With no Wii version of Rock Band in sight for PAL gamers, THQ’s decision to launch Battle of the Bands on the same day as Harmonix’s glorious rock sim is a masterstroke. While the wand-waving antics of this quirky rhythm action title might be a far cry from strapping on a plastic Strat or belting out Bon Jovi tune like your life depends on it, there are enough interesting ideas on display here to delight forgotten Wii owners and even drag dedicated rockers away from the stage for an hour or two.
At its core, Battle of the Bands is an extremely simple music game with many a similarity to EA’s Boogie – flicking the Wiimote in the indicated direction in time with the music is the foundation upon which the game is built. But harking back to Koei’s superb Gitaroo Man, BOTB heavily plays on the first word of its title to create real musical confrontations where you’ll need to worry as much about attacking and defending as you do about actually hitting the notes on your side of the screen.
At the start of the game, you pick your band from a selection of styles, which will be yours for the rest of the solo game. One of the main elements of the game harks back to its original title of Band Mashups, since the group in control of the tune at any given time will hear the song played in their individual style. While on top, you not only get treated to your own often bizarre renditions of the songs on offer but more importantly earn significantly more points – staying in control is easily the most crucial part of winning any given battle. Each group has three attacks that can be employed simply by hitting the right number of notes in sequence, with more powerful moves needing longer runs to fire off. Because of the slightly unresponsive nature of the Wii controller, weaker, more frequent attacks seemed to prove far more effective than saving up for a big hit only to be stiffed by a tricky run or the game arguing that you’re not quite flailing wildly enough for a note to be registered.
But in order to hold control of the song, you need to learn how to block enemy attacks effectively as well. A simple tap of the B button brings up a brief shield to repel incoming attacks and depending on when the opponent lets rip, these usually drop into the natural timing of the tunes pretty well. Countering hits like this stops the opponent from scoring points for their barrage as well as helping keep your band in control for longer, making it an important if initially unintuitive element. The third attack of each band can’t be countered and while costly, these play havoc with your opponents’ screens – shrinking notes, reversing controls and speeding up patterns are all annoying things to be hit with, especially when they don’t appear to be nearly as effective on the CPU as they do on your poor human brain.
In keeping with the five styles on offer – rock, latin, hip-hop, country and marching band – the track list too is a decent mix of both genres and tunes. Given that each can be played out in one of five styles, they’re naturally all covers and, if we’re to be brutally honest, not particularly good ones. Even in their native styles, songs like Spoonman and Master Exploder just feel limp but then the game’s prime appeal is surely the ability to twist classic songs into variants you couldn’t possibly have imagined. The Soundgarden track, for one, is bizarrely entertaining with a hip-hop band at the helm and in truth, much of the track list can be made comically insane by one of the given groups. Countrifying any tune is almost guaranteed to raise a smile but in a similar vein to the Fatalities of the Mortal Kombat series (now there’s a comparison you didn’t see coming), the novelty is somewhat fleeting.
Once the initial hilarity of ruining songs wears thin, you’re left with an extremely simple rhythm action game, albeit a pretty enjoyable one once you get a feel for the attack/defend mechanics. Outside of Guitar Hero (and now Rock Band, obviously), this generation has been extremely light on music-based games and it seems the world has forgotten that this genre can be done just as well without the need for plastic replicas. Just ask Gitaroo Man or Amplitude. That said, though, both mentioned titles stand head and shoulders above Battle of the Bands – it’s not like there’s been much competition for this unique music title in recent years but it still just feels a bit like an opportunity missed. The concept is undeniably strong, execution pretty good but the vague nature of the Wii remote control setup is not particularly well suited to a genre where precision is key. It’s a good laugh, especially in multiplayer, but just don’t expect to get the same amount of entertainment from this as you do (and will) from Guitar Hero and its ilk.
