There is little doubt that this is the year of the music-base game – whether you have all the SingStar titles that just released, or the rhythm-based blockbusters like the next iteration of Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour. So it seems only right that one of Nickelodeon’s television shows, which followed the lives of members of a fictitious band, that went by the unlikely name of The Naked Brothers Band, would find themselves front and center in their own video game.

Rock University Presents: The Naked Brothers Band The Game offers some of the same elements that you might find in Rock Band 2 or GHWT, but tone down (or dumbed down for the PlayStation 2 controller scheme – it depends on your choice of semantics).

Now to be fair, the game has some charm, and the 12-year-old girl who was the chief tester rolled through all aspects in quick time. The game itself is a combination of playing instruments or singing the sometimes sugary and inane lyrics (the same could be said about many modern rock songs, though, if you break down and try to make sense of the lyrics), and even offers players the opportunity to stage concerts with lights and pyrotechnics, or make a music video. All that would be fine if the game were graphically pleasing, but the truth of the matter is that this title does not even come close to visually challenging the capabilities of the PS2.

The game does come with a microphone and it is fairly responsive. There are six members of the band – Nat, Alex, Qaasim, David, Thomas and Rosalina – and 25 songs to work through. The instrumentation will require little effort as players merely have to time-press buttons on the easy end and work a more convoluted combination of controls for the harder difficulty settings. There are five different instruments to use as you play – the drums, guitar, bass guitar, cello and keyboards. It is the way the instruments play that begins to take the game beyond the control of younger players – for which, presumably, the game was designed. Not only do you have to use the left and right thumbsticks to score the hit, but you have to use them in combination with the L1/L2 and R1/R2 shoulder keys, depending on the note color.

The game does follow a pretty stock formula in that you start in a venue with a short song list. If you succeed, you move to the next venue and add more songs to your list. There are 20 concert venues across five cities

The game also features multiplayer with competitive or cooperative gameplay. In the multiplayer setting, each of the two modes is scored. The cooperative mode is a combination score of both players’ performances. In the head-to-head competitive mode, players work the same song for the higher score.

On one hand this is a game that seems to have targeted itself for a younger crowd and then outstripped that with convoluted controls and repetition. On the other hand, though, this is a game that is very non-offensive. Sure, some of the songs tread the themes of love and what does a 13-year-old boy know about true romance, but generally the songs are very upbeat pop tunes that don’t ingrain themselves into the brains of anyone within hearing range.

Emma, the 12-year old who played through the game, thought "the songs were Ok, but I like SingStar better." When it came to the instrumentation, she merely shrugged and said it "could be pretty easy at times." She was asked if she would play the game again after finishing it, and said "probably not. It was Ok, but it wasn't as fun as some of the other music games."

RUPTNBB The Game tried to do something a little bit different and it didn’t work so well. Ok, give the developers props for trying. But this is not a title that should adorn too many wish lists for the upcoming holidays.

Gameplay: 4.8
The control scheme has good moments and several bad ones.

Graphics: 4.5
The PlayStation 2 is capable of much more than this.

Sound: 6.0
There are only 25 songs and that is way too few. What is here, though, is mostly inoffensive, sugary and very upbeat.  

Difficulty: Easy/Hard
This depends a lot on the age playing the game. Some of the control mechanics may be beyond the abilities of younger players. Some elements, like singing, are geared for anyone – even those who are a bit tone deaf.

Concept: 5.0
A good idea, but the execution comes up short.

Multiplayer: 5.0
Nothing innovative or new here, but recommended only for fans of the band who are familiar with the music.

Overall: 5.0
This is a game that simply missed the mark, or opportunity. The television show was well received but the game bogs down on many levels. And it really does not work the PS2 system for what the console could have delivered in terms of visual quality.