Review: Wii Music (Wii)

Author: Tigervamp | Date: December 9, 2008

Ever wondered what Twinkle Twinkle Little Star would sound like if you played it on a Banjo, Ukulele, Sitar, and Castanets? Well, I did just that, and it was amazing! Okay, it actually sounded terrible, but it was a lot of fun all the same. That pretty much sums up my experience with Wii Music – ultimately pointless yet strangely entertaining.

To compare this to something like Rock Band would not just be unfair it’s also not particularly helpful. I’ll quickly do this just now in order to show you what I mean – Rock Band has many more tracks available and the quality of songs on offer are far superior. This statement is true but it means little when you take into consideration that they are two very different titles which are aimed at two very different audiences.

The track list is lightweight and is nowhere near as good as it might have been and Nintendo should have at least padded this out with many more game themes as the only ones of note are The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers. There are also some “Popular” songs available but while it’s fun to mess around with the likes of Daydream Believer, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, and Every Breath You Take, the lack of variety on offer will result in repetitiveness creeping in which is a shame. Let’s not forget that this title is targeting a younger audience and the cynicism I suffer from may not have poisoned them as of yet and I’m sure most children would be perfectly content playing that song about the little star.

By far the best feature in Wii Music is over-dubbing and not only does this add a great deal to messing around with different instruments it is something which I hope to see in Rock Band and Guitar Hero in future. How it works is that you start a jam session, select a track from the list, play through the song with an instrument of your choosing, repeat this process with five more instruments, and play back the final performance. You can then make use of the second best feature and save your recording onto a virtual DVD and play back the resulting ‘music video’ of your performance whenever you feel like. This is another feature which should definitely make its way to RB and GH as the ability to show your friends a recording of your performance without the need for an external camera would be a huge bonus.

Wii Music has been unfairly slated all across the Internet by people who feel the need to prove how grown up they are. It seems that irony is lost on many of these individuals as they criticise this for being childish while they’re only too happy to stand around holding a plastic guitar pretending they’re a lead guitarist in an any one of a hundred rock bands from the Eighties. While you’re being all grown up you better make sure you don’t forget your power pose and rock face as otherwise you run the risk of being labelled a fraud by all the other pretend rock stars out there.

7/10