Prior to the release of Let’s Tap, the mechanically-innovative Sega game seemed to fall within two categories: those who instantly understood its potential brilliance and those who simply wondered why anyone would want to play a game that revolves around senseless tapping.

For me, it was more than a game of anticipation. Finally, I thought. Somebody gets it. I’ve been tapping on tables, drumming on counter tops and pounding on steering wheels (while parked or stopped at a red light, of course) for years. Long before Activision and EA’s music games hit it big (but after Konami launched the genre with the first music peripherals), I used to dream of a game that took the fun of rhythmically pounding on something and placed it within an interactive world. It wouldn’t – or at least shouldn’t – be an experience designed to replace a drum controller. Rather, it would be a music game of a different breed – something to capitalize on the urge to turn anything into a drum.

When it was announced, Let’s Tap appeared to be as brilliant in its design as it was innovative in its use of the Wii remote. You don’t touch the remote. You don’t swing it. You place it upside down on top of a box (the game recommends a tissue box but an empty shoebox works too; using the game case wasn’t half-bad either). The Wii remote, with another layer of sensitivity hidden beneath its white plastic exterior, can actually detect the vibrations/motions you’re creating every time you tap the box.

This, however, comes at a price. By not forcing gamers to buy a separate peripheral, Sega was able to keep development and manufacturing costs much lower than most music games. Thus, the retail price is also much lower: $30 – a small fraction of the price of Guitar Hero or Rock Band. By using the Wii remote and only the Wii remote, gamers will learn that its technology is indeed more impressive than we thought. But not impressive enough for this game.

According to the intro calibration screen, which registers varying degrees of box taps, Let’s Tap is capable of detecting a large number of beats. Despite this, the game only uses three beats (light, medium and heavy), immediately limiting how much the player can accomplish.

Let’s Tap is comprised of five different mini-games, and when I say “mini,” let me tell you: this game gives new meaning to the word. To qualify as a game, you’ve got to have more than interactive content. You must also contain specific goals.

One of the mini-games – Visualizer – does not have any objective at all. You tap the box and the game reacts with fireworks, splashes of paint, water ripples and other colorful things. This would have been kind of cool if the game could keep up with a realistic level of drumming. But it assumes that every player is a sluggish turtle; tap on the box any faster and the visual display will fall behind your speedy beats.

The other four games – Tap Runner, Rhythm Tap, Silent Blocks and Bubble Voyager – aren’t much more interesting. Tap Runner is just as it sounds: you tap to make the little wireframe guy run across a wireframe environment. Silent Blocks is a horrible version of Jenga where you tap lightly or forcefully to remove blocks, one at a time, from a large stack. Rhythm Tap is your typical tap-the-box-when-the-icons-scroll-by mini-game. Some of the music is great and some of it is terrible. The visuals, however, make it all but impossible to enjoy – the act of watching mundane circle icons scroll by while wireframe shapes spin in the background is as boring as it is dizzying. This isn’t 1998; today, music games, whether part of a concept game such as this or a full-fledged game itself, need to offer more.

More than the rest, Bubble Voyager had the potential to be a really cool mini-game. In a nutshell, it’s a side-scrolling aerial shooter (think R-Type with a little robot) controlled entirely with taps. Unfortunately, its slow pace drags the game down, as do the repetitive controls (tap lightly to thrust upwards; tap firmly to fire missiles) and repetitive goals (is that a barrier up ahead? Firm tap! Another one? Firm tap again!).

Of these five, Bubble Voyager responded the best; Rhythm Tap responded the worst). None of them were particularly standout, and none of them were suddenly more fun when a second, third or fourth controller was added. When you do that, the monotony is multiplied by the number of people playing the game.

Technologically, it’s amazing that the Wii remote can work this way. At the same time, it’s disappointing that it didn’t work better considering the application at hand. But even if it had, that wouldn’t have made Let’s Tap the star music game it should have been. Before that can be accomplished, the developers need to realize that tapping alone isn’t fun; rhythm has to be a significant part of it.

Gameplay: 6.9
Thirty bucks for a concept game that's more fun to examine and dissect than it is to play.

Graphics: 3.0
Simplistic colors, wireframe models and a lot of 2D flash. Not much to get excited about.

Sound: 6.0
Had this been a full-fledged music game, Let's Tap couldn't have survived. There just aren't enough good music tracks to keep the listener engaged.

Difficulty: Easy
Mechanically frustrating but still a relatively easy game.

Concept: 5.0
The idea of using a Wii remote and a box as a tap-sensitive device is definitely new. But the mini-games found within Let's Tap are the same old thing.

Multiplayer: 5.5
When the novelty wears off, your friends will pick up their boxes and go home.

Overall: 6.7
Let's Tap is one of those games that had the potential for greatness but ultimately couldn't achieve anything above a Wii remote feature we didn't know existed.