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IGN Review of Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour
I like, totally went to this wicked-awesome-rocking-sweet-totally-cool-amaaaazing party this weekend. No, seriously, I did!
This year brings Hannah Montana's first Wii appearance, and what better way to make use of the unique motion-sensing power of the system than with a dancing game, right? That's exactly what Disney Interactive Entertainment did with Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour. Is it a genre-changing music game? No. What it is, however, is a decent music game for the younger female demographic on Wii, and a solid first effort despite a few depth and execution issues.
Teamed with Music Jam for Nintendo DS, Spotlight World Tour is a hybrid music/adventure game starring teenybopper Hannah Montana. Taking the roll of the latest superstar flavor of the week (one that drives ticket prices into the thousands, might we add) players take Wii-mote and nunchuk in hand and perform dance actions along with Hannah through more than 15 recorded tracks in concerts across the globe. Being that the design is made specifically for the pre-teen female demographic, the gameplay is pretty simple throughout, having 24 total actions broken up into Wii-mote only, nunchuk-only, two-handed, and specific "crowd interaction" moves. From the beginning of the game's World Tour mode gamers will have access to less than a dozen moves, and grow from there, unlocking more locales to shop in, more performances across the world, larger set lists, and a ton of actions.
On paper the design works just fine, as Spotlight World Tour looks to take the same formula as games like American Idol and DDR, mashing them up into one core gesture-based system with the classic "bad, good, great, perfect" scores for each action, and an overall star rating seemingly pulled directly from the likes of Guitar Hero. Each performance opens a new stage around the world, which in turn unlocks more of the songs and area-specific stores and themed concert halls.
Where the game drags its feet, however, is in the execution and depth department. For starters, Hannah Montana relies pretty heavily on both motion controllers working flawlessly, and we've detailed time and time again our gripes with the less responsive nunchuk controller. The sketchy motion detection looms over World Tour as well, with seven of the moves in the game using the nunchuk, and only the nunchuk to perform moves. Not only will players need to deal with the ever-apparent controller motion lag, but they'll also need to be very precise when putting in the moves, and oftentimes the margin for error is too small. Be it a pure hardware issue or interpretation within the game, missing nunchuk moves (and only nunchuk) can be come frustrating, and definitely bogs down the experience.
The rest of the product is pretty decent for a first run at both Wii motion and a more girl-friendly music game, but it lacks some serious depth to really hit anyone outside female Hannah Montana fans. If you're not into the main dance control, the only other options available lie within basic character customization - both within your dressing room and in shopping areas - and a handful of very simple mini-games. These extra challenges are basically the Wii equivalent to touch-controlled DS minis, and while we don't fault the game for being simple (considering the demographic we'd expect it), its simplicity still means an overall lack of depth. The game seems to know its humor though, having areas such as autograph signings where players need to click on the right items to endorse (album cover good, hot dog and cell phone bad), but along with the included laugh track during the scripted character sketches only the youngest of the young need apply. Hannah Montana accomplishes what it sets out to do, but the design is inherently thin due to the nature of the game.
As far as the audio/visual aspects are concerned, Hannah Montana isn't much to look at (we'll leave that one alone), but the audio delivers nicely. The game supports 480p and 16:9 presentation, but the character models and animation are still about on par with PS2 or GameCube, oftentimes dropping in framerate at odd times and never pushing the Wii system overall. The VO in the game is pretty decent - though you'll need to take it with a 2 liter bottle of salt if you're any older than 14 - and the music is as high quality as a two pack of CDs, so if your Hannah-holic son or daughter is into the tunes, the game delivers. It would have been great to see the team go all-out with downloadable content, tons of video of Hannah's concert performances, or more general extra feature fan service, as that's really the only direction we can see the game going to appeal more to the core Montana fan, but we're sure this isn't the last we'll see of the franchise either.
©2007-11-26, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This year brings Hannah Montana's first Wii appearance, and what better way to make use of the unique motion-sensing power of the system than with a dancing game, right? That's exactly what Disney Interactive Entertainment did with Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour. Is it a genre-changing music game? No. What it is, however, is a decent music game for the younger female demographic on Wii, and a solid first effort despite a few depth and execution issues.
Teamed with Music Jam for Nintendo DS, Spotlight World Tour is a hybrid music/adventure game starring teenybopper Hannah Montana. Taking the roll of the latest superstar flavor of the week (one that drives ticket prices into the thousands, might we add) players take Wii-mote and nunchuk in hand and perform dance actions along with Hannah through more than 15 recorded tracks in concerts across the globe. Being that the design is made specifically for the pre-teen female demographic, the gameplay is pretty simple throughout, having 24 total actions broken up into Wii-mote only, nunchuk-only, two-handed, and specific "crowd interaction" moves. From the beginning of the game's World Tour mode gamers will have access to less than a dozen moves, and grow from there, unlocking more locales to shop in, more performances across the world, larger set lists, and a ton of actions.
On paper the design works just fine, as Spotlight World Tour looks to take the same formula as games like American Idol and DDR, mashing them up into one core gesture-based system with the classic "bad, good, great, perfect" scores for each action, and an overall star rating seemingly pulled directly from the likes of Guitar Hero. Each performance opens a new stage around the world, which in turn unlocks more of the songs and area-specific stores and themed concert halls.
Where the game drags its feet, however, is in the execution and depth department. For starters, Hannah Montana relies pretty heavily on both motion controllers working flawlessly, and we've detailed time and time again our gripes with the less responsive nunchuk controller. The sketchy motion detection looms over World Tour as well, with seven of the moves in the game using the nunchuk, and only the nunchuk to perform moves. Not only will players need to deal with the ever-apparent controller motion lag, but they'll also need to be very precise when putting in the moves, and oftentimes the margin for error is too small. Be it a pure hardware issue or interpretation within the game, missing nunchuk moves (and only nunchuk) can be come frustrating, and definitely bogs down the experience.
The rest of the product is pretty decent for a first run at both Wii motion and a more girl-friendly music game, but it lacks some serious depth to really hit anyone outside female Hannah Montana fans. If you're not into the main dance control, the only other options available lie within basic character customization - both within your dressing room and in shopping areas - and a handful of very simple mini-games. These extra challenges are basically the Wii equivalent to touch-controlled DS minis, and while we don't fault the game for being simple (considering the demographic we'd expect it), its simplicity still means an overall lack of depth. The game seems to know its humor though, having areas such as autograph signings where players need to click on the right items to endorse (album cover good, hot dog and cell phone bad), but along with the included laugh track during the scripted character sketches only the youngest of the young need apply. Hannah Montana accomplishes what it sets out to do, but the design is inherently thin due to the nature of the game.
As far as the audio/visual aspects are concerned, Hannah Montana isn't much to look at (we'll leave that one alone), but the audio delivers nicely. The game supports 480p and 16:9 presentation, but the character models and animation are still about on par with PS2 or GameCube, oftentimes dropping in framerate at odd times and never pushing the Wii system overall. The VO in the game is pretty decent - though you'll need to take it with a 2 liter bottle of salt if you're any older than 14 - and the music is as high quality as a two pack of CDs, so if your Hannah-holic son or daughter is into the tunes, the game delivers. It would have been great to see the team go all-out with downloadable content, tons of video of Hannah's concert performances, or more general extra feature fan service, as that's really the only direction we can see the game going to appeal more to the core Montana fan, but we're sure this isn't the last we'll see of the franchise either.
©2007-11-26, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved