Rock Band

"Get Ready to Rock Out"

After opening the box and inspecting everything, I saw that none of the instruments needed a "Wiimote" to be used. I was pretty impressed, but that quickly turned into dislike when I saw two of the three instruments were wired. I thought to myself, "This ruins the Wii's tradition of wireless controllers (with the exception of the Classic controller and the GC controller)." The fact that I could deal with it quickly canceled my dislike of the wired controllers. After setting the instruments up, I started the game. It has almost every feature that Guitar Hero has, except it had no online mode, a luxury that I enjoyed in Guitar Hero. The set list is pretty impressive, with a great selection of songs and a nice ability to sort the songs according to genre, decade, difficulty, and alphabetically.

The drum section of the game follows the same rules as the guitar - hit the colored pads according to the colored notes on the screen, orange being the footpad. The drums tend to make a loud smacking noise if you hit them hard, but that's only if your hitting them really hard. There are four drum pads, each standing for red, yellow, blue, and green/cymbals, with a footpad for orange/bass. It's pretty cool, because each color represents a certain part of the drum in real life, so during a jam session, you can actually plan a good beat, if you know what reps what.

The singing is pretty simple. Lyrics come up on the screen, with line indicating the pitch you should sing at. Even if you don't know the song, you can guess at what the adequate pitch is, and make noises to substitute for words. The microphone has no controls, so you use a Wiimote to choose selections, if you're playing by yourself, or just have a friend be a band leader.

The guitar section of Rock Band is pretty interesting and realistic. You have the regular notes, where you strum, and hammer-ons(HO's) and pull-offs(PO's). They made the HO's and PO's execution more realistic, however. You need to hold the previous button and press the HO's button, just like you would hold the string further up a fret on a guitar, and then hammer on a fret higher down.

There are also "solo sections" where you use the buttons further down on the guitar. They act like the normal buttons during the rest of the song, but during a solo, you can just press the buttons without strumming, and they'll count. It's hard, though, because the buttons are very small, and you can easily hit two instead of one. It adds a spin to regular guitar playing.

The guitar does have some negative points. The strum bar is too loose, and that makes it hard to strum fast and have it register. You really have to jam down on it, and that might cause it to break. There is also a weird creak coming from my guitar every time I pick it up. That makes me think it has some loose parts inside, and it doesn't sound cool when you're jumping up and down, shaking the controller because you just rocked that awesome solo on Expert. It kills the mood.

Overall, the game is great. It may feel like Guitar Hero with a twist, but don't let it stop you from getting this game. The people who developed it really did a great job on making it feel different than Guitar Hero. It's a great game that you can have fun with by yourself, or with friends.

Pros

* Great Gameplay
* Nice setlist
* Family-friendly
* Easy to pick-up
* Feels like you're playing guitar
* No Wiimotes to plug into the instruments

Cons

* Loose strum bar on the guitar
* No online mode
* Some controls are wired

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/08

Game Release: Rock Band (Special Edition Bundle) (US, 06/22/08)