Battle of the Bands Preview
March 10,2008 - The rhythm action genres of games have become quite popular as of late. Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have shown that people do indeed like to feel like rock stars, even if it’s only in front of their friends. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to see new titles come onto the market to try to capitalize on this trend. Battle of the Bands is one such title throwing its hat into the ring. What Battle of the Bands does differently is it does not use any special peripheral; it relies on the Wii remote’s motion sensing technology instead. There’s also the whole element of throwing completely different musical styles against each other.
The game sends notes up the playfield and it’s up to you to move the Wii remote in the specified direction. You’ll be tasked with making left, right, and down motions with the remote for the most part, though there will be some squiggly notes that require you to shake the remote from side to side. There are also some forward thrust motions which presumably are related to attacks. Scoring successive notes will allow you to build up your attack meter, which you can then use to throw an attack out at your opponent. It’s similar to how the Battle mode works in Guitar Hero 3, with the exception being that the attacks will happen automatically as opposed to you having to manually deploy them.
Battle of the Bands will feature roughly 30 tracks to battle to. These will span the spectrum from The Ramone’s “Blitzkrieg Bop” to Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain”. Each of these is recorded in their original style as well as in four different alternate styles. You won’t always be playing your chosen musical style either, as your opponent can change the music to his chosen style if they can land enough damage to your band. This ends up creating some really bizarre sounding combinations, like Tag Team’s “Whoomp (There It Is)” remixed as a Country song. The changes between the two vastly different styles can be not only jarring, but quite amusing as well. It’s looking like a neat trick, but we’ll have to wait and see how it works out.
Battle of the Bands looks pretty decent. It certainly doesn’t have the best visuals ever seen on the Wii, but it does look clean and stylish. The environments all look quite good; though with all of the action happening on the playfield you probably won’t have a lot of time to really take much of it in.
This game could turn out to be a pretty good rhythm game for the Wii. With only 30 songs though, we can’t help but wonder how long it’s going to have legs. Even if the 30 songs are all recorded in five styles, not everyone is going to want to play every single style. We’ll just have to wait until April to find out if Battle of the Bands can go up against Guitar Hero on the Wii.
Written By: Filippo Dinolfo | Tags: Battle of the Bands, Nintendo Wii, THQ, Planet Moon Studios
The game sends notes up the playfield and it’s up to you to move the Wii remote in the specified direction. You’ll be tasked with making left, right, and down motions with the remote for the most part, though there will be some squiggly notes that require you to shake the remote from side to side. There are also some forward thrust motions which presumably are related to attacks. Scoring successive notes will allow you to build up your attack meter, which you can then use to throw an attack out at your opponent. It’s similar to how the Battle mode works in Guitar Hero 3, with the exception being that the attacks will happen automatically as opposed to you having to manually deploy them.
Battle of the Bands will feature roughly 30 tracks to battle to. These will span the spectrum from The Ramone’s “Blitzkrieg Bop” to Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain”. Each of these is recorded in their original style as well as in four different alternate styles. You won’t always be playing your chosen musical style either, as your opponent can change the music to his chosen style if they can land enough damage to your band. This ends up creating some really bizarre sounding combinations, like Tag Team’s “Whoomp (There It Is)” remixed as a Country song. The changes between the two vastly different styles can be not only jarring, but quite amusing as well. It’s looking like a neat trick, but we’ll have to wait and see how it works out.
Battle of the Bands looks pretty decent. It certainly doesn’t have the best visuals ever seen on the Wii, but it does look clean and stylish. The environments all look quite good; though with all of the action happening on the playfield you probably won’t have a lot of time to really take much of it in.
This game could turn out to be a pretty good rhythm game for the Wii. With only 30 songs though, we can’t help but wonder how long it’s going to have legs. Even if the 30 songs are all recorded in five styles, not everyone is going to want to play every single style. We’ll just have to wait until April to find out if Battle of the Bands can go up against Guitar Hero on the Wii.
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