 I always had the idea that on every development team, someone thought, "I really just want to make the most innovative, creative, interesting, fun, and intuitive video game I possibly can. If for nothing else, to not shame my family name." The people at Planet Moon Studios made some of those games over the last decade: Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Armed and Dangerous, and Infected were all met with positivity, particularly Giants. Their latest creation, Battle of the Bands, made its way to Wii this spring. It is a "musical combat" game that plays a lot like Guitar Hero III's Battle Mode.
Battle of the Bands has a few bullet points of interest. It offers 30 different songs, from groups like Cypress Hill to AFI. Planet Moon actually recorded five different versions of each song, fitting each of the five different styles of music that players can choose from in the game's campaign mode - so technically, there are 150 songs to hear. Each different genre is represented realistically while any song is played, so "Brick House" sounds much different if you play as a marching band than a latin style. There are also power-ups to use during each song and some of them are devastating: one that covers the noteboard with smoke, one that slides the notes back and forth over the noteboard, for example.
Battle of the Bands faces a few potential problems. The controls are completely waggle-bound, so everything is done by flicking, jabbing or shaking the Wii remote. This is rarely effective in a Wii game, despite the fact that waggle is what makes Wii so unique. None of the songs are master tracks; each song's five recordings are all done by cover groups. Some people might enjoy this, others might be incredibly annoyed by it. Battle of the Bands also happens to be light on gameplay modes, and has no online multiplayer. How does this musical combat fare on Wii?
Jump in the pit, be prepared for anything.
Battle of the Bands' main draws are in its waggle gameplay, various musical styles, and its power-ups. These different elements are all incorporated in interesting and thoughtful ways, but for the most part, Battle of the Bands misses a whole lot. In fact, I simply could not enjoy the gameplay at all. To compare, I once played a DS game called Turn It Around. I considered it one of the worst video games ever created - not only because it was terrible, but it also hurt to play after a short amount of time. Battle of the Bands is not one of the worst video games ever created, but it is far from being good or even average. Almost every nifty trick is a missed beat, pun intended. I intend the pun because Battle of the Bands also happens to be incredibly, incredibly cheesy.
The line and dot at the top of the note board is the indicator for when you strike a note.
The gameplay has you flicking the Wii remote, jabbing it forward, and shaking it around to the beat of 30 different songs. This wore me out after five songs. All I can say about that is it is incredibly hard to enjoy any video game that wears me out before I can even get a solid chunk of game time. The notes come from a note board and scroll vertically, but from the bottom of the screen rather than the top. This was very awkward to me, as a Guitar Hero and Rock Band fan. Power-ups obscure the notes, and despite the fact that the waggle instructions (flick left/right/down, jab, shake) are very easy to separate, the power-ups are quite a distraction. You can block some attacks from your opponent by pressing the B button just before being hit by a small projectile that appears on the screen, but this is hard to do when you are trying to concentrate on a note board and Wii remote waggle. In fact, just playing Battle of the Bands can be really hard. The waggle does not always work, so it is easy to miss a lot of notes even if you flick or jab or shake perfectly. I really cannot stand that. If I am making a conscious effort to play a game with as much skill as I can muster, I at least hope that the game works for me. Battle of the Bands does not.
The one cool part about the game is the batch of genres. You can choose from 11 different bands encompassing five different music styles: rock, country, hip-hop, latin, and marching band. I feel like the selection is a little off-the-wall (marching band?!), just like the final challenge being a battle against an orchestra. The bands are all pretty lame, and the things they say to each other before each song in the campaign are really stupid. The dialog is so cheesy that you will be asking for crackers. The five versions of each song are usually alright, but some songs have far better versions than others. Most of the rock ones are pretty lame, but some of the latin and marching band ones are funny to hear. I guess I have to give Battle of the Bands credit for being humorous in some offbeat way.
Visually, Battle of the Bands is an unsurprising bore. It doesn't even look as good as Guitar Hero III Wii, and that looked like it might have passed on a PS2. There are only a few different camera angles that switch while songs are being played, and the animated band members only do so much. It is difficult to focus on playing the songs, blocking attacks, swinging around the Wii remote, and watching the background, so I won't bash the hell out of the game for that. There is a decent amount of detail found in the characters and backgrounds, even if it doesn't look the best. At least they tried.
Now, player 2, give yourself a nice hand massage.
The songs sound alright, and I will also give Planet Moon credit for making 150 different songs on one disc. As I said before, some sound better than others. The sound effects are quite annoying, though. I would go as far as to say they are distracting, just like the power-up icons. If the game tried to be any flashier, I would say it does nothing but try to distract you from itself.
Overall, Battle of the Bands is not a very good game. I would not recommend it to very many people, really, because it becomes so painful to play after such a short amount of time. I actually enjoyed the multiplayer action against a friend, but it wasn't really any less painful to play than the single-player. The idea of waggle-bound music/rhythm was done before in Rayman Raving Rabbids, and Battle Mode from GHIII should suffice - Battle of the Bands is nothing new, and is not quite as good as those two other offerings anyway.
Final Score: 4/10
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