Battle of the Bands [Wii]

Given the popularity of the Guitar Heroes and Rock Bands of the world, game companies need to be a little creative in order to make a new music game stand out from the crowd. THQ has come up with a clever gimmick for its new Wii-exclusive title, Battle of the Bands: musical mash-ups.

When you start the game, you must choose to play as a band that represents one of five different musical styles: rock, hip hop, Latin, country, or even a marching band. From there, you travel to different venues and challenge the other bands to, well, battles. Here's where the mash-up gimmick comes into play.

There are 30 songs in the game, ranging from popular hits ("Insane in the Brain," "Jungle Boogie," etc.) to some fairly obscure songs (unless you're up on your Southern rock bands from the '70s, anyway). As the two dueling bands face off, the song will be played in the style of the band that's currently doing well in the contest. So if you're playing as a rock band, the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" will sound like it's supposed to. If the marching band that you're playing against suddenly starts doing better than you, however, the song will instantly change to a lyric-free version that sounds like it should be played on a high-school football field.

Because all of the songs in the game are recorded in five different ways, all of them are cover versions. It's a bit of a shame that the original versions aren't there, but it's highly unlikely that the developers could have talked LL Cool J into recording a country version of "Mama Said Knock You Out." The genre-switching in mid-song is worth the lack of originals, though. Luckily, there's a music player that lets you listen to any of the songs and switch between the five different styles on the fly.

Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't nearly as creative as the music. As every song is played against an opponent (either the CPU or another person), the screen is split down the middle. Notes scroll up from the bottom of the screen as if you're playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band with your TV upside down. Using only the Wii Remote, most of the notes simply require you to give the controller a flick to the left, right, or down. Occasionally, you'll have to stab the Remote forward or rapidly shake it back and forth (either softly or hard), but those moves aren't nearly as common as the others.