After owning a Wii for a little over a year now, and playing a fair amount of the absolutely horrid titles available on the system, I initially had very low hopes for Battle of the Bands, Planet Moon Studios and THQ’s entry into the recent hit rhythm-music game genre. However, the track record for rhthym games on the Wii has been and looks to be very solid, what with Guitar Hero III already released and the upcoming Rock Band and Samba de Amigo to release on the system later in the year. How does Battle of the Bands fit into the equation? Quite messily, in fact.

The actual rhythm game behind Battle of the Bands is a concept that, while it may look good on paper does not actually work once implemented. The player must move the Wii remote in three different directions, either down or side to side, depending on which “note” crosses the line at the top of the screen. While this may seem like an interesting and ingenuitive idea, some of the time, the Wii does not pick up the motion that the player makes which is very frustrating. Additionally, the game uses an attack system that allows you to attack your opponent once you have hit a certain amount of notes in a row. The more notes that you hit, the more powerful your attacks are, and the more difficult you can make the game for the other player. However, you are able to block many of the more basic attacks by hitting the B button in time to create a shield above the upper marker. While the idea of attacking and blocking, which turns out to be the slightly retarded (and fully inbred) cousin of Guitar Hero III’s battle mode, seems exciting at first, it gets very old very quickly. On the harder difficulty modes, it becomes damned near impossible to block all of your opponents attacks while focusing on getting a high note streak, and the whole attack-block scenario becomes more annoying than anything else. Now that we’ve got the gameplay basics covered, how do the actual songs stand up to others like, let’s say, in Rock Band?

Battle of the Bands‘ song selection is one of the few things that stand out in the game. The game boasts thirty licensed songs, from the likes of Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.” to Ram Jam’s “Black Betty,” a song that I’ve been dying to play in a Guitar Hero or Rock Band type game since the genre’s conception. With these thirty different songs, coupled with five different covers of each song, such as Rock, Hip-Hop, Country Western, Latin and Marching Band, there are essentially 150 different songs to be uncovered in the game. However, these different genres of music of each song also tend to be the major downfall of the game. The problem is that none of these covers, with a few rare exceptions, are any good. Many of the Marching Band covers sound nothing like their parent song, and are just plain annoying. The same can be said for the Latin and Country Western covers. They just aren’t any good. The awful covers of each of the songs then destory the remaining fun that could be had with the game. What good is a music/rhythm game if you can’t even enjoy the music?

In sum, I would recommend this game to anyone who has a burning desire to get carpal tunnel syndrome before the age of 30 or to parents of children yearning to play a Guitar Hero or Rock Band type game. Time to crush some dreams, parents!