There was a lot of chatter about Wii Music not being a “game.” Well, it is a game. Just one with no discernible means of failure… or, at least, nothing besides noticing that you just totally ruined “Daydream Believer.”

I can see right away why Wii Music failed to spark. It is confusing in a way that is at direct odds with Nintendo’s easy-to-play Wii dynamic. Although you are immediately hit with tutorials a-plenty, the game then lets you dangle with only the barest notion of what you could go do next. It is sort of like Animal Crossing in that regard, except that Animal Crossing at least contained enough inspirational gaming elements that you had a good guess about what to do. OK, I’ll go walk around, talk to animals, and pick up stuff. In Wii Music, the tutorial ends – perhaps it ends badly – and you’re left at a menu screen wondering if that’s all there is.

In my first session of Wii Music, I meet the host, Sebastian Tute. He’s sort of half-Mii, half-Muppet, and he has a great lilting sound sample that warbles when his dialogue is onscreen. Turns out there are multiple Tutes, a whole family that will fill in pieces of your band if you do not have enough human players available.

Sebastian’s first goal is to show you four basic poses. These are the simplified musical control schemes that we all made fun of last fall. Guitar is easy. Piano/drums is easy. Trumpet is easy. Violin is a little weird since you have to hold Nunchuk buttons while you strum, or whatever the proper verb is for bow movement. Nearly all the schemes have advanced control options where you can hold a button to cut a note short, for example.

It’s not exactly advertised, but the d-pad lets your Mii pose and grandstand as you play.

The tutorial song is “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” It’s hard to get psyched about playing a nursery rhyme, but you get the point. This is where you learn that Wii Music is, at its core, a rhythm game not unlike PaRappa or Dance Dance Revolution. During any song, you can hit (-) to pull up a note chart. If you perform your motions in time to match the visible notes, your song sounds pretty good. At your desk right now, tap out Twinkle Twinkle with your forefinger. That’s how it works. If you want you can add in extra notes just by doing more motions. The game will generate the music based on what you physically do, but with an ear towards making it sound good. You have little control over what actual notes you hear, but you do control how many there are, how fast they are, when they are… and via various button presses you get music-nerd options like glissando and whatnot.

I’m not a music guy. But in animation terms, I think a lot of what Wii Music does would be called in-betweening. That’s when the director or lead animator draws pose 1 (guy sitting) and pose 2 (guy standing) and some poor lackey has to draw all the motion frames in the middle, yet still retain the director’s style and character model.

That is not to say that you get a perfect remix every time. Although the game knows what it wants might sound good, you can still screw it up. Since we humans naturally have an ear for music (at least, most of us do), you will know instantly if you came in on your part late. If you tried to squeeze too many notes into the vamp. If you missed the beat entirely. You won’t get crazy off-key sound effects like when you screw up in Guitar Hero – that would be too punishing – but you will still know that something isn’t quite right. Other webloggers I have read have figured out that this is the true gameplay of Wii Music: mixing instruments you like, learning where you can go offroad and where you can’t, and working the song over and over again to get a song that sounds perfect. If you replace the phrase “working the song” with “playing the level,” you can see where Wii Music might actually be a game after all.

I’m sure none of that sounds interesting, or even fun, to some of you. But not everybody likes Splinter Cell, either.

However, much of Wii Music’s problem is the general sense of a lack of purpose, coupled with a directionless UI. What am I supposed to do next? Have I unlocked anything? Once you finish the tutorial, you’re told to just go play some more. Play what? Twinkle Twinkle again? And the answer comes back: yes, Twinkle Twinkle again. You unlock more songs at some point, but the game is completely dodgy about it. I just don’t think that even the hallowed Casual Gamer is that blase about a game that perhaps cost $50. At least Wii Fit had those credits you could build up, so you felt like you were moving towards a goal. Accrue 200 Wii Fit credits, open up a new yoga pose or Balance Board minigame. Wii Music expects you to lose the OCD-gamer mentality and let things arrive according to the game’s own unseen internal clock. Wii Music: Gotta Relax It All.

The Nintendo charm is evident, and that goes a long way. The main menu features your Miis on the Jam Session mode, randomly selected and randomly assigned one of the game’s many instruments. In a very classy touch, the instruments chosen accurately reflect the way the game plays the extremely catchy background menu music. Even the Mii animations match up to the score.

After you finish a song, you have the option to save it as a music video. But first you have to design album cover art. If you participated in the early Check Mii Out Channel contests where the reward was to create a picture with your Mii and a Mario Mii, then you know how this works. It’s probably a high point for the game, making silly faux album covers with your Miis.

The final video itself is not so different from when you actually performed, just plenty of camera angle cuts and some MTV-style text. Videos can be sent to Friends, but only Friends who already own Wii Music, presumably since playback uses the game engine to render it on the fly (Proof can be found in the background characters. Even in those made by a third party, the video will feature your local Miis.) There are no Friend Codes; the game just knows which Friends also own it. Why can’t all Wii games work like that?

Sebastian seems to think that the more videos you make, the more additional content will open up. But again, there’s no in-game indicator of this. I guess there’s some Nintendo fan-service songs in there, but I have no way of knowing. Trust the Tute.

I drafted the family into a three-person jam session. While my son was fine to blindly flail at air guitar, my wife wanted the onscreen note chart for guidance. Without that chart, it feels like nothing matters. Regardless of how you sounded, Sebastian says “Very nice!” in his little sing-song voice.

It’s cute. If you like Miis, you’ll enjoy seeing them play in a band. Unfortunately for Nintendo, Wii Music arrived concurrent with Guitar Hero: World Tour, which had a similar feature. Along with recognizable music, massive hype, and an established gaming trend. If you ever wonder why Miis do not feature in more third-party games, that’s probably your answer.

After booting it up twice and saving maybe a dozen videos, I have six songs at my disposal. That doesn’t strike me as a lot. Sebastian says I have some new tutorials to sit through, where he will teach me about layering new instruments on previous performances. I’m expected to learn all about harmony and chords and all those Italian terms and it seems sort of daunting. Except that, in the end, most of that is optional and I’ll just do like I did in PaRappa all those years ago: hit the icon at the proper time.

I paid $20 for Wii Music, some eight months after the game’s initial release. So far, that feels about right.