Wii Music Review: The Latest Stroke of Genius from the Savior of Videogaming

In just over 2 years since the launch of the Wii, the game series branded with the same name has managed to become a cultural phenomenon. Carried by the record breaking sales of the new Nintendo console, the packed in game Wii Sports is now a household name far outside the traditional video gaming demographics. The Wii series has been complemented by the hugely successful Wii Play, a collection of short games designed to train gamers in using the motion sensing features of the Wii Remote and Wii Fit, an exercise game that comes with a weight/balance board and predictably, one of the fastest selling games of all time. This holiday season Nintendo completes their Wii Series with the long awaited Wii Music. From the earliest hints of this games existence, it has been clear that it is a project especially close to the heart of the most legendary game designer in the World, Shigeru Miyamoto. No wonder expectations were running high, when the man who brought us Mario is excited about a game, it's a good sign that something amazing is coming.

Wii Music has been in development an unusually long time for a Nintendo announced game, and following a presentation of the game at a major electronics convention last year, the gaming community started to murmur. The game deviates from traditional game designs in many many ways. For one, the game doesn't keep score of your performance, and even worse, even if you miss a designated note, there's no penalty, the game just keeps playing along as if nothing has happened.

Skepticism mounted as the details of the game became clear, to many it seemed as if the game would provide no challenge at all, and that the concept of the game is basically to shake the Wii Remote, and the game will play one of the 60 available songs for you. No room for error, no challenge, no creative input. When the track list for the game was announced, many gamers turned their backs to the game entirely. Used to playing through well know songs by contemporary bands in games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Wii Music's track listing includes songs like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Yankee Doodle. With a line up of songs like that, clearly the game is little more than a toy meant for children, right?

Upon Wii Musics release, the game was poorly reviewed by almost the entire gaming media. Is it possible that the might Nintendo dropped the ball completely with their biggest Christmas release this year? Has Miyamoto finally laid a brick, and failed at creating a compelling gaming experience? After having played the game comprehensively, my answer is a resounding NO! Not only is the game a lot of fun, it is in fact one of the most amazing games I have ever played, the depth and creative freedom it offers is simply astounding. While the traditional gaming market still is having a hard time accepting this game, it is my firm belief that Wii Music will be remembered for decades as a truly groundbreaking game.

Wii Music offers around 60 different instruments for you to play, but to be able to unlock them all you have to go through a set of learning tutorials meant to set you on your path teaching the basic mechanics of the game. Lead by the in house maestro, Sebastian Tote, you'll go through the basics of playing instruments, creating music videos, and some of the basic arrangement techniques you can use. Progression through the lessons is very fast and most songs and stages are unlocked relatively quickly. The game also has a section of music games that you have to play to unlock the full set of songs and instruments. Once, all instruments are unlocked, there's not much progression left in a normal gaming sense, but then again, Wii Music is anything but a conventional game.

The music game section of Wii Music has three basic music themed games, conducting an orchestra, a hand bell rhythm game, and finally a tone recognition game. In the orchestra game, the Wii remote become your baton, and a full orchestra will play to your instruction, matching volume and tempo to your hand movements. This mini game is probably the most entertaining of the selection of music games. It is satisfying to feel the music swell and then die down at your command. Unfortunately, the number of songs you can conduct is very limited.

The next mini game, Handbell Harmony, is the closest Wii Music ever gets to the other music games in the market. In this game you play a set of hand bells using the Wii Remote and the nunchuck attachment, as the melody plays, you shake your controllers to sound the different hand bells at the right time as colored bells scroll by on screen. Again, only 5 songs are available to play which limits the game. Finally, Pitch Perfect, is a game that tests your musical ear. In a series of challenges, you'll have to pick out which Mii plays a note at the same pitch as a reference note, arrange Miis based on the pitch of their instrument and other similar listening exercises. This section of the game has great potential, but the tasks are too similar and too easy to make the most out of this game.

In general, the games available in Wii Music are ok, they are not too involved, and they could all use the ability to play more of the songs in the game. In general, IO think that most of the criticism of Wii Music that claim the game is shallow and underwhelming have put their focus on the game section and view the rest of the title as a sideshow to the music games. If this was the case, I would agree with the harsh reception many has given this game, the music games included in Wii Music are not good enough to warrant the cost of the game, nor the money and time spent on developing the title. Once you spend some time with the game though, you will realize that the games are actually not the main part of Wii Music at all, the area where the full unlimited wonder of this game unfolds itself is in the Jam mode.

The Jam Mode is where you put your musical skills to the test, and play any of the 50 songs you've unlocked, with any instrument you would like. You can play by your self, accompanied by the very skilled Totes that will play their parts flawlessly, or you can invite up tp three friends to join you and hash out your own arrangements on the fly. Once you've played through the song, you can go back and play your part over or play another section of the band. In the Jam Sessions is where you can let your creativity flow. Some of the reviews of Wii Music claim that you have no artistic control over the song you play, that you are left to shake your Wii Remote around while the song plays along, almost regardless of what you do. This could not be further from the truth. With super responsive controls, you can take control of the instruments, and create virtually anything you'd like. If you want to play through the song in the standard way, you can bring up a note sheet that will cue each beat for you, but the real challenge is to step outside the set structure of the song, and make it your own.

Typically, the first experimentations people do with a song, and something Sebastian Tote himself recommends early, is to change up the melody line, add some notes in one section, maybe drag out your notes in another. And it is a very rewarding experience to listen to a well known piece of music, but with your own variations of the melody line. Just the ability to improvise over the melody opens up limitless opportunities to replay a song and create something unique. But, of course, the depth of Wii Music runs a lot deeper. You can play all sections of the song, percussion, bass, chords, harmony and melody, which gives the opportunity to change the way a song sounds completely. Adding another dimension to the game. On top of this, the accrual instruments themselves have a variety of different ways they can be played, which makes mastery of the instruments themselves yet another level of complexity. In short, Wii Music offers so many different ways to play a song and express yourself musically that the replay value is infinite.

Wii Music is different from the music games that are available already, the approach is much closer to the experience of playing music in real life. And the true brilliance of this game is in the fact that the controls are easy enough for your kids to pick them up and jam away with you to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, while the game is complex enough to provide hours and hours with fine tuning just to get that one last part of your awesome trumpet solo just right. The game is definitely step away from the traditional game concepts many people have become very familiar with, but underneath the unassuming presentation of this game you'll find one of the most ambitious game designs ever. Wii Music comes very close to replicating the infinitively complex world of creating music, and achievement that is so impressive it's easy to see past some of the things that could have been better. I highly recommend that anyone why are interested in music creation try this game out, it will not disappoint.