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346 of 367 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Musical Creativity with Limitless Potential (With Minor Issues), October 22, 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
I love the recent string (no pun intended) of musical games coming out from Guitar Hero to Rock Band. Problem is, those kits are flippin' expensive and I'm not too keen on storing either plastic guitars or bulky drum sets. Don't get me wrong, I own them anyway but lugging them to a friend's house is no fun task.
Enter Wii Music.
Wii music is pantomime meets Rock Band. The bulk of the game revolves around the player mimicking gestures to simulate sound according to the actual song being played as the notes are hit automatically unless the player's timing is off. The player does this up to six different instruments to simulate melody, bass, percussion etc. When the player is done, he or she can make a CD jacket to label the track and make a music video of it. On top of this, there are three minigames.
1: Wii Conductor. Move your arms similar to a conductor to make an orchestra go.
2: Hand bells like the ones some people use in Christmas musicals or church services.
3: Music quiz thingy similar to the memorization game on Wii Play.
That's it! That is, in a nutshell, the entire game.
While the game itself is simplistic, that is also the idea. Nintendo, in it's grand scheme of marketing to the casual gaming audience, has created a very simple, yet elegant, game to allow the player to easily mimic music without real lessons or going nuts while trying to play Through the Fire and Flames on Guitar Hero 3. In doing so, Nintendo has appealed to anyone who desires a musical experience but either A) doesn't have the time to master easy, medium, hard, and extreme mode and/or B) does not have at least $80 to spend on a Guitar Hero set. All that is needed is at least one full Wii remote and nunchuck set although more sets with more players make it more fun.
While up to six instruments may participate in a song, only four players can go at a time although this does not mean the player can record tracks for all six instruments. This means four people at a time can go nuts with over 60 instruments including cowbell (which we all know we need more of), a DJ turntable, recorder, flute, sitar, and much more.
This game is very addicting. My graduate students friends are playing the game in my apartment as I type this, not only having a blast but hogging the darn TV in the process. They're hooked on Ode to Joy, which we arranged with sleigh bells, a flute, and a clarinet. When working on my thesis for more than five hours at a time gnaws at my brain, I love saddling up the Wii and playing Twinkle Twinkle on the piano.
Now, with all the goodies in Wii Music there are a few drawbacks especially with the sound and selected songs. Unlike Guitar Hero, Wii Music's musical selection is mostly derived from the public domain track list. This means it's very generic songs like Twinkle Twinkle, Yankie Doodle, Ode to Joy, and Swan Lake. This constitutes the bulk of the soundtrack. There are a few good licensed songs like September by Earth, Wind, and Fire along with Loco-Motion. The real songs that everyone bought Wii Music to play are the Nintendo mixes like Legend of Zelda and the Mario Bros Theme Song. Unfortunately, there are only seven Nintendo songs and of that only three are any good (the aforementioned two and F Zero Mute City).
The soundtrack could have been soooo much better even with more licensed songs by Nintendo such as Castlevania, Star Fox, Metroid, and Paperboy. Anything would've been better than the ragtag bunch of songs from Europe that were used. Not to mention they could've used some greater public domain songs like Greensleeves or Battle Hymn of the Republic.
The next con is the sound itself. While the majority of the woodwinds and drums sound magnificent, several other instruments do not. The most notable bad sounding instruments are the trumpet, saxophone, violin, and viola. Don't even get me started on the more... interesting instruments like the cheerleader, the black belt, cat and dog suit, and the rapper. Those wacky things seemed to have carried over from Mario Paint despite a 15 year gap. While having an all-male cheerleading squad sing the Legend of Zelda theme song was disturbingly amusing, I would never be so bold as to show that in public.
The only other cons are basic Nintendo ones such as the use of weird instructional characters. The Maestro instructor looks and talks like a more flamboyant homosexual version of Beaker from the Muppets. The other issue is how the remote distinguishes movement for the cursor and that of the instrument itself. It can get very annoying but I find that if I want to switch, just hold the remote in front of the TV for two seconds and the cursor switches over from the instrument.
All in all, Wii Music is a really fun game for the whole family and your friends if you've consumed enough alcohol... seriously. I give it a solid A- as it fully utilizes the Wii interface but lacks in some sound and musical selection issues. It's too bad you can't really go heavy metal... *sigh* party on Wayne!
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164 of 174 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wii Music : Guitar Hero :: Mario : Pinball, November 12, 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
A big mistake being made in nearly every review is people likening Wii Music to Guitar Hero. It's like comparing Mario to Pinball.
Music games generally fit into three categories:
- Rhythm (you copy exactly what you see on the screen)
examples: PaRappa The Rapper, Simon Says, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution
- Free Form (emphasis is on music rather than gameplay)
examples: Electroplankton, Traxxpad, Fluid
- Hybrid (a combination between a non-music genre, such as an RPG, and a music game)
exmaples : Rez, Ragnarawk
It's hard to pin Wii Music down, but it best fits into the Free Form category. The comparisons to Guitar Hero are silly, as Wii Music is not a "simon says" type game. When reviewers compare the two, they're just stating their preference for one genre over another, which is rather useless.
One example of people's silliness comparing the two are the complaints about the track list. Track lists are important to Rhythm games, not so much Free Form games.
Much like beginner piano lessons where you're first taught "Chopsticks" or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", Wii Music's track list has songs that ease you into the creation of music, which is the main point of a free-form music game. The tracks are not for listening to as much as they are templates for your own creations.
As a Free Form music game, Wii Music is strange. While it doesn't allow you total freedom of pitch and tone (which most do), it still allows enough wiggle room to create your own songs. For example, playing only the 8th notes in a given song - such as Jingle Bell Rock - will sound nothing like Christmas. Or you can stick to the established notes and remove entire sections, or play certain parts quietly, or just cut loose with the Wiimote and make noise.
Still though, you are limited in what you can do, as Wii Music doesn't allow total musical freedom. The tradeoff in losing that freedom is that it lets non-musicians create music with relative ease. I want to emphasize "relative", because making music is still difficult; it takes thought, planning and some basic knowledge of music theory. Wii Music wisely teaches players the basics of music theory over many lessons, though some painfully last 30+ minutes, and I wish they'd use real music terminology rather than dumbed-down terms.
The last song I made took two hours to get to the point where I was happy with it. Those two hours were spent experimenting with different instruments, rhythms, and melodies - all of which were enjoyable. It was also spent dealing with occasionally inaccurate controls, frustrations with certain notes I couldn't change, and some bad sounding midi instruments - all of which were not enjoyable.
Collaboration is fun, so long as you're both in the same mood (creative or silly). I've jammed with friends sitting on the couch at the same time, as well as people online where we take turns adding pieces to the composition.
Wii Music has the ability to save and share your creations, something I wish other free-form games would focus on, but the sharing features still come up short to youtube, which has become the premiere place for users to show off completed works.
Wii Music is also full of mini-games, including ones that focus on volume, theory, memory and yes - rhythm. You can compare the little bell game to Guitar Hero all you want :) However, these are mostly distractions compared to the real meat - the free form "jam" mode.
Wii Music, even for a free-form music game, is strange, brilliant and sometimes frustrating. It's sad that its been shoved into the middle of the silly "hardcore vs casual" game war, released at the same time as popular rhythm games (increasing the amount of useless comparisons) and is often judged by reviewers with an established belief of what a music game can and can't be. In the end it's one of Nintendo's most ambitious and insane games ever made, and if you have some untapped creativity lying around, it's worth a buy.
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98 of 102 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly Advanced Game, December 4, 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Potential buyers, please be careful when reading some of the reviews posted here: nearly all of the negative reviews will try to convince you that this game is simplistic, shallow, or aimed at a very young audience. This could not possibly be further from the truth.
First off, this is, perhaps, the only real music game on the market today; yes, there are the Guitar Hero / Rockband games, but, however fun they might be, those games are nothing more than a glorified Simon Says, where you simply hit the correct button on your fake instrument at the correct time as shown on screen.
This game is not simply about performing a part as indicated. Instead, Wii Music puts you more in the position of a band leader: first you select a song, then assign instruments out of the 60 available to different roles, each of which holds different possibilities for what will occur when you play, i.e., a violin assigned to the role of "chord" for a song will follow the main harmonic movement of the song. Assign that same instrument to the "harmony" role, however, and it will notes that are roughly in contrapuntal relation to the main melody, or put it in the role of "bass", etc.
Once you assign instruments, you record each part, one by one, until you have created an entire arrangement. While recording an individual part, you can do whatever you want to change the feel of the song: hold out a note for a suspension, throw in fills and riffs, completely change the rhythm, shake things up for the chorus or bridge of the song, etc. The final recording can be a truly original take on the song, according to the musical vision you carried out.
If you have a musical ear, or at least a musical curiosity and willingness to take the time to be truly creative, this game will offer you more than any other on the market. Most reviewers who are actually trained musicians have praised this game, and rightly so -- don't listen to the voices online who don't understand the point.
Bottom line: if you're looking for a simple, quick game to pick up like Guitar Hero, you won't understand the point of this game, but if you truly enjoy music and would, for instance, enjoy trying to create your own folk arrangement of Beethoven' Ode to Joy for 2 violins and a banjo, buy this game.
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