School of Rock

The App Store is filling up more and more every day, so developers really have to think hard about internal marketing when it comes to getting their apps in front of the right audience. A good, strong movie license can take care of that for them, but adds a bit of extra danger when it comes delivering on the expectations that license comes with.

In the case of School of Rock, Paramount couldn't have got it more wrong if Mr. Shneebly had taught them good salesmanship himself. It's also made it damn hard to review and score this game appropriately, since this isn't really anything to do with the excellent 2004 Jack Black movie and nor is it really a game. That's not to say it doesn't do whatever it does well, but considering this is filed under 'Games' on the App Store it's fair to put it under the lash of a gaming whip.

It's not entirely devoid of gaming elements, but what's here is only in the vein of educational gameplay or the kind of micro-game you used to see on BBC computers in schools during the 1980s. You are most definitely meant to learn from playing School of Rock. As any true gamer knows, though, learning is seldom fun.

You're given four instruments to learn: guitar, drums, bass and keyboard. This is presumably why the film was chosen as a sponsor, since these are the areas for which Jack Black recruited those posh kids. But there are no kids, no classrooms, no fat, washed-up rocker and no Battle of the Bands. This is School of Rock in name only, and Trade's Descriptions would be justified in taking interest in that title.

Beginning with guitar, you're given a chord both on screen (with the notes appearing on a section of the axe's neck) and audibly, followed by a choice of three answers. Choosing the correct chord from the list first time gets you 25 points. One wrong answer wins you just 10, while two wrong answers and it's on to the next chord. Identical games follow for note names and intervals, all requiring you to guess/learn the correct names for the musical harmonies.

There are also a couple of fairly lacklustre mini-games tagged onto the end requiring you to guess the make of certain guitars from their pictures or place a quote against the rocker who said it. You definitely wouldn't buy School of Rock for these small sidelines, but they do no harm.

Bass, drums, and keyboard are pretty much the same, though these three instruments involve some small element of additional play. You can follow notes, chords, and beats in a 'Simon Says' fashion, though it's one note at a time and doesn't really count as shredding. There's also an extension of the drumming aspect which allows you to choose from a variety of bundled songs (or from your own iTunes) and drum along to the beat. You can even record your session and play it back afterwards, if finger-tapping is your thing.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this was, up until this point, a fairly scathing review, and in terms of School of Rock's gaming quotient, it is. This is a poor game at best and feels a lot more like homework than anarchically rocking the learning establishment as the title suggests.

School of Rock isn't a game - it's a musician's companion. If you, or maybe your kids, are learning to play the guitar, bass, keyboards or drums, this could prove to be a valuable training aid. Presenting the tedious task of learning chords and note names in a contemporary method (such as an iPhone app) could be exactly the right tool they need to learn the technicalities of playing music.

This is the reason School of Rock is so difficult to score. As a game it flunks, but as a musician's utility it would land a solid B+. Bear this in mind when deciding whether to enroll in the School of Rock because it's far from fun and games at this academy.