Nintendo Wii Screenshots: Ultimate Band

Ultimate Band is an interesting music game from Disney. It may be associated with Disney, but it is not like it has classic Disney songs or songs from the pop stars Disney tends to support or at least not in the first two areas. That would be nice and some may expect those type of songs, but the songs are at least cleaner ones than the ones that tend to be in the Rock Band and Guitar Hero type games. In the game you do not use music instrument peripherals, but only the nunchuck and Wii remote.

The band roles you can play as in Ultimate Band are Guitar, Drum, Front Man, and Bass. I like the Drum the best, although it is not as cool as playing the drums in Rock Band. The controls at least feel mostly like you are actually playing the drums, although it has some odd movements like swinging the Wii remote in a circle. The Frontman thing is at least unique and the movements make sense as sort of dancing moves and such. The Guitar and Bass moves work almost exactly like the others and do not feel realistic at all, which is why I do not like them in this game. In all the roles when your "spirit" meter is built up you go into a special mode that you do a variety of moves such as maraca, time out position, making a baseball safe gesture, etc. These really make little sense as part of any role except Front Man, but they are a kind of fun aspect anyways.

Overall I found this to be a fun and different music game. It does not really give much of the realistic music feeling of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, but it is a nice alternative considering the clean music and you do not have to find a place for the bulky peripherals. However, I would recommend as a rental first because I think some would rather have a different music selection or would be disappointed with out the peripheral type play.