Hands On with Ubisoft's DS Jam Sessions

It's difficult to look like a rock god when all you're packing is a DS Lite. As sexy as that clamshell design and gloss finish are, they're nothing like as orgasmic as a cherry red Fender or a Gibson Flying V.

Still while Ubisoft's Jam Sessions may not get the rock chicks swooning, it is an interesting piece of musical software, as we found out twice – during a recent Ubisoft press event and at Nintendo's summer preview.

At first glance you wouldn't think there's much to it – merely a nearly blank touchscreen and chord names lining the top of the display. Move your stylus over the touchscreen, however, and you'll strum a virtual guitar string. Mimicking the actual instrument, the speed and frequency with which you move the stylus over the string impacts the resulting sound's intensity and duration.

With only one string available for play on the touchscreen, Jam Sessions maps entire chords to the string instead of individual notes. From the top display you can view what chords are mapped to the directional pad. Holding a direction on the D-pad changes the chord when strumming the guitar.

While it's obviously nothing like playing a real guitar, that's a good thing. We found Jam Sessions was easy to pick up and immediately start playing – you use your thumb on the directional pad to switch chords and the stylus in your right to strum. And don't worry if you're left-handed. The game supports that, too.

Training, Performance, and Free Play make up the modes. A sort of tutorial session, Training mode takes you through the controls, the music theory as it applies to the game, and teaches you basic techniques.

Moving into the main game, Performance mode offers 20 songs that you can play by following the chord progressions displayed on the top screen. Lyrics are also displayed, so you can sing into the microphone while strumming along if you so desire, although unlike SingStar on PlayStation the game doesn't rate your performances. That would be a nice addition, either as a means of tracking your progress or simply in conjuring up a competitive spirit among friends trying to best your high scores.

The only track we were able to check out was Beck's Jack-ass (from his cool country-rock album Odelay), but Ubisoft is promising a range of music from hard rock to ballads and contemporary pop. Other songs in the performance mode list include Cheap Trick's Surrender and Avril Lavigne's I'm With You.

Once you've gotten a handle on how to play the game, you can make your own tunes using the Free Play mode. This gives you full range to strum the guitar and toy around with the chords, while a recording feature enables you to save any cool licks you create. Even better, you can add special effects such as tremolo, reverb, and other filtered sounds to the recording to spice it up.

It's fair to say that Jam Sessions is more of an interactive music tool than an actual game. But nevertheless, it seems likely to provide the potential for those of a musical bent to fill hours of their time with creative music making.

Jam Sessions is due to get a European and US release during September.