Rock Manager

"Think you can make it in the rock world?"

Rock Manager is an interesting little game, and quite frankly there isn't much like it out there today. The game puts you in the role of (you guessed it) a rock manager, where it is your job to put a band together and guide them through the process of recording songs, promoting releases, and (most importantly) staying together.

The bulk of the game is split into various goal-oriented scenarios where you are given a band and told what to do with it. Many of the missions also allow you to create your own band, choosing from roughly 25 different types of artists to put into your band. Each artist has a different skill level and unique personality, giving you quite a bit of options. The goals in each scenario differ greatly from each other; one puts you in charge of a Paris Hilton type singer with little talent and your goal is to get her on TV. Another is to get a record contract with one of the various labels in town and bleed them of all of their funds. The scenarios are successful in this game because they each offer a different level of difficulty and all of them are interesting and fun.

You play the game mainly on an overview map of a city. Clicking on a building brings up a window with different options for that building; for example, clicking on a recording studio will give you the option to record a song. Clicking on one of the various promotional buildings, such as the newspaper or TV station, will allow you to book promotional gigs, bribe executives, and hand out CDs in hopes of getting them reviewed. There are also various clubs and venues where you can book gigs in order to promote your band or artist, though depending on your band's genre you may not be able to use all of them. You also have many screens typical of management sims, such as the budget screen, but there really isn't much to worry about other than your money and band popularity.

The graphics in the game are simple, and much of it is shown in animated images and text. The look of the game is nice and even a bit stylish, if not a bit childish. The sound is probably one of the best parts of the game. Each artist has a completely unique voice and quite a few different sayings (many of them a bit crude). The voice acting is top notch. The music in the game is nice as there are many songs for your band to record, and although options in the recording studio are a bit limited, it's still fun putting a song together and hearing the outcome.

The game is quite short, but also very difficult in spots. While some missions are mind-numbingly easy, there are just as many hard missions as there are easy ones, and they are not put in order of difficulty. It's not uncommon for an easy mission to follow directly after a ridiculously hard one, so there are some obvious pace issues here (though some will welcome this). The main difficulty of the game lies in keeping some of your various bands together. Many of the artists have touchy personalities and don't get along, but losing an artist will often cost you the entire mission, forcing you to start from scratch. Difficulty keeps the game a bit longer than it actually is, but it's still a little unforgiving in parts.

The game isn't without its flaws, however. Glitches and bugs pop up a bit too often for my liking. Many of them are small annoyances rather than game busters, but it's annoying nonetheless. The game is also not very deep, and while its still a hell of a lot of fun to play for a while, there isn't much to do once you beat all of the missions. Sure, you do get to unlock the games sandbox mode where you can do whatever you want, but by the time you unlock it you've basically done everything there is to do.

The value of Rock Manager is probably its strongest point. The game was released at a starting price of $10, and you can easily get it for less than that today. It packs quite a bit of punch for such a cheap game and is worth the time tracking down, especially for fans of music and management sims. If the game was released at a higher price tag I would have probably given it a lower score, but this game is too fun to pass up as cheap as it is. And quite frankly, there really isn't anything else like it out there..which is a shame.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/13/08

Game Release: Rock Manager (US, 06/30/02)