Wii Music - Notes and Measures

[glasfen]

I recently received Wii Music as a gift. Upon removing the wrapper, I put on my best show of appreciation while thinking, "Uh... you got me this?" As the couple who had given me the gift looked on, I put it in the Wii.

Despite what I had heard (almost entirely negative), I was still curious to give th game a try. After all, Nintendo had focused on Wii Music during E3 last year, instead of other projects that experienced gamers like myself are still awaiting. Wiimote in hand, I fired it up... and was greatly surprised.

The game is hosted by a Muppet-like maestro (hilarious) and gets under way quickly. I was instructed on how to play the piano as my favorite Mii, plunking out the impish Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Once out of this tutorial, I explored the other options available.

It was certainly coincidental that I had just been lamenting the lack of group games in my family's library. The four of us spent the next five hours or so playing multiplayer games. We finally called it quits with fatigued muscles from conducting and jamming into the wee (Wii?) hours. But sore arms did not prevent us from picking it back up the next day.

Here's the low-down:

- Wii Music is great for groups. Be sure to have four Wiimotes with nunchucks, especially for the bell choir mini game (not as easy as it sounds!) and jam sessions. The conducting games are hilarious and in multi-player, as is the musical training (challenging even, I found, for music majors).

- If you are playing solo or with others, jam sessions are the way to go. It takes no musical skill whatsoever to jam. Of course, a decent sense of rhythm helps, but with all the rockin' and wacky instruments from which to choose, it's bound to be fun. The second-best feature of this game is the ability to overdub different parts of the jam session to produce killer music videos with professional dust jackets (which can be sent to other Wii Music owners). Oh, and the game remembers the past few sessions' worth of parts for a few songs, in case you want to go back and add a different bass line to F-Zero's Mute City track.

- The single best feature of this game, in my opinion, is found in the single-player mode. Drum lessons. Yes, that's right. If anything could make the most of the Wiimote, nunchuk, AND balance board, it is this. Snare, toms, bass, hi-hat, crash, and splash. Now I am a mediocre musician, at best, but figured that I have pretty good hand-eye coordination from 18 years of gaming. Um, try hand-eye-foot coordination. It's as tricky as playing real drums, but without the embarrassing noise and expense of a drum set. Fortunately, the game is very lax and eases you into drumology. You can pass the lessons with a fair amount of mistakes, but perfect marks on all of them is a true measure of your percussive worth. To top this off, you can use your new drumming skills to play the percussion part of a jam session.

Okay, so that's quite a long explanation for what is really very simply a great game if you like music and are not too self-conscious to use a few gestures while playing. Sure, there could be more tracks or DLC (though the selection is pretty awesome). But for a Nintendo in-house game that you can pick up and play or use to create sweet covers, it's impressive. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a gig.

[Dhsu]

Nice review, woulda gone nice on OSV.

I tried it at a friend's house for about an hour and I have to say I'm really impressed about how they made arrangements for every song in all the different styles. I got a kick out of hearing the F-Zero theme as a traditional Japanese piece.

[glasfen]

Nice review, woulda gone nice on OSV.

Thanks!

It's funny how I judged it so harshly prior to playing it. Bad habit, I guess. But I'm happy to be corrected in this instance!

I seriously want someone to remix the Wii Music theme...