Battle of the Bands

Battle of the Bands

While the Guitar Hero series has long presented cover versions of hit tracks for its players to strum along to, the emphasis has always been on recreating the original so closely that it’s hard to spot the difference. Battle of the Bands takes a different approach, taking well-known contemporary songs and re-recording them in a completely different and incongruous musical genre to the original for comic effect. It’s a good idea that doesn’t quite manage to produce a game of the quality or humour it aspires to.

At the start of the game you choose to play a role in one of eleven different bands, each of which specialises in a specific musical style, from the obvious popular choices of Rock and Hip-Hop through to some stranger selections such as Marching Band and Latin. The game comes with 30 different songs to play, each presented in five different genre versions.

The premise of the game is that you must go into head-to-head battles against other bands to demonstrate who’s the best. The core mechanic draws heavily upon Guitar Hero, Rock Band and EA’s recent Boogie with the top half of the play screen showing your characters rocking/ hip hopping/ marching out, and the bottom half displaying the ‘beats’ that must be hit in time with the music to defeat your opponent.

Arrows indicating upward, downward, left and right motions scroll down a vertical musical stave and, when they cross a beat line, you must match the input using the Wiimote. Occasionally you’ll need to shake the Wiimote or make a stabbing motion but mostly the game follows the straightforward arrow system seen in Dancing Stage.

Collect enough consecutive hits and you’ll be able to deploy an attack move while also keeping an eye open for your opponent’s attacks which can be deflected with a well-timed press of the b button. This focus on combat is reminiscent of Guitar Hero 3’s ill-advised head-to-head boss battles and, while better implemented here, it’s still not as fun as just playing along to a song.

The game’s principal problem is that no matter whether you hit or miss the inputs, there is no aural cue (in contrast to Guitar Hero where, if you miss a note, that guitar note in the song is silenced). This creates a fundamental disconnect between the music and the player inputs, and the game suffers greatly for it. Add to that the fact that the motion inputs just aren’t that fun or interesting and you have a good core idea whose potential has been somewhat lost in the execution.

3 out of 5