Band Hero Hands-on: Wii/DS Connectivity

Oct 15, 2009

The clouds of another review season parted last week and a metaphorical ray of light shined down – it was Band Hero and it was packing Taylor Swift songs. If you're not familiar with this title, it's basically Guitar Hero 5 with Top 40 hits. Gone is the metal/rock vibe and in its place are songs by the All-American Rejects, Devo, and Styx.

Activision is aiming its drum/microphone/guitar setup at folks like your girlfriend, your sister, and me; people who are intimidated by "real" music and love to belt out tracks by Pat Benatar and Evanescence.

You belong with me, Taylor.

If you're looking for the nuts and bolts of how things play in Band Hero and what it all looks like, you might want to double back to last week's preview. The summary is that things play just like Guitar Hero and look sugary sweet, and all of that applies to Band Hero on the Wii. Activision popped by the office yesterday to show off the game, and it turns out everything from the PS3/360 version – the in-game music store, the career, etc. – is carrying over to the from-the-ground-up Wii version.

Oh, but there's more.

Because the Wii and DS are so tight, Activision's packing the Wii version of Band Hero with all sorts of goodies to have the Nintendo platforms make sweet music together – both figuratively and literally. Just like in Guitar Hero 5, you're going to be able to sync your Band Hero-playing Wii with your empty DS and do all sorts of things.

A brand new feature is DS Party Play. Now, Band Hero is designed to be a pick-up-and-play experience. When you're rocking out in Party Play, you can't fail, people can pick up instruments and drop in or out when they feel like it, difficulties can be changed on the fly, and so on. If you want, no one can play and the game will just serve as your jukebox.

Anyway, while folks are rocking out on the TV, you can use the DS to set the playlist and keep the party moving. If you've got the handheld communicating with the Wii, you can look through the library of tracks you have, choose which ones you want on the setlist, and drag and drop the tunes into the order you desire. There's even a button to press to get some trivia about a given track or artist.

While you're managing the music on the DS, your changes are popping up as little notifications on the TV screen so that people can see that you've added Hilary Duff and so on.

The awesome team competition known as Roadie Battle is back in Band Hero. This is where a guitarist faces off against another guitarist on the TV screen and each has a "roadie" playing on a DS. The Roadies have to tap their screens to run around backstage and sabotage the opposing guitarist while also fixing their own shredder's equipment. In my playthrough, I was unplugging wires and jamming them into the wrong holes, destroying speakers, and re-stringing guitars the completely wrong way. When I'd complete one of these attacks, the guitarists onscreen track would get completely screwed up – restringing the guitar flipped the notes on the screen – and it wouldn't be fixed until my opposing roadie ran over to fix it.

Just as Bozon said when he previewed the mode in Guitar Hero 5 – and it really hasn't changed that much since then, thank God – this mode is a blast. If you have friends who are getting burned out on music games, this is probably the perfect way to get them to stop being sourpusses and play with you while you rock out. Struggling to see through sabotaged pyrotechnics that set your track on fire and dodging explosive notes is a guaranteed good time.

Also making the jump from Guitar Hero to Band Hero is Mii Freestyle. This is where you and your friends can turn on your instruments and just jam. There are suggested notes that scroll by, but you're free to tap out whatever you want. If you hook up the DS for this portion of play, you can control what you're seeing on the TV screen like you're directing a music video. There are camera angles, lights, and more to tweak, but it's pretty much the same system you saw in Guitar Hero 5.

The Wii didn't get all the limelight while Activision was in the office and rocking out; I also got to play a tiny bit of Band Hero on the DS. Now, this is the Band Hero that you need the DS cart to play, and if you haven't seen the crazy drum skin that's going to be packed in with this game, check this thing out. Band Hero is coming with the Guitar Hero DS peripheral, but it's also coming with a rubber skin you'll put over your DS to turn the face buttons into four drum pads.

I kid you not.

Help me, Roadie!

The skin is designed for DS Lites only, and it actually feels pretty good. Just like every music game before it, the notes descend on the screen and you tap out the beat as they cross a line – the only difference this time is that you're tapping it out on a palm-sized drum set. Plus, the touch screen controls have been tweaked to be used by your fingers because the stylus will be entombed; you can scroll around the game's track list with simple finger brushes.

Vicarious Visions also went in and touched up the guitar controls so that you can tap the strings or strum them depending on how you're feeling at the moment.

Although the drum skin is crazy, what's effing nuts is that this game also supports singing. That's right, you can sing into your DS' microphone and karaoke wherever the heck you might be. Being the office's resident SingStar, this was the biggest news of the demo for me. I teamed up with a full band – get four systems and games together and you can have a band comprised of whatever combination of instruments you want – and began crooning Blink-182's "First Date" into my DS. Pitch and timing bars popped up on the top screen of the DS and I had to fill them with my voice for points.

It's been a long time since I sang in front of people where I wasn't singing into a microphone and hearing my voice through a set of speakers. Here, it's just your vocals in a roomful of your friends. It was weird, but it was definitely fun and the scoring system seemed to be working fine.

If you have the Wii version of Band Hero, you'll be able to connect your DS version of Band Hero and download 50 exclusive Fan Request challenges. These are tasks challenging you to use Star Power in a certain way or dodge bomb notes or so on. Complete them all and you'll unlock new stuff for your created rockers as well as the ability to play at the DS rockers on the Wii.

I liked Band Hero enough when I previewed it on the PS3/360 last week, but I really had a blast with the Wii version yesterday. The song list is solid, but the Roadie Battle and the ability to organize your setlist on the DS while people are playing on the Wii are pretty awesome features. While I only got a taste of the DS version of Band Hero, it seemed interesting. The visuals seemed a little blocky – these were big vocal bars to fill – but the idea of having a portable foursome is intriguing.

We don't have much longer to wait for Band Hero, so keep checking IGN for more information as we lead up to the review.