Hannah Montana Music Jam for the Nintendo DS received buzz-worthy press at E3 this past summer. It was a music game that allowed you to have a Rock Bandesque experience while on the go. The E3 buzz is now a distant memory and Hannah is yet another disposable cash-in game.

It’s an adult music game blended with a kid’s adventure game and unfortunately the music game was dumbed down for the expected junior audience of gamers; it just didn’t need to be that way. For those that don’t have young daughters, Hannah Montana is a TV show on Disney Channel that features Miley Cyrus (Billy Ray Cyrus daughter – Billy sang “Achy Breaky Heart” all those years ago). Miley is mild mannered student by day, and rock star Hannah Montana by night. Of course this is a huge secret that only her friends know about; apparently everyone at school is too stupid to realize that it’s only a wig that separates Hannah and Miley.

In the adventure part of the game, Hannah Montana’s popularity is threatened by another singer, Savannah Star (hmmm….that doesn’t sound like a name for a kid’s game…). You’ll challenge Savannah in a music video contest to show your awesomeness! And in order to get to the music video contest, you’ll have to complete multiple challenges at your house, at the beach and at the mall. You’ll also have to be careful not to get your secret out to the world, or something. So anyway these challenges come at you left and right – challenge Savannah to a figure skating competition at the mall, help your friend win a RC race, but first find his RC car for the race, and so forth.

The mini games, like figure skating, are just too long and boring for anyone to enjoy – it’s hard to imagine a ten year old girl enjoying the figure skating minigame – the Hannah Montana song actually loops multiple times for one “routine.” What does the routine consist of? You have to move the stylus in a pattern that is shown. Talk about a missed opportunity – it makes Epyx Winter Games figure skating minigame look fun, and boy that was awful.

Unfortunately most of the minigames are in the same vein; thankfully there are some music minigames but again, it was another missed opportunity. The list of songs to play is woefully short and this isn’t Guitar Hero. On the plus side, you can play the drums, bass guitar, rhythm guitar or the lead guitar. You may have noticed that there are a lot of guitars in the game. Thankfully they all do play different and you can play individual strings rather than the all or nothing strumming in Ubisoft’s Jam Sessions. Playing the drums can be fun but mostly it’s an exercise in Simon or Elite Beat Agents, i.e., hit the right circle (drum) at the right time. It wasn’t as much fun as anticipated.

Due to the limitations of the cartridge format, the song list is limited and there’s no voice in the songs – instead you hear instrumentals. The audio is not great either – rather than taking an MP3 and removing the vocals, instead you are treated to what sounds like a midi file. Believe me if you weren’t sick of Hannah Montana songs before playing this game, you will be after.

The music games are available as individual minigames but you’ll have to unlock some of them in the adventure mode (sorry!). A neat feature is that if you have multiple DSes (and multiple copies of the game) you and three friends can play as a band and record your own music, with the caveat that you have to finish your song in 60 seconds. It’s a shame this couldn’t work as a ‘download play’ game because finding three friends that have this game might be rather difficult.

Music Jam is Wi-Fi but you can’t play one instrument online with friends— instead you get to upload music video poses! Not music – but poses! It‘s rather silly to allow you to record your music but do absolutely nothing with it – you’ll lose it when you turn off your DS! It’s just another missed opportunity.

Graphics aren’t bad and the actual adventure game does seem to come right out of the show. Kids will need to have reading ability to play the game as there’s little voice and all text. If you’ve seen the show, you’ll know the soundtrack and controlling Hannah is relatively easy.

Overall, Hannah Montana Music Jam, despite its girl-centric title, could have been a great family game that adults could play with their kids – especially with the music focus. Instead we have a music game crippled by a so-so adventure game, which leaves both kids and adults looking to High School Musical, or trying to get tickets to the real Hannah Montana Tour.