"Rock Manager Rocks"

This game by Swedish company, Monsterland first attracted me to buy it because of my strong interest in rock music. It combines the glam rock life of the 70s with 3d toon vulgar characters and great voice acting and decent music.

It feels very cool to manage a rock band. You can also manage Pop/Metal/Punk groups and perform gigs in Rock City or go for world tours.

The main objectives of most 'missions' are to bring your band to stardom and sell a certain target of albums while there are varieties such as making a record label lose money so that another record company can buy over it and helping a Metal band, Firewolf, make a comeback.

These missions are interesting but they somehow feel pretty repetitive later on in the game. Probably because the aim of the whole mission and the way of acheiving the aim is pretty much the same. Eg, keeping your members happy, purchasing a song license and recording a demo, getting a sponsor, designing a album cover and doing many gigs, world tours and making MTVs.

Your start by making a band and choosing up to five band members, the vocalist, drummer, bassist, guitarist and keyboard. They all have different stats in terms of Musiciality and Star quality and have different costs. You can build internal relations among the band member and give them gives to appease them or they will quit. Sending them to music classes will improve their Musciality temporarily.

There is a limited amount of customization of recordings, allowing you to adjust the sound volume of each equipment, the type of playing style and mixing in different effects. However the tempo is fixed and there are also other certain restrictions. I found the music to be pretty decent and even catchy. I found myself to be humming to the tune of 'Supermarket Love' at times. They also have pretty lame lyrics.

Monsterland have also done some research on the popular genre of music of different cities. For example if you are managing a ROCK band you would like to avoid Singapore on a World Tour as the population there is more aligned to POP music and travel to L.A. where the people live on rock.

There a few flaws in the game which will prevent it from being a hit and pretty much spoil the game. I feel that it is pretty short, really short...I managed to complete it in a day. The game also does not allow you to just play a 'free' mode as you only get to play missions. Worse, you cannot choose to continue the scenarios to manage your band further. The missions get too repetitious in the end and become a chore to complete them. You also cannot save in the game and only do so when you exit the game.

Overall, it is a commendable effort by Monsterland and I'm very grateful for this rock and roll sim. I can't wait for Rock Manager 2.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/01, Updated 11/29/01