Review Surfing – Wii Music (Wii)

The gut reactions toward Wii Music when it was presented at this year’s E3 helped predict how the game would be received by game pundits. It’s either you loved it or hated it. If you’ve read the latest reviews for Wii Music, you’d understand what I’m talking about.

For what it’s worth, not everyone in the gaming press think the game is horrible. See for yourself:

1UP (91%): “…Wii Music gets it really right. Using the Wii Remote, Nunchuk, and (optionally) Balance Board to mimic the motions of real instruments may have seemed like a bad joke when the game was first announced, but in practice, it works amazingly well. It’s worth it to take the time to learn the four different instrument motions (drums, guitar, horns, and violin) because the game offers so many varied opportunities to pretend-play all of the dozens of instruments in the game, and knowing how to wave your arms and press the buttons just right makes the crucial difference between a stupid-silly game and an actually fulfilling one.”

Young gamers might enjoy rocking to Wii Music.

GameSpy (70%): “Wii Music is an odd duck. It is far from a traditional video game, and more akin to a tech demo or social audio experiment. The fact that it is so very basic means it’s completely accessible to anyone, but at the same time there’s not much here to interest regular and core gamers. It’ll be a definite hit with younger children and in turn, parents and family members will love to watch the reactions of this demographic.”

IGN (50%): “I think most adults will quickly recognize that Wii Music is little more than a noise maker tied to a series of gestures and grow bored of the experience in a matter of hours, if not minutes. The controls aren’t particularly intuitive, but gimmicky, and the selection of music is fundamentally flawed with dated public domain songs rendered in equally dated MIDI. That Guitar Hero World Tour’s complementary modes — namely Mii Freestyle and advanced studio — completely obliterate the entire Wii Music package is proof just how much Nintendo’s game either doesn’t do or doesn’t do well.”

Apart from the very positive 1UP review, Wii Music seems to be facing a lot of hate—particularly from the “core” gamers. Then again, the complaints leveled against the game are valid: it plays itself, so it can’t really be a “game” in the strictest sense. The important question now: would you buy this game?

Based on how Wii Sports and Wii Fit have performed, it’s reasonable to expect that Wii Music could be as successful. If you’ve tried Wii Music, we’d be very happy to hear what you think.

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