Level Up: Battle of the Bands

Reviewing games can sometimes be hard. No, seriously. Despite all the fun I might be having while I play a game, when it comes time to review it, I might have to put that aside to analyze it. Let’s take today’s game for example; Battle of the Bands. This is a rhythm game produced by THQ and this is one of my favourite underrated for the current console generation. I really do enjoy playing it, but when I take a step back and analyze it to review it; I can see that it’s obviously not that great. Don’t get what I mean, well just listen and I’ll explain while I review Battle of the Bands for the Wii.

As I’ve said before, this game is a rhythm game, and if you don’t know what I mean by that, think Guitar Hero or any game where you have to hit a button or do an action at a specific time. In this game, the actions are swing the Wii remote left, right, softly and vigorously shaking back and forth or in a stabbing motion when the corresponding symbol reaches a target area. Your reward for matching a certain number of symbols in a row correctly is that you launch an attack at your opponent (hence the “Battle” in Battle of the Bands). Each band has 3 unique attacks you can chose to use during battle and some even have special effects. Finally, you can also block attacks coming at you by pressing B at the right time. This might seem like you have a lot to keep track of (your notes, which attack you’ve chose and possible enemy attacks), and in such a short time, but I think that’s part of what makes this game’s game play so fun; the constant attention, action and reaction.

So, why are these bands fighting? To have their style play. When you go into a battle, both bands seem to be simultaneously playing the same song; however, only one is heard at the time. With enough successful attacks though, that can change. Suddenly, you no longer hear your band rocking out, you hear the other one marching in victory. It may be a different musical style, but the song and tempo don’t change, which is really cool. There are a total of 5 musical styles in this game: Rock, Rap, Country, Marching Band and Latino. This means that there are 5 version of each song, one for each style. With 30 songs covered in this game, that makes the total 150 tracks found on this disk. And the song selection was perfectly done for this type of game. In the background, I’m playing the Marching Band version of AFI’s Miss Murder, but you can also get a country version of a rap song... *Country “Whoomp there it is”* ...a rock version of a Latino song... *Rock “Adios Mexico”* ... and so many other possible combinations *returns to normal music*. If you are a fan of these types of cross styled covers, then that’s the main reason to get this game, especially since you can listen to all of them from the get go. If not, then this will probably be a downside to the music.

Now, for everything I just said I liked about the game, I now have to do what I said every reviewer has to do and take a step back from my feeling of this game and analyze it. When I do that, I can see that there are issues that some people may not like with this game. First off was that some may not like the different style, but I already mentioned that, so let’s move off. Next comes the fact that if you play this game for a while, your wrist will start to hurt badly, meaning that you can’t play this game much more then the recommended hour and you need to take a decently long break when you do. There are also the arguments of the graphics quality in the game, but since you’re going to be looking at the symbols and not the characters, I think it’s a moot point. Also, I find the characters blowing each other up good for what they are. But, I think the biggest issue is that this game is described as “simplistic”. Now, the first reason this might be is because it gets compared to other music rhythm games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, which isn’t right, it is its own game and is different (though probably not different enough). The other reason it’s called simplistic is because it’s for the Wii, a system that has games that are SUPPOSED to be easy to play so that everyone can join in. Although I do understand these points and have to agree with them, I have to ask if other reviewers aren’t just overreacting.

I still really like this game. The flaws it has never really got to me and I love the different music heard in the game. I will admit that paying the original 50$ (estimated in Canadian Dollars) would have been really much to ask for this, but at the current price of 10$ at most places that carry this game is more than reasonable. Think about it, a CD with 12 tracks normally cost that amount, and this one has about 150 and is a game... for fun. I’m not going to give this game the score I want to give it, since I do understand the complaints, but I think it is far from a bad game. I give Battle of the Bands for the Wii 8 Levels out of 10.