PopStar Guitar

With Guitar Hero and Rock Band topping the best sellers lists, music game clones are coming fast and furious. Every company seems to have one, including XS Games, which brings you POPSTAR GUITAR, a Wii offering. But unlike the best sellers, PopStar Guitar has no online capabilities, no instrument-like peripherals, and about 60 songs, most of which are by indie bands. As you play your way through these tunes and perform well, you climb the music industry ladder all the way to fame and glory before big crowds in giant venues.

Instead of faux instruments, you get two sleeves called AirGs. These AirGs slip over the Wii remote (but not the protective sleeve, if you happen to own those). The AirG contains colored buttons like the guitar frets on the Guitar Hero controller. You press the proper colored buttons in tandem with the colored icons that appear onscreen as the songs play. Like the other games in the genre, you can customize your avatars and dress them up in this one or two player game. 14 songs are by pop artists like Rihanna, Maroon 5, Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers,and Fall Out Boy . The rest are by fairly unknown independent bands and covers of the original by musicians who are not credited.

PopStar Guitar is a decent rhythm-based music game, but it's played without instrument controllers. Without an instrument controller, you feel as though you're playing air guitar, which can be fun, but is very geeky nonetheless. Your fingers may get stiff after a while because the buttons are so close together, so you might want to limit playing to half hour intervals. Since the gameplay isn't new and there's no online capability, you'll want to check out the songs to see if they're by artists you will enjoy.

Remember that after the 14 original songs, you have 16 covers by uncredited bands doing their renditions of Avril, Good Charlotte, Kelly Clarkson, etc. Then you have 29 songs by generally unknown indie bands, the best of which is all-female Led Zeppelin cover band, Lez Zeppelin. But do you really want to spend $60 for a game that includes only 10 original artists you know doing 14 original songs?