Just Jam: WII

WiiWare's lone release this week is a new music game – though it's not so much a game as it is just an interface to use in messing around with some songs. Just Jam gives you some music, breaks apart the drum, guitar, keyboard and vocal pieces that comprise it, further divides those pieces into five smaller tracks and allows you to turn on and off all the individual sound components at your leisure to build a unique jam session that's all your own.

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It works well. Though the tutorial is intimidating and it at first looks like this is going to be one of those overly complex virtual synthesizers like KORG DS-10, it's actually really accessible and fun to play with once you get past the introductory instructions and start goofing around. All of the included songs and song components have been skillfully arranged to sound good in any combination, so no matter what you do you're going to end up with something that sounds slick. You can then save your favorite performances to listen to them again later, and the more you play the more songs that are unlocked for you to toy around with.

There are some drawbacks, of course. The songs here are great, but none of them are famous – so there's no jamming along to Michael Jackson, Aerosmith or the Beatles here as in other more major music games. You can download new songs from an in-game storefront at a cost of a buck apiece, but there's no audible preview of what you're about to buy – you've got to go on the text description of the track to decide whether or not it would be something you'd actually like to listen to.

And the control is a mess in Freestyle mode, but that's not as great a concern – since the default Music Mixer control style is much cleaner and easier to use.

Closing Comments
Altogether, Just Jam is surprisingly fun for what it is – a game that lets you just jam. If you don't want anything more than that and you don't mind playing along with songs you've never heard before, go for the download.

by: Lucas M. Thomas

Posted in: Music