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The Naked Brothers Band: The Video Game
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Graphics & Sound:
Well, when I requested The Naked Brothers Band: The Video Game, I must say I was a bit surprised when I got the video game in the mail. Why would a tween-aged group name themselves the Naked Brothers? Wouldn't their marketing directors guess that us older folks might think the game was something a tad different than it actually was? As it turns out, The Naked Brothers Band: The Video Game is like Guitar Hero for eight year olds. It features songs strictly from the brothers (and a few friends) themselves - which, unless you are a major fan - will make you want to tear your ears off and throw them from a moving vehicle. I made my sister and her fiance play the game with me, and ten minutes later, I was picking my - now twitching - sister off the floor and begging my soon-to-be brother-in-law not to jump off our top story apartment.
The Naked Brothers Band: The Video Game really just has horrid graphics on the Wii. There is no way to get around this. I've played games on my DS that look twenty times more crisp and less pixelated. Actually, I've played games in the 80's that looked better! The characters themselves aren't all that horrible, however, the backgrounds are atrocious! They are blurry, pixelated and dark. Normally, fun colors would save a kids' video game from awful graphics, but a smear of purple against a dark stage just isn't going to cut it. On the upside, when you are playing with two players... you cannot even see the background. The side-scrolling bars (different from the top to bottom scrollers in Guitar Hero) take up the entire screen and block out the background altogether. |
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Gameplay:
The Naked Brothers Band: The Video Game was not fun for me... and I'm just silly enough to enjoy most things. I did laugh hysterically as my sister became incredibly frustrated with the slightly crappy responsiveness of the game and began brandishing the Wii-mote like a wild animal. "How do you get the top and bottom notes! This sucks!", became her repeated mantra as she struggled to figure out how to operate the World Tour part of the game (there is no tutorial if you start in the Two Player Mode... which really does suck!). A big factor of me not liking the game was the music. You have to absolutely love the Naked Brothers if you are going to sink $50.00 on their game. 25 Naked Brothers songs about bananas, not wanting to go to school, and other inane non-adult-friendly subjects is enough to make you think slitting your wrists is preferable to sticking any more bananas in a cup and shaking them all up. To top that off, you can unlock 25 more Naked Brothers songs to drive yourself insane with.
Each character comes with a certain instrument (you can't mix and match) and is ready to play right out of the box - no unlocking. You can, however, unlock outfits and upgrades for the characters and their instruments. The game features Jam Session (one player with a tutorial), Party Mode (which is Jam Session with another player), and Tour Mode which will take you through five cities. Within each city, there are 4 venues you can choose from (none of them really matter because you cannot see the background).
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Difficulty:
There are three difficulties for the game, but Hard must be unlocked for Tour Mode. You can pick your character in the game and play the cello, guitar, bass guitar, drums, keyboard, or sing. Basically, if you twitch your arms around enough, you will at least get a rating of 70% on each song. There is really no skill involved at all, which makes it perfect for the little ones. The one thing I thought might save the game was that it comes with a microphone. I was looking forward to watching my sister belt out goofy lyrics about refusing to go to school, but while she was laughing at the lyrics, the game was giving her perfect scores on the vocals. Again, no skill. You could put an audio book up against the microphone and still manage to get a pretty decent score. At one point, we decided to see just how accurate the microphone was. We took turns clapping and and making animal noises into the mic and got an 87% for the song. Again, this would be so amazing for younger kids who like making random noises and getting rewarded for them. Not so great for anyone expecting Guitar Hero.
The hardest part of the game is figuring out how in the seven rings of hell you are meant to play it. Because there is no tutorial mode for Tour Mode, you have to run through the Single Player Mode to access this information. You and I both know you aren't going to take the time to do this while you have people waiting to play... or kids in your living room fighting over who gets to control the Wii-mote through the tutorial. |
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Game Mechanics:
Game mechanics for The Naked Brothers Band: The Video Game are annoying. They require no skill, and the shaking of the controls never coincides to the beat of the song that is playing... which is a bit of a buzz kill, really. To play the game, you only need a microphone (it comes with the game in some packs), a Wii-mote and Nunchuck. To play the drums, guitar, cello, bass guitar, keyboard, and vocals in controller mode, you need with Wii-mote and the Nunchuck. If you purchase a microphone, you can do the vocals with the mic instead of the controllers.
For drums, you beat the controllers up and down like a psycho and hope the game registers what you are doing. For everything else, you move the control stick on the Nunchuck and swing the Wii-mote around. No skill, and only hard if the game fails to register that you are twitching like a zombie that has been shot in the head (it will fail to register the twitching quite often).
The Naked Brothers Band: The Video Game is a definite buy if you have small children that cannot handle Guitar Hero, Rock Band or similar games, or little ones that are morbidly obsessed with the Naked Brothers and their cheesy, kid-directed lyrics. Even if they do love the band, the songs -- and the game -- might start to get old fairly fast because of the lack of variety. |
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-Phate Kills, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Field |
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