Trailer Tuesday is a weekly chance to present trailers, gameplay videos, retro commercials, interviews and other video-tastic material to the folks at Destructoid.
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Though I can't say I agree with EternalDeathSlayer's views on beer, I think he was pretty spot-on with his impressions of Band Mashups for the Wii. While cool in concept, more details continue to come out that edge this game towards utter fail. The 150 promised songs are actually 5 different versions of each of 30 different “Chart Toppers,” all of them cover versions. Although the songs so far range from 'meh' to awesome in their original versions, I have no desire to hear covers of them in the styles of rock, funk/hip-hop, country western, Latin, or marching band. I'm sure Cypress Hill could have done a great marching band version of “Insane in the Brain,” but I have less confidence in a cover band working for the publishers of WWE and Disney games.

The real kicker comes in the form of the gameplay video that was recently released. Reading about Band Mashups, there were hints of cool gameplay mechanics and ideas. Hey, 70 “weapons” to use on your opponent sounds pretty awesome. In screenshots, the game looked fairly pretty (if strikingly similar to Rock Band and Guitar Hero). If anything, THQ and Planet Moon Studios probably have the sweet WWE cash to pay for some decent covers of the songs, right?

Right?



If my two “rights” didn't tip you off, the answer is no. The weapons seem to add some points during battle, but do little to affect your opponent. It is hard to tell from the video how much of an affect they actually have,and the “Face-Off” (at 0:58) does seem to have more of an impact on gameplay, so I could be wrong. The graphics are uniformly bad. They only look worse when the camera zooms in on the player characters, which look like N64-era models. Having said that, shotgun-guitar-monacle-Lincoln (1:07) is pretty badass. Finally, the music. Dear God, the music. Two equally bad versions of Tag Team's "Whoomp! (There It Is)" make my hopes about the other 148 “songs” pretty dire. If you make it past the style-switch at 0:27 and are still excited about the game, congratulations.

Maybe someday a game will come out that lets players create actual mashups. Until then, keep looking. Maybe details will come out that vindicate Band Mashups, but I'd say right now that things – literally – don't sound good.