Disney Hannah Montana - Spotlight World Tour

The premise of the show was always about maintaining a lie, and the tie-in game takes that literally: half of it is playing sold-out arena dates as Hannah, and the other half is scurrying around backstage keeping Miley Stewart's identity intact. That split is the most interesting idea here, and it comes from the license rather than the design team. It also means the game keeps interrupting itself.

The concert sections are the reason it exists. Notes and dance prompts scroll toward a marker while the show plays out behind them, and the song list is drawn from the series soundtrack, which is exactly what the audience wanted in 2007. On PS2 the input is buttons and stick flicks, and the timing windows are generous enough that a seven-year-old can finish a song without ever failing out. That generosity is the point, not a flaw, though anyone who came from Guitar Hero will find the charts thin.

Between shows there are the mini-games, and this is where the package thins out. Wardrobe changes, dodging attention, small dexterity tests strung together to represent the business of being two people. They are short, they are repeated, and none of them develop past their first appearance. Disney Interactive was shipping a lot of these licensed music titles in the late sixth generation, and the pattern is familiar: one solid central mechanic surrounded by filler that exists to pad the runtime to something a parent will accept as a full game.

Presentation-wise the PS2 build looks like what it is, a version of a Wii release running on older hardware. Crowds are flat, the venues are simple, and the character models sit somewhere short of the show's own visual polish. The unlockable outfits and stage dressing do a lot of work to make progression feel like progression.

What holds up is the honesty of the thing. It never pretends to be a serious rhythm game, it never asks for more skill than its audience had, and it gets you back to the next song quickly. Judged as a piece of merchandise with a pulse, it does its job; judged next to the rhythm games that were defining the generation around it, it barely registers. Fans of the show will recognise every song. Everyone else will notice how little is happening behind the lights.