Rock Band

"A great game, but it comes with a heavy price tag."

Some of you may, but probably not, know that I live in the UK. I also happen to be a Guitar Hero fanatic (pretty much), owning almost every game in the series (ill get On Tour eventually), and I love them all. At first I admit I was a bit skeptical about Rock Band, but the more I learned the more I wanted it. Unfortunately it took about 6-7 months to finally get released in the UK (thats about the same time it takes Square to translate and release a Final Fantasy game into all the EU languages for the PAL release). I actually got the solus for the game on release, however there has been a reason into a massive delay of my RB review. The plan was to get the solus, play the guitar part, then buy the instrument box. Eventually I just got the drums, so I had everything I need to fully review the game.

First up, I'm going to talk about the single player options. Just like in the GH games, you get a solo tour. This time you can make your own character, which is automatically assigned to a particular instrument, depending on the controller plugged in. This means you can only use that person whilst playing their instrument, so you can't use your guitar player for drums or vice versa. Once you do that, it's just like that. You play the songs, beat all of them in the tier, get money, move on. A slight difference is that you just beat the first Bonus song to unlock the next until you get them all, but nothing major. The Guitar parts are much easier than Guitar Hero III's, and lack a sense of challenge. I got 5* on pretty much all of them on my first try, and felt a little disappointed. It certainly wasn't challenging, but perhaps a little too easy (a lot of the songs just consisted of fairly easy chord sequences etc). It may take a while to get used to the slightly harder HO/PO system, but it's not too bad. The solo tour is basically the same for the vocals and drums. Bass doesn't have a solo tour, mainly because it's too dull/boring for it's own solo tour.

So how do the vocals and drums handle? First, I'll start with the Vocals. The screen will have a bar at the bottom, with an arrow. This is basically your pitch, which makes it move up or down. You must move the arrow accordingly to the green bars that scroll across the screen, by singing the lyrics, which scroll under the bar (you don't have to sing them, just use the same pitch as the singer uses). Every second the arrow scrolls along the green bars, your multiplier fills up, if it reaches at least half-way your Rock meter goes up, if you don't, it goes down. Filling it up all the way makes it go up to the next multiplier. To activate the overdrive (basically star power), you simply shout when the golden sections pop up on the bar, simple as.

The Drums work a bit like the Guitar though. It's the same kind of screen, except you get 4 main notes. When the note scrolls to the bottom, you hit the correct pad to hit it. Score system is the same, getting over drive is the same, you get your mutliplier etc. However you also get bass pedal notes, which are shown as orange lines that move across the board, but again, you just press the pedal when they reach the bottom. Overdrive is activated during drum fills (which only come up when you have overdrive) where you just hit any note you want, although you must hit the green note at the end of the fill to activate the over drive. One of the main differences with overdrive is that you can still get once you have activated it, meaning you can sometimes go on for ages. The actual drum set was good, although I found the drums sticks a little annoying since my hands were getting sweaty, the ink rubbed off and makes the sticks look horrible, and feel a little uncomfortable. The drums pads were good enough, however I felt the red pad was a little unresponsive. Apart from that, they're fine.

Now we come to band world tour. This basically allows you to create your own band, where you can play with any instrument (although the band leader is required to play each time), meaning you can get friends around to play with any instrument, you only ever need the same leader (so you aren't limited to certain friends and instruments). You then go to different venues and play the gigs, gain fans, gain new vehicles, complete gigs, get money, and just do different events. It's pretty fun at first but it can pretty boring quick, especially when asked to do certain songs over and over again, you will find your self fairly bored quick. Band World Tour can't be played online either, although band quick play is available. Other online modes are just standard Score Duel (pro-face off), and Tug of War (face-off), and of course, you can only face someone else with the same instrument (why people think you should be able to duel some one drums with you on guitar is beyond me). The game also has DLC, with new songs coming in every week, there is a massive library of over 100 songs to download.

So, Guitar Hero or Rock Band? Personally I have had more fun with GHIII than Rock Band. Whilst Rock Band has the multiplayer, GH has the single player, and was a better experience for myself. One of the reasons why RB is a better game though, is due to the fact it has multiple instruments. If you're after a single player experience, go with Guitar Hero. If you want a fun (but for a fairly short while) multiplayer experience, go with Rock Band. It's a great game and barely just gets it 9, if you can afford it, it's worth a go.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/08

Game Release: Rock Band (EU, 05/23/08)