I’m not a fan of the show, and in fact, have never watched it until recently, a bit like doing research prior to playing so I would actually have an idea of who Hannah Montana is. It only took a few bits of episodes to know I wouldn’t enjoy watching it, so I’ll be honest: I really didn’t want to play the game.
Fortunately, I have been getting into rhythm games a lot more lately, so that was what eventually convinced me to give it a shot. I like getting up, moving around and making a fool of myself in my own living room when no one is watching. So, on occasions when no one was watching, I got up to play so I could write this review.
In Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour for the Wii you play as Hannah on a tour of some major cities around the world, including Rome, Tokyo, London, Paris and New York. You have a concert to perform in each of them, and you do that by perfecting certain moves. Before each event, you practice those moves, and from concert to concert, you learn new ones.
Hannah’s movements are controlled by the Wii-mote (right hand) and Nunchuk (left hand). The basics of the game are like in Dancing With the Stars: there is a bar at the bottom of the screen where the symbols will appear, and you must do the right move when the symbol hits the star.
Symbols are color-coded: green means both hands, pink for the left hand, blue is for the right hand. They also appear in different shapes. For example, a star means point, an arrow tells you in which direction to move the controller, a guitar tells you to do a strumming motion, two arrows pointing at each other means clap.
When on stage, Hannah performs her songs by doing these moves, and at some point will come forward to the crowd and do some special gestures. Like high-five, touch or wave. There’s no scrolling bar from these, so you don’t know what these moves are until the message pops on the screen.
Your overall performance is measured in stars. As you do your moves on stage, there will be a meter that will either go up or down according to how well you do or if you miss a move. The highest rating is five stars, and the more stars you obtain, the more items you get to shop for.
Shopping is actually interesting – and you will never hear me say that again! It takes you through typical places in the different cities: a big mall in New York City, a picturesque French neighborhood with cafes and lots of small boutiques, a London corner with little stores and booths. It’s worth walking around just to see how the environments are. The actual shopping is done in a way that lets you roam around freely, try on whatever you want and buy something by using one of the tokens. There is everything from hats, sunglasses, hairbands, tops, pants, shoes, boots, skirts, belts and jewelry. The fashion style also differs from city to city. Items you have purchased will appear in Hannah’s dressing room, so you can change her look to your liking before a performance.
You will also come across some mini-games when shopping. There is a posing game where you have to mimic the moves, a guitar playing game where you use the Nunchuk analog to follow the direction of the arrows and the Wii-mote to strum, and a hilarious autograph signing task. For some reason, I loved this one, it was completely wacky. You point with the Wii-mote and press A to sign something, but you can only sign photos, albums and concert tickets. The trick is that people will offer all sorts of objects to be signed, from stinky shoes to ice creams. Doing well in the mini-games will give you a souvenir to display in the dressing room.
The game also offers a multiplayer component that places two players head-to-head in a dance-off.
I was actually pleased with the overall look of the game, and there are plenty of details to look at. For example, during her performance, Hannah’s lips are synced to the music, she animates fairly well (though sometimes seems off-beat, especially in slower songs), and everything that goes on on stage, such as lights and pyrotechnics seems right.
I didn’t like the cutscenes so much, and it was not just the fact that the graphic quality seemed to decrease quite a bit. The dialogs seemed pretty silly to me, and I think the whole thing would have been a lot better if the annoying and overused laugh track wasn’t there. The music sounds great though, and I actually found myself humming to the catchy tunes I had never heard before after some time. And it’s not even my kind of music! Now I’m almost positive that this Hannah Montana phenomenon is a mind control thing!
The controls are very simple, which makes this a game for everyone, although the Nunchuk seems to have trouble recognizing the point and stir motions compared to the Wii-mote. Timing is also an issue; the game isn’t very forgiving there and it takes a while to get used to, especially when you seem to be doing the moves out of the song’s rhythm.
Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour is definitely a niche game aimed at pre-teen girls who are fans of Hannah and the show, but will certainly appeal to them because of the entire “be a star” concept, the shopping, the mini-games, and most of all, the music.
Special thanks to Kate Pagliara and Disney Interactive for providing a copy of this title.