With Guitar Hero and Rock Band sharing a vice like grip on the music & rhythm sub-genre, it was always going to take something fresh and different to have any chance of cutting into their highly lucrative market. Enter Battle of the Bands, a game that, on paper at least, has a concept unique enough to force its way into the public consciousness and find a place for itself as the family friendly alternative to Guitar Hero and Rock Band's more hardcore sensibilities. Planet Moon Studios has taken the multiplayer battle aspect of the aforementioned titles and stretched it across the entirety of Battle of the Bands, creating an experience that gives the gameplay a more competitive emphasis throughout. Unlike Guitar Hero or Rock Band, in which self-improvement is the fundamental aim of the game, Battle of the Bands allows for a more tangible aim, thanks to its constant split-screen style action that continually pits you against an opponent, be it a friend via the multiplayer mode or the CPU via Quick Play or Story Mode.

While the 'battle' aspect of the gameplay is nothing new, the way in which Planet Moon Studios has approached it certainly is. In Battle of the Bands you select one of eleven bands as your own. Each of these bands is split into five unique musical genres; rock, hip-hop, marching band, Latino and country - each, as you can imagine, with their own sound and style. From here you battle it out against another band to the sound of one of the thirty eclectic and surprisingly decent songs that the game has to offer. The only thing is, each song has been covered in the style of all five genres - with the sound and style of the music changing as you play, depending on which genre of band is racking up the most points or doing the most damage via the battle-based mechanics of the gameplay. While this is an interesting and potentially franchise-creating concept, the execution of said concept has turned out to be hugely disappointing - a terrible shame, especially when you consider just how good some of the music in Battle of the Bands actually is.

While there are a couple of fillers, the majority of the track collection are solid songs that have been successfully covered in the style of all five genres. The list of songs of a surprisingly high standard, ranging from the always fun hip-hop anthem Insane in the Brain to the hugely catchy Blitzkrieg Bop and Whoomp! (There it is). Oh, there is also a treat for fans of the Coen Brothers, thanks to the ingenious inclusion of Man of Constant Sorrow. Sadly, as good as some of these songs are, they simply can't make up for the repetitive, overly simple and generally tedious gameplay.

Whether playing against a friend in multiplayer or the computer in Story Mode, the gameplay is always the same. Each battle may be introduced via a collection of rather boring static cut scenes while playing Story Mode, but to be honest, they are all but pointless and at times borderline racist thanks to the extremely one-dimensional, stereotyped take on each band's paper thin persona. There's nothing to get upset about here, it's just that, as is the case with so many other videogames, it seems easier to simply conform characters to easily identifiable stereotypes rather than to apply a modicum of individuality. Poor story and dialogue aside, this type of game will inevitably live and die by its rhythm-based mechanics. Sadly, they fall painfully short of their nearest competitors. While a simplified control scheme was all but inevitable, Planet Moon Studios hasn't made up for the lack of challenge with some kind of depth. A game of this ilk should be easy to play but hard to master - Planet Moon Studios has instead created a game that is easy to pick up, but sadly, even easier to put down.

While playing, the screen is split into two 'beat scrolls' at the bottom of the screen, with your chosen bands at the top doing battle as you hit the markers throughout the song. Although having the fully animated bands go at it at the top of the screen is a novel and well implemented idea, the actual input of commands is far too limited and feels completely disconnected from the music being played. As the music plays, icons representing one of the limited Wiimote gestures slide up the beat scroll, tasking you with making the specific gesture at the correct time to coincide with the beat. These gestures are made up of simple left and right flicks, jabbing motions and waving the Wiimote back and forth - very simple and very repetitive.

The major problem however lies with the fact that your actions directly influence the wrong aspect of the game. While you gestures and well-timed attacks may have a visual effect with your band at the top of the screen physically attacking your opponents' band, your inputs actually have no effect on the music. While the music does change style depending on who is taking the current upper hand, missed motions and beats have no immediate effect. Whereas Guitar Hero and Rock Band make you feel like you are actually playing the songs thanks to missed beats being accompanied by grating twangs, here there is little to emphasise whether you are doing well, other than the score at the top of the screen. To make matters worse, regardless of how well you are doing, the style of song seems to change of its own accord at times, an option that does little other than to undermine the game's most unique and successful mechanic.

Beyond the traditional hitting of beats, be it with the untraditional Wiimote gesture controls, the gameplay is also geared largely towards attacking and defending against your opponent. Before each track is played you get to choose a collection of three attacks, ranging from smokescreens and reversed gesture controls to reduced note size and fire attacks. The three chosen attacks can be changed on the fly with a simple press of the A button, each of which takes a specific number of consecutive successful beats to use. These attacks work to not only add huge points onto your tally, but also to have a detrimental effect on your opponent's success rate, thus increasing the chances of getting your specific style of the song played.

While this does add some much-needed tactical depth to gameplay, its inclusion isn't enough to save the game from premature repetition. The fact that there is also a forced skull battle section to every song also doesn't help matters. Whilst playing in the usual manner, the game inexplicably goes into skull battle mode, in which you take turns to attack your opposing band with bizarre exploding skulls that are thrown via the same basic gesture controls that are used throughout the rest of the game - the difference here being that you can block them with a quick press of the B button. It sounds like a good idea, but sadly it feels disjointed and has seemingly been haphazardly thrown into the game to attempt to add a bit of diversity to the proceedings.

While Planet Moon has come up with a great idea, in an attempt to steal in on the Wii family crowd they have diluted far too much of the competitive edge that should have driven this game's battle mentality. It's too easy, too forgiving and more importantly too boring to challenge the big hitters of the genre. By taking away that link between the player and the song, the game is drained of its challenge and subsequently its potential fun factor. Sadly, the gameplay isn't the only aspect of the game that treats the player like a child, as Planet Moon Studios has sadly decided to tell us to go outside and take a break after every single song; a choice that proves to be both condescending and hugely unnecessary - believe me, you won't need anyone to tell you to put down the controller, you will quickly come to that decision of your own accord!

Although graphically competent, Battle of the Bands can't quite shake that budget third party Wii development look. Like so many other titles released on the Wii, the visual style feels like it has been phoned in, with some rather disappointing production values. Hi-definition and polygon count aside, I get the feeling that the visuals would have seen a lot more effort on the 360 or the PS3. Saying that, the graphics do their job and the bands do look decent while battling it out mid-song. The pre-battle animations are static but well drawn, and the backgrounds, while genre-specific, suffer from being, well, generic.

The audio, as already mentioned, is by far the game's strongest aspect. With a track list of thirty available in five different genres there is more than enough music here. A music player has also been included that allows you to listen to all of the songs while being able to manually change styles as you see fit, allowing you to create genre mash-ups of your favourite songs at will. If anything, this makes the rest of the game all but redundant by taking the best part and stripping away the boring, repetitive gaming mechanics that have been built around it.

Be it the basic, largely pointless Story Mode or the by the numbers Multiplayer Mode, Battle of the Bands never ceases to feel like a missed opportunity and a huge disappointment. While Planet Moon Studios can be applauded for coming up with a potentially great concept, they have to be seriously questioned for their choice to dumb down the experience to suit the family friendly Wii crowd. All the ingredients were there to make a game that could have seriously challenged the big hitters of the genre, were it not for the idiot-friendly mediocrity; the result is a game with a huge amount of potential but very little to show for it.

Reviewed by Liam Pritchard for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).