I’m one of the few people who actually enjoyed the battle mode in Guitar Hero III. I know there was a large contingent of people who felt it ruined an otherwise fantastic game but not me as I like the idea of a head to head mode in the game. Battle of the Bands is a bit like that part of Guitar Hero III except without the guitar controller, all the buttons, and most of the licensed songs. To hit the notes you use the Wii remote to hit notes by either flipping the controller left, right, or down. While this is a bit more intuitive it’s not quite the same experience that I was used to in my rhythm games.

Battle of the Bands takes the rhythm game in a different direction with how it uses its songs. The game has 30 different songs with five different interpretations of each song. These five genres are Country, Rock, Ranchero, Hip Hop, and Marching Band. This gives you 150 different songs on the disc.

When you battle another person head to head you each select one of these genres and then face off. You can tell who’s winning by which version of the song is currently being played. This really works as you know who’s winning without having to look at the score. It’s also a good incentive to try and win for your version of the song for moral reasons alone. For instance I never, ever want to hear the country version of Blitzkrieg Bop again in my life and if that’s not incentive enough to win a song I’m not sure what is. Outside of the head to head mode is an adventure mode that allows you to battle your way through the other bands in the game.

You have an interesting mix of weapons you can pick up and before each match of the single player you can choose which weapons you want. There’s everything from machine guns to flamethrowers and smoke bombs which obscure the other players beat chart. It’s an interesting mix and it will be interesting to see how it does when it’s released later this month.

What works:
- Only requires the Wii remote
- Easy to pick up and learn quickly
-Soundtrack has some good tunes on it including the Gorillaz

What Doesn’t:
- Will be competing with the Wii version of Rock Band in the near future
- There are only 30 core songs and while there are 5 different versions of each ones there are certain interpretations we never need to hear.