing (since the band has no singer).
• The bands are very nicely characterized. It's easy to identify the type of music they play based on their characters.
• If you play versus another person, the songs are all unlocked immediately. That is a very neat touch that makes the game fun to play against someone right off the bat.

Cons

• The game's tutorial is lacking some serious pieces of information, such as "what attacks do." I still don't know whether they lower the opponent's score or if they raise mine.
• The versus song selector doesn't tell you the band, only the song name. Ouch.
• This game is highly repetitive. There's nothing that made one song special in comparison to any other.
• The beats match the music, but there's never anything special about any part of a song - it's all very ho hum. No part of a song wants me to play it again.
• Due to the Wii nature of the controls, your wrist starts to hurt pretty quickly. I was only playing on Medium, too; I can't imagine how painful it would be to play this game on Hard.

Verdict

I stopped playing after forty minutes because the game was too repetitive and my wrist hurt. I don't even think I could play this game with a friend for more than a half an hour. It's a good concept, but somehow it's just not fun - it lacks anything that just punches you in the face and makes you go "wow."