Jam sessions Review
When this game was first announced Ubisoft made claims that they would be able to make you're ds an acoustic guitar. They told us from now on wherever we were be it on the plane, the bus or simply chilling at home, we would now be able to "rock out" to some of our favourite songs using only our ds. And to some extent they achieved this, i mean they did technically turn my ds, albeit it briefly, into something that resembled the sound of a guitar. But in no way did this game enable me to fulfill my Rock star fantasies or "Rock out" to any of my favourite songs.
The game starts of as you would imagine with the obligatory introduction to the game and some of it's basic functions. Fair enough. From then on you are pretty much left on your own, you don't get told any objectives, there are no missions, and there are no high scores. The game itself is pretty easy to pick up with the d-pad serving as some sort of fret board, and you guessed it, the touch screen serving all your strumming needs. The menu is fairly simple to navigate, and you shouldnt have any problems figuring out where to go. The display is pretty average, with a few lackluster background providing something "pretty" to look at while you strum you troubles away.
One of the few things that surprised me about this game is the track list. It is surprisingly varied and has some recent hits sch as "Yellow" by Coldplay as well as an Amy Winehouse Track stuck in there for fun. It also sports a few oldies such as "Wild Thing" and even a Jackson 5 track was put in for seemingly no good reason. The only stand out track that i can think of is
"The Man Who Sold The World" as it is the only track that really sounds like the original, in this case it is Nirvanas Acoustic cover of the song. At a mere 20 tracks, this proves to be maybe an hour to 2 hours playtime on just these songs which by todays standards is just not good enough.
One of my main annoyances with this game was the incentive to play, or lack of in this case. As I previously mentioned there are no objectives, missions or even high scores, For example, you are not even required to actually finish any of the songs, you can skip to the end and it automatically congratulates you. Even though Jam Sessions isn't really a game it's more of a creative tool, it comes across as a fairly poor one.
I'll admit it, when i first played the Japanese version of this game a while back i guess you could say I was fairly excited about this game. For months i fantasized about what this game could have been, and i slowly began to have faith in ubisoft making something fresh and interesting. But nothing annoys me more than when a company promises much but produces little to back up these claims. The game while momentarily fun fails to deliver any real enjoyable "gaming" experience to anyone other than guitar players.
