Though I am rather embarassed to do so, my first entry in my gaming blog is going to be about Wii Music.
Now, back when the game was first announced at E3 2008, I thought it looked ridiculous. It was the lowest note in an otherwise awful keynote for Nintendo, so that’s saying something. I didn’t understand the point. It looked and seemed to play somewhat like Guitar Hero or Rock Band but apparently you didn’t need to hit the notes in proper time. So what’s the point of a game without any sort of challenge or goal? Then Miyamoto came along and clarified that Wii Music was a toy, not a game. So what was it doing on a video games console? The whole idea baffled me and had I not “given up” on the Wii long before, I probably would’ve regained those feelings of betrayal from Nintendo.
Sometime later, my brother and I happened upon a short video. I cannot for the life of me remember where I might have found it but the person speaking in it was praising Wii Music and made it sound appealing. They mentioned the sheer potential it had for teaching about music and for arranging your own songs and understanding the layers of music and whatnot. This piqued both our interests but Nintendo was still trying to sell the damn “game” at $50 which was well out of my price range. So the other week, when Gamestop.ca had the game on sale for a mere $10, I bit. Splitting the cost between my brother and I, it came out to just over $5 each with tax and I don’t mind paying $5 to test something out and maybe have a few laughs.
Introduction
Since my brother went to a friend’s house overnight the other day, I had to put our playthrough of Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World on hold and, having nothing better to do, I switched the disc to Wii Music.
I was greeted with a Mii-esque little man who looked like a cross between Einstein and a conductor. I picked a Mii and was tossed right into a tutorial where you learn to play the different instruments. There are three main ways:
- Piano: Uses Wii Remote and a nunchuk. You basically just waggle up and down like you are a horrible piano player. Because you are. Especially in this game. Used for piano-like instruments and things like bells or the DJ Turntable.
- Guitar: Again, Wii Remote and a nunchuk. You hold the nunchuk out like you’d hold the neck of a guitar and you “strum” with the Wii Remote. Used for guitars, ukeleles, etc. It’s horrible. :( It rarely picks up my strumming unless I am playing wicked air guitar or something and exaggerating every movement.
- Trumpet: I think it’s called something else but trumpets are awesome (I used to play it!) so that’s what it is here. This just uses the Wii Remote and you hold it in front of you, pushing 1 or 2 to make noise. Tilting it up plays louder and tilting it down mutes the instrument somewhat.
There’s also a violin way but I have no idea how it works because I suck at it so much. It’s kind of like guitar, though. I think. You can also use the Balance Board for drums, I think, but I have no clue where mine is and I suspect it is being used as a table somewhere in the house so I haven’t tried it out.
The tutorial then runs you through Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star with you on piano, giving your first real introduction to the game. I must admit, this part was a little fun. You can choose to play it “properly” by hitting the notes when they’re supposed to be hit based on the bar of music on the screen. (So you can basically play rudimentary Guitar Hero, if you so choose.) But if that’s too boring, which it will be, you can hit the notes whenever you damn well please and Wii Music carries the melody through.
So you can add notes where you want or delay them, or cut them entirely, and whatever you choose to do, Wii Music does its best to make it not sound like crap. I sound a lot more cynical saying this than I actually was but honestly, it’s kinda fun to experiment with what sounds good and what doesn’t. Some parts are really built up with the additional notes and melodies and others just sound strange. There’s no pressure to do it “right” because the game emphasizes time and time again that whatever you choose to do. (And likes to call your worst performances “avant-guard” lmao.)
Music Videos
After this tutorial, it forces me to make a music video out of it, which sounds more time consuming than it is. Basically it just records your Mii’s playing and changes the camera angle a lot. All you really have to do for the creation is rate the song and give it an album cover.
You have to rate each song you save out of 100. Mine always sound like crap when I play them, so everything has a rating of “12″ so far, save this one song where I really tried to make it sound bad. That one’s a 100 so that I could easily find it again later. :’) Later, when you’re browsing music videos, you can view the Top 10 or sort by rating. The game stores up to 100 videos and after that will auto-delete them starting with the lowest-rated songs.
After rating, you are presented with a rudimentary photo editor. You get a square canvas with maybe 15 set options for background, another 10 frames/titles, and you can place “clipart” of the Miis that were in the video on the background. There’s a few different poses and you can choose between showing the Mii with its instrument or just the Mii’s head. It’s really basic but I don’t expect much. The only disappointment here is that no matter what song or setting you played in, the title is always just “Wii Music”. I can kind of understand why they won’t let you enter your own but at least show the song title on the cover? It shows up in the listings themselves (along with a pre-made band name based on the Mii(s) you used) but it’d be nice to see it on the cover since you’d think that if you have to go to the trouble of making one every time, you’d want to make it useful. Oh well.
“Expanding Your Style”
Once you save 3 music videos, another level of tutorials opens up. It introduces you to the different genres of music included in the game. It leads you into a rock rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle. Here, it really lets you see how each section (percussion 1, percussion 2, bass, chord, harmony, and melody) really impacts a song. You play each part and it puts it all together in the end. I must admit, I haven’t had much musical training and this really made me see why some teachers wanted to use this game in the classroom. Even listening to other songs now on my iPod, I catch myself going “oh, this part is the harmony” or “okay, I see what they meant by chords being used to accent only some parts of the song”. Haha.
Upon completing 6 videos, yet another level opens up, this time giving you more advanced techniques for each style. So instead of just learning one pattern of beats as percussion, there are two that are used in different parts of the song. This part will be boring to retell so I won’t bother but again, it added at least a little more depth to the game.
The interesting part of all this, is that it opens up “Custom Jams”, where you can choose your song, then choose the genre for it. It’s fun setting up a jazz rendition of Legend of Zelda or a rock version of Do Re Mi. You can record each part with your Mii (or a different Mii) and put it all together in one music video. And that’s where it gets interesting, ’cause you can choose ridiculous instruments for each part and still come out with something good… or, if you’re like me, make it as hilariously bad as possible. It’s fun! :)
Minigames
Okay I am not going to lie, I love minigames. They are a guilty pleasure for me so long as they aren’t tedious parts of a sidequest or required in an RPG (since RPG minigames usually suck D:), I can waste hours on them. So honestly, the minigames were pretty much the only part I really enjoyed in Wii Music.
And that’s using “enjoyed” rather liberally.
There are three. In one, you play as a conductor and I do not understand it at all and am thus very bad at it, so I played it to unlock all the songs from it and left it alone. The second, you use handbells and you basically just have to play your bells at the right time. Pretty simple (but I am bad at it because the Wii never picks up that I’ve rung the bell ffffff). The last one is a series of minigames based on Pitch. It is lots of fun!
In the Pitch one, each level is a quick series of questions. It starts out easy. In level one, the questions are simple like “Match the pitch from the speaker” and you have to select the Mii that’s playing the same note. Or match 2 Miis out of many that are playing the same note. In another, you’re given a feeling (“Oh no, I dropped my phone in my soup!!”) and you have to select which melody depicts it best–the happy-go-lucky tune or the ominous “DUN DUN DUN” one. These get harder and harder each time but it’s just a lot of fun to get it all done before your time runs out. :) Easily the most fun part of Wii Music.
If there had been more minigames, I would’ve been happier. I don’t like playing games with literally no point. These minigames? I might not have liked them all, but at least they had a defined goal, something the rest of the game lacks. So I can see why Miyamoto classified it as a toy.
Songs & Instruments
I guess this is important to talk about. I nearly forgot to, haha.
The song selection in Wii Music, to be perfectly honest, is abysmal. There are maybe… 30? If that? And only about 6 are worth playing (for me). :( They’re mostly basic free melodies or folk songs with about 4 Nintendo themes and then a few pop songs, only like 2 of which are even at all recent. The songs suck, which is unfortunate, because the premise of Wii Music (arranging songs with your own flair in different genres) could be vastly improved if there were more familiar songs, or songs that would really sound different out of their natural genre.
But the instruments are another story. There’s actually a lot to choose from and the problem wasn’t that there weren’t enough, but sometimes too many, haha. There’s no way to sort them when you’re scrolling through them so it’s a bit hard to select them but that’s the only complaint I have with them. Some instruments are really weird (like the cat & dog suits) but most are just fun to experiment with. It’s just a bit too bad that the controls are so bad that some instruments are just rendered unplayable.
The Verdict?
Wii Music was a really good game considering my brother and I got it for $10 but anything more than that and I’d be very disappointed with it. The game itself is good to kill time and I will admit it’s fairly relaxing, but it felt more like WiiWare and that’s probably where it would have fared better. Being marketed and sold as a full-price game was just wrong and it’s disappointing to know just how many people thought it deserved that place. :| It didn’t. And even at $10, had I not gone into the experience expecting utter crap, I probably wouldn’t have been impressed in the least, to be quite honest.
But I knew there was a lack of goal or meaning in this game. So despite what all this would have you believe, that was not my biggest issue with Wii Music. The problem with it was actually the controls.
Now, maybe it’s just my setup or something, but I could not get it to recognize some of my actions most of the time. :/ Especially with the guitar, I’d have major issues with the game only picking up the most exaggerated movements. I’d be strumming with my whole arm just to get it to pick up a strum which made it near impossible to play any faster songs that required multiple notes in a second or two. It also made timing near impossible to get. It was so frustrating! I even grudgingly got off the couch to stand up, hoping it might make a difference, but to no avail.
I have the beginnings of carpal tunnel, so most Wii controls that involve waggle, or really anything similar, will really aggravate my wrists after a time. So playing Wii Music was just absolutely painful. I played for an hour or two yesterday and I’m still feeling the effects. :( Mind you, I know this is my fault for ignoring the “why don’t you set the Wii remote down and take a break!” messages, but I was taking my own breaks after every song anyway because of my short attention span.
I’m still blaming the crappy controls. :(
Aside from controls, the game was okay. Not something you pay full price for (or even half price for), but I can see it being a good way to kill half an hour with friends as you try to either make nice music together (if that’s your thing) or, the more likely situation in my group, create the most ear-splitting song you can.
I rated it a 1 on Backloggery and was happy to set it down and move on to bigger and better things.
