Rock Band

"Could have been epic, turned out to be just O.K."

**PLEASE NOTE THAT WHAT I REVIEW HERE ONLY COUNTS TOWARDS WHAT IS SHIPPED ON THE DISC. DLC COSTS EXTRA MONEY AND THEREFORE WILL NOT BE INCLUDED IN ANY ASPECT OF MY REVIEW**

Now, that that is out of the way let me get onto the review of Rock Band. Rock Band is the spiritual successor to Harmonix's largely popular Guitar Hero franchise. This time around you're not only the guitar player, but you have the option to control the rest of the band as well. In the review I'll look at each individual component of the game, as well as reviewing the peripherals that come with it.

Gameplay: 7/10

Harmonix changed the gameplay quite a bit in Rock Band compared to Guitar Hero. Some of it was for the better, but some of it was for the worse as well. A good thing was making HO/PO's a lot easier to see by making those notes considerably smaller than the notes that need to be strummed. Also they added a ton of gameplay modes, and great online features. Solo career is what we've come to expect from their last 2 games. Online versus play and co-op is very solid and can be quite fun. The addition, world tour seems like a great concept at first, but can grow tiresome after a while. It often requires you to play the same songs over and over again in different venues, and while this does increase the longevity, there's only so many times I can stand to hear the song "Maps" in a 1 hour period. Also not including an online World Tour absolutely kills everything the feature had going for it. No one can constantly have 3 friends over willing to play, and there is never a guarantee that they can even play anything past medium (progressing requires you to play at higher difficulties. Also the HO/PO timing window has been reduced below that of Guitar Hero 2's, and that can make it somewhat frustrating at times. Many feel that GH2's timing window was perfect, so there was really no need to change it. Also the lack of hyperspeed is a negative. As you progress to higher difficulties, this feature really benefits you, and would especially come in handy on the drums section. Unfortunately Harmonix decided to do away with that great feature.

Setlist: 6/10

Okay here's where Harmonix completely bombed. This is the reason why people buy rhythm games, for the songs that are included in them. Harmonix decided to gives us 12 less songs than the competitor (GH3) and only a handful of them are really great songs. On the guitar part, the vast majority of songs in the first 8 tiers are quite boring to play and consist mostly of repetitive chords that need to be strummed at a constant rate. On expert level, I was able to 5 star the first 8 tiers of songs on my first or second try, never taking any longer than that. Its not until the last tier that we actually see challenging songs for guitar. For drums, its a bit better, as its easy to see the songs get progressively harder from tier to tier. From a singing standpoint, these songs are mostly good and provide enough of a challenge at expert.

However the setlist in general is just not too interesting at all. They ditched true rock groups in order to add bands that would more likely fall under the category of "pop rock" like Fallout Boy, Hole, Yeah Yeah Yeah, and many other. Sure we see Boston, Blue Oyster Cult, Iron Maiden, Bang Camero, but not even these are enough to save the game from some of the downright horrible songs they decided to include. I also have to address the bonus songs, and ask a rhetorical question, what was harmonix thinking by putting some of those songs in the game? Also I was disappointed to see that that didn't include a "Jordan" style song for each instrument, i.e, a song that had a seemingly impossible guitar part, a different song that had a very difficult drum beat, and one that was very difficult to sing.

Peripherals: 4/10

I will say the microphone is great, no issues there.

The drums are mostly solid, sometimes you have to hit them pretty hard in order for a not register, and tapping it to lightly at times can result in it not registering the note. But those seem to be few and far between. The bass pedal, however is very cheaply made and has many issues. They have been known the break quite often, and at times they will not even register a note when you press on the pad, and it happens far more often than with the drum pads.

The guitar is my biggest gripe, and the reason of the low score on the peripherals. While everything else is pretty good, I'd have to classify the guitar as barely usable under normal circumstances. It works great on Easy and Medium difficulty, but when you move up to hard or expert mode, make sure you have a Les Paul or and Xplorer lying around, because the Stratocaster simply will not get the job done. Picking up the guitar, its easy to see just how cheaply made it is. It is very flimsy and is extremely prone to breaking. The fret buttons have a tendency to stick, the strum bar is very loose and inaccurate when you need to strum fast, and the whammy bar can be snapped like a twig if you're not gentle with it. Also the select button doesn't seem very responsive at times, so you must always resort to tilting the guitar if you want to use overdrive. The solo fret buttons are a neat idea, but again, because of how easy most of the songs are, you won't find a use for them until the last tier of songs.

Graphics: 9/10

Leaps and bounds above guitar hero 3. Some excellent special effects, and deep character customization makes everything look incredibly detailed and unique. No slow down whatsoever. The note chart is extremely easy to see and has a cool "electronic" look to it

Audio: 10/10

Every song sounds great, save some of the covers that could have tried a little harder to sound like the real thing. In 5.1 DD this game will make it sound like theres a concert in your living room. The crowd singing along to the songs you play is one of the best audio features I've seen implemented, and takes the experience to a new level.

Overall:7/10

This game could have been the greatest rhythm game ever, unfortunately there are many issues that result in it being a game that really is just okay at best. For the $170 price tag, we don't get too many songs, and the peripherals included seem to break easily and are of poor quality. There is always another chance to get things right in the inevitable Rock Band 2, so lets hope Harmonix returns to their roots and learns from the mistakes that that were made in this outing.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/25/08

Game Release: Rock Band (US, 11/20/07)