Rock Band

"A Unique Step Up, For the Most Part"

First of all, I'd like to note the enormous popularity rhythm games are achieving in the United States. Sure, Japan has had Guitar Freaks and Beatmania, among others, that took rhythm games in new, horrifyingly difficult levels, but it was years before Harmonix built what became the first popular peripheral-based rhythm game. Now that the market is booming, Harmonix, separating itself from the Guitar Hero name, has made what is arguably the best of the rhythm games available to mainstream US gamers.

PERIPHERALS: 8/10
Since these are the real meat of the game, lets look at these first.

MICROPHONE: 9/10
This is definitely the best peripheral. It is durable (been dropped many times now and still works perfectly), it is highly receptive, and is light and easily held. There was one issue that was fixed with Harmonix's update, that of the phoneme recognition, so if you don't have an internet connection you might have a little trouble with some of the more lyric-heavy songs like Sabotage, but the pitch recognition is dead on. Even better, the microphone offers options for the singer in the form of sensitivity, singer volume, and recorded voice volume. This is great for people who are shy and quiet, or people who just don't want their voice to be heard, as well as helping you practice by being able to hear the real singer over your own voice.

GUITAR: 9/10
The guitar that comes with this game is quite strange. When I first picked it up, it felt flimsy and easily breakable. That said, the guitar that came with it has yet to break. It has several advantages to it that make the game, in my opinion, easier. The first thing they improved were the buttons by making them flat as opposed to raised. It is much easier to slide my fingers up and down the guitar during a difficult passage than over large raised buttons, and it gives (however slight) more of the impression that you are playing an actual guitar. Additionally, the buttons are much more easily depressed.

Second is the strum bar. The ridiculous clacking that once came with the old guitars is finally gone! That was always my biggest annoyance, so this came as a huge relief. Finally being able to hear the music is a rather large advantage for me. Well... Most of the time, but I'll get to that later. This is also a large step up.

There are also a few add-ons, unnecessary but neat. There is what amounts to an effects pedal where you can switch between 4 different effects for your solos and overdrive moments. If you are really getting into the music, these can be very neat, though they can be distracting if you pick one that doesn't fit the sound. Also, for your solos they added a little solo bar farther down the neck that can be played simply by pressing the keys without strumming (unless you want to). Again, neat, but unnecessary and you can skip over it without any hesitation. I highly recommend it if you want to add a little challenge, though.

I suppose the only other disadvantage is that the guitar is incompatible with GH3 or 2. It'll use their guitars, but not the other way around, so if you buy it in the hope that you can now play co-op on GH3 you will be disappointed.

DRUMS: 7/10
Oh, the drums. This is my favorite and most frustrating part of the game. I understand they wanted to make the game reasonable, but this is probably the weakest part of the game from a peripheral standpoint.

If you plan on getting very good at the drums, you should know now, they are almost definitely going to break. Now, for the most part, as long as you observe good technique (strong wrist action with the stick held loosely between your fingers, not gripped tightly in your fist) you should be in good shape. However, unless you are some percussion prodigy, or you have played drums before, you are probably going to hit a point where the difficulty makes it tough and you will break something. The bass pedal is the most frequent thing to go, but the drum heads themselves can crack. The good thing is that their customer service is very helpful and will gladly replace the whole set or just the pedal and relatively quickly, but if, for instance, your bass pedal breaks in the middle of the endless setlist (which happened to my friend) you better be ready to work for the rest of the songs, or give it up if you're not far enough along. This is a huge drag.

Additionally, the drums are LOUD. It is not uncommon when playing a difficult song that the band members may have trouble hearing over your own banging. There are methods people have used with cloths over the drums, but it seems this could easily have been amended without a huge price increase.

Nevertheless, they still get a 7 because, to me, this is most fun part of the game. For those in the mainstream system, you've probably never played a game that tries this hard to emulate a real drum set.

GAMEPLAY: 9/10
The gameplay is to me, the best part of the game. This game deviates in a few ways from the past guitar hero games, often to the benefit of less hardcore players of the game. First and foremost, it is easier. There are still some very hard songs, but when compared to Guitar Hero 3, they cannot stand up. While this can be a detriment to some, it is mostly important to the single player. And while this game has a single player section, there is little reason to play it. This game is made for a group. For the sake of completion, however, I will review the single player as well.

SINGLE PLAYER: 8/10
This is pretty standard. If I remember correctly, there are no encores like in the previous Guitar Hero games, just play through all the songs. If you've never played this type of game before, you will almost certainly want to go through this, but, with the exception of the drums (and really, even this is questionable) you can skip this and jump right into multiplayer. There is really almost no reason to buy this game if you won't be playing it with other people because it is just not made for that. For those who haven't played, however, let me explain the rules of the game. There are a variety of different colored notes (for guitar and drums) that come towards the bar at the bottom of the screen. When they reach the bar you hold the button or buttons for guitar and strum with the strum bar, or hit the notes with the drumsticks and bass pedal on drums. Generally this is done in rhythm with the music. For singing, you are given a bar which corresponds to a pitch which moves up and down, and you must change your pitch to match that of the bar. Sometimes the changes can be subtle, so I highly recommend you have a large TV if you plan on singing. Anyway, hitting the correct notes or pitches earns you points and keeps your rock meter up, missing them lowers it. Miss enough and you lose. Hit enough to stay on through the whole song and you will get a score and star rating. If you hit several notes or singing phrases in a row, you gain a multiplier that increases your score up to 4 times. You can, with certain phrases, fill up an energy bar that, when half full or more, can be used to double your score in addition to any multiplier you have. This can be activated by playing a drum fill ending on a cymbal strike (green drum), singing at a gold phrase (you'll see what I mean if you play) or tilting your guitar or pressing select on it at any time when playing guitar and the bar is more than half full. The other thing overdrive does is allow you to increase your rock meter a lot faster. One thing to note that is DIFFERENT FROM GUITAR HERO is that you can still score more overdrive power when you have activated overdrive to keep your overdrive going longer. Again, if you've not played any Guitar Hero game, you might want to do this first, but it is not at all necessary.

MULTI PLAYER: 9/10
This is, to me, the real reason for the game. You can, and should, play with up to four people. This includes a guitar and bass, a drummer and the singer. Aside from the basic gameplay, there are a lot of things they do to mix up the multiplayer experience. First, instead of just playing single songs, you often play sets of multiple songs in a variety of locations (based on where your band leader is from). Also, there are some bonuses for playing multiplayer. First, the overdrive doubles the score of every player, and it adds multipliers for each player in overdrive, so if you are all in the groove you can have an 8X multiplier and really rack up the score. Second, unlike Guitar Hero, each players rock meter is separate, so if you fail, it doesn't kill the whole band. You can be revived up to two times by another member of the band, but at the cost of a half bar of overdrive energy. This lets people who are having difficulty get a second chance, and keeps the pace of the game up. As you move along, you open up new cities, venues, and gigs, as well as earn fans and money, and every once in a while, some special opportunity comes along to let you move up in the rock world. And while this is definitely fun, the real excitement of the game comes from playing with three of your friends and feeling like you are really part of a band, plastic and cover though it may be. By letting everyone play on their own difficulty it lets you attract new players and veterans, and yet it encourages you with increasing rewards, to increase your skills and try harder and harder songs to get all the fans you can and finally enter the Rock and Roll hall of fame.

As a slight note of interest, there is a bass part which is unavailable in the single player mode. It does a few interesting things that are new. First of all, you can earn up to a 6x bonus (ostensibly because the bass part is less interesting and has a lot fewer notes). at 5 and 6x you get a fancy design on your bass fret board. Also, it encourages you to play the bass by strumming only up by giving an achievement for it (on expert of course). While this is hardly necessary, it is an interesting concept and, more importantly, it can make what might be a boring bass part far more fun to play.

There are a few minor annoyances I should point out, which relate to the interface. If you are a fan of switching instruments frequently and also don't want people to use your profile, you will have to make at least three bands (one with guitarist, singer, and drummer as the leader), and you will have to sign out and back in with your profile every time you switch. Of course, you can just play band quickplay and not have any profiles, but you have to earn the songs through the band touring mode. This might cause problems if you are a stickler for your achievements, but it is not too big a hassle (especially since the update which makes it load profiles a lot faster). Also, if you have friends who have profiles on their Xbox's and drag them around on a memory card, it is a real annoyance and I recommend them just temporarily moving their profile onto the Xbox and removing the memory card, then moving it back when they're done.

Just a couple more things to note:

GRAPHICS: 8/10
The graphics are not the best of the 360's potential, but that is not the focus here. In fact, I find them much better than the cartoony look of the Guitar Hero franchise, as they aren't as distracting from the actual game. Additionally, there are a variety of customization options for your characters in the game, and you don't feel pressured to buy every single instrument and article of clothing in the game. You do, however, get a much better custom character and the ability to make every member of your band feel unique. When you play the game, I highly recommend you play on a large wide-screen television, as playing with 4 players can get cramped on a small TV, and the pitches for singing will be much harder to read. Also, even though you will infrequently notice, the percussionist still acts a little wooden when drumming. The guitarist and singer, however, look significantly better than in past games and actually appear to be singing and playing the guitar instead of performing very robotic actions. They also do an excellent job of letting you set the delay for the game, which is very important on HD TV's. Overall, it is very clear and pleasant and does what it needs to without being too overwhelming.

ONLINE: 8/10
There are a few online options, but I have never played any of the actual online play. They DO, however, have a fantastic store available. You can preview songs, review songs you've purchased, and even purchase packs of songs and be free of accidentally downloading the songs again! While there is a very good selection of songs, this will be what keeps the game going for a long time. And, speaking of which...

MUSIC: 9/10
This is going to be the most important thing to a lot of people. I find that even if I don't like a song a lot, if it is fun to play I will enjoy it. That said, I think this game has the best selection of music as long as you are willing to pay for some of it.

To me, if you are able to make the 180 dollar investment in the game, you probably have a job, and therefore, the low price for a song or group of songs is not going to be too much of an issue to you. Forcing you to pay for a song, therefore, did not affect my rating here as I feel most people should not have a problem with it. As I have watched the game grow its library, I have seen a huge selection of songs from all sorts of genres. While it tends toward more rock songs, there are some poppy songs and some metal songs, and everything else you could find. They have something for everyone here and I find it to be my perfect mix. Since the game seems to be aimed more to the 21-35 crowd, many people will find songs they remember from their childhood as well as songs their parents probably grew up with as well, and plenty of modern songs. I am sure that everyone can find a song they will like here and probably even some new groups they've never heard of. Of course, I don't like every song, but no one will and so there is really nothing you can do.

OTHER: 9/10
There are lots of little things to the game too. After a group song, it will give you nicknames based on your performance which are not important but just a sort of neat bonus. As mentioned before, the guitar comes with a sort of effects pedal which you can use during solos and when in overdrive, the bass part has a fancy design, and you are given lots of minor customization options for your character. A lot of little things come together in this game that make it above the norm and give it just that little extra edge.

Just one more thing to note. As I mentioned earlier, there is a single player section, but it is really hardly anything compared to what the game is really all about. If you buy this game solely for a single player experience you will be sorely disappointed. Also, as noted earlier, the game takes a slight step backwards from the Guitar Hero series in respect to difficulty. If you want ridiculous songs that will have your fingers aching, you want Guitar Hero. However, neither of these things is what this game is about, and so I have rated it overall based on its intention, which is to create a fun group atmosphere where everyone is able to both challenge themselves and enjoy the game. It has done an excellent job of both of these things. Furthermore, the constant addition of new songs and the ability to play each song four times before truly mastering it, makes the game have almost endless potential. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't put out a sequel to Rock Band for a long long time.

OVERALL: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/08

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