Rock Band
Added April 10th, 2008 by Hellrazr360
To say that the Guitar Hero franchise has left quite an impression on the gaming world would be an understatement. While skepticisms arose prior to the first game’s release for its sheer ambition and rather high price tag, the game proved to be well worth the extra money and became the quintessential music-based game. After the release of Guitar Hero 2 (and in the middle of production on Rocks the 80’s) developer Harmonix went straight to work on an even more ambitious project that quickly surfaced under the name of Rock Band. Rock Band pushes the ambition and price tag envelopes even further (at a paycheck-killing $170 with a mic and drum kit in addition to a guitar), but is the game really worth all the fuss?
Guitar Hero veterans will likely be going into Rock Band expecting a very familiar welcoming but the game has a number of differences that help it stand on its own. For instance, Rock Band does away with the pre-made character selection and lets the player create their own rocker. As you beat songs and gain cash, more items will become available to you so modifying your character doesn’t become old quickly (it can get addicting if you really get into it). While Guitar Hero fans might miss their favorite pre-made shredders making your own character is definitely the preferred route in the long run.
Solo players will want to head to the Single Player tour area where they can choose to play through the songs Guitar Hero style in a campaign that’s oriented towards guitar, drums or singing. The single player portions feel a little too tried and true but for what it’s worth there’s still some fun to be had. But the beauty of Rock Band doesn’t come out until you have more than one person playing. Have four people taking a single instrument in the Band World Tour mode (which we’ll get into later) or the Band Quick Play and you’ll find yourself playing what’s quite possibly the best party game ever.
The Rock Band bundle comes with the game and three weapons of rocking: a Fender Stratocaster replica, a standard microphone and a four pad drum set complete with a bass pedal. Included is a multi-USB port hub with four slots that connects to your Xbox 360 but will also need to be plugged into a power outlet so that you can play all four instruments with convenience. The microphone requires an extra controller for selecting options at the menus but otherwise it acts as you’d expect. Rock Band’s included guitar controller is a bit of an odd case so your liking of it will likely vary. The strum bar is very flimsy opposed to the click strum bars for Guitar Hero and the fret buttons are the actual frets rather than merely a nub-like button. There’s also a second set of frets near the guitar body that can be used during guitar solos (indicated by the fret board on-screen becoming blue) without strumming. Topping things off is a longer whammy bar and an effects switch for multiple sound pitch changes (None, Echo, Wah-Wah, Chorus and Flange). The guitar controller isn’t necessarily bad, but most players will likely see a preference in the older Guitar Hero controllers.
Then there’s the drum set which comes with a bass pedal and two actual drum sticks and is definitely the most interesting and exciting of the instruments. This is thanks in part to the fact that the drums are a whole new peripheral that hasn’t been realized until now. What also helps make this instrument particularly enjoyable is how closely it mimics actual drumming. Like the guitar and bass portions of the game, you’ll need to hit the notes that come at you on the board for the drums. While hitting the notes on the drum pads is typically easy the included bass pedal makes things a great deal more challenging. In addition to hitting the drum pad notes, wide orange notes stretching across the whole drum board indicate when the pedal will need to be pressed with your foot. It may sound simple in theory, but just like with the guitar it will take time and practice to really master this part of the game. One note of caution about the drums is there is a chance the bass pedal may snap on you, so you’ll likely want to tap lightly and without any footwear when playing the drums, especially on higher difficulties. The copy we used has been holding up pretty well so far but there is still that possibility.
Finally there’s the microphone that also comes with the game for the vocal parts. These sections work pretty similarly to SingStar in that you’ll need to hit the right pitch in order to get through the vocal parts. Lower difficulties are more lenient towards missing the right pitch but higher difficulties will demand spot-on pitch changes. While singing will usually be the last part of the song someone will want to take part in there are some songs that will be hard for several to resist.
Speaking of the songs in the game, Rock Band is in no short supply of popular and well-known songs. The genre variety here is pretty good, spanning from grunge to punk and a couple lighter forms of metal. There are fifty-three songs preloaded on the Rock Band disc, thirteen of which make up the bonus songs now under a menu called “Play Bonus Tour”. You’ll find yourself rocking out to memorable anthems such as “In Bloom” by Nirvana, “Learn To Fly” by Foo Fighters, “Epic” by Faith No More and more difficult hitters such as Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and The Outlaws’ “Green Grass and High Tides”. While Rock Band’s pre-loaded soundtrack quantity doesn’t exactly stand tall against Guitar Hero 3’s seventy-one preloaded songs, the game offers plenty of downloadable songs to extend the replay value. And not only are the downloadable songs available for Rock Band cheaper than those for Guitar Hero 3 (nearly half as much at 160 points per song instead of 300) but there are far more available (the total amount of songs for Rock Band towering over 130 whereas Guitar Hero 3 still has less than 100 songs available for shredding). And while Rock Band’s soundtrack doesn’t have quite as many songs as Guitar Hero 3 the quality of the soundtrack itself is arguably better, especially with all but a certain few songs being master tracks. Needless to say, Rock Band has more than enough to keep you coming for more and more rocking out.
But what good are all these available songs if none of them are any fun to play? Well, don’t fear, because Rock Band’s songs are far more manageable than those in Guitar Hero 3. Admittedly the less difficult songs might not feel so spot-on with the guitar notes to Guitar Hero veterans, but the game still manages to hit a perfect balance between challenge and fun (something many games struggle with). But the real beauty with Rock Band’s difficulty is that the guitar-oriented part of the game is the only one that most should be able to jump right into. The introduction of vocal and drumming sections guarantee that everyone who plays can hope to go from a beginner to eventually a master with at least one instrument.
Rock Band really isn’t so much about mastery as it is about working together and just having a fun time with your friends. Whenever you get together with your friends and begin playing through the songs with every instrument the concern of difficulty is almost non-existent. The game is far more cooperative than competitive so those who like to brag about being superior more than working with others might not see the beauty at first. Fortunately it’s almost impossible to resist being able to just enjoy rocking out in a game with your friends. Once you find that one song you’ve loved and known since you were a child like “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and begin playing together it’s very easy to feel like you’re actually performing on-stage as The Who.
Really Rock Band’s only weakness as a multiplayer game is when you look at the online portion of the game. While one might think a game that’s as multiplayer-oriented as this would have a very deep and involved online portion it couldn’t be any more disappointingly simple. The only option offered for online play in a band is a Player Match in Quick Play, meaning that after you get together with any other number of people for one song and perform you’ll need to search all over again. While the game’s two other means of multiplayer Tug of War and Score Duel (much like Guitar Hero’s Face Off and Pro Face Off respectively) are also available for online play they really don’t add much to the replay value that can be gathered via online play.
Fortunately, the lackluster online mode really doesn’t hurt the game too much in the long run. While more and more games are trying to usher in the online possibilities nowadays, Rock Band’s really more about local multiplayer rocking. You’ll still get a rocking feeling while playing the game online, but compared to playing with others beside you making the rock group on stage feeling come out more, online play here isn’t much of a concern. About the only issue you might have with playing the game in a local multiplayer fashion is if your gaming area isn’t too large. Having someone take up the drums with two people playing guitar parts can take up a decent amount of space so don’t be too surprised if at least half your room is filled by you and your friends in this scenario.
One final note about the game is its presentation and graphical quality. While more and more games are trying to break ground by having sharp visuals, the Guitar Hero games have leaned less towards this aspect than anything. Even though the visuals in most games are usually just for show Rock Band’s actually improve the experience for when you notice what happens on the virtual stages. The amount of detail in Rock Band’s visuals might not strike your eye at first but as you keep playing you’ll notice certain details that really make the game look nice. Perhaps the most impressive part of Rock Band’s graphics technically is how accurate and detailed the animations are. The NPC’s that replicate the bass, guitar and drum playing look like they’re actually playing and the game will even zoom in on the guitar so you can see each note hit on the strings of the guitars. It really leaves quite an impression when you see just how spot-on the animations are.
Helping to make Rock Band’s visuals stand out even more is the game’s excellent presentation. While playing, you’ll notice the environments behind the nearly transparent fret boards alter their color and even slow down during certain parts to give the game a more 80’s like effect (or “tripping out” as some might call it). The game’s menus are all nicely laid out and organized with some nice touches made such as mini-scale versions of the cities you’ll be readying to play in (these cities range from Boston, to Paris and even Stockholm). Navigating through the game and seeing the little details put into the game before you even pick a song to play is a real pleasure and does well to give you that pre-rock concert excitement.
At the end of the day (or night even), Rock Band is easily one of the best party games ever made and one of this generation’s best, most enjoyable experiences. Few games can really make you feel like you’re truly somewhere other than your bedroom while playing, but Rock Band manages to pull this off with ease. If Guitar Hero didn’t quite bring out the rock star in you, Rock Band is almost guaranteed to make you feel like the biggest rocker in the world. And if Guitar Hero did make you feel like a real shredder, then Rock Band will take that feeling to the next level. The game’s price tag is quite hefty, but after playing this game, $170 will make it feel like a steal.
