Rock Band Review

Written by: Alec Hilton Posted: 14th July 2008

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We rock the world with Rock Band.

Rock Band Details:

	Music
	PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/Nintendo Wii
	Harmonix
	EA Games

Out Now

N/A

After so much hype and possibly the most expensive accessories ever conceived, Rock Band has arrived in the UK. For those that have had their heads buried in the sand for the last six months, Rock Band has been out in the States since the end of last year and has turned quite a few heads with the options that it gives over similar Rhythm-Based games like the previously developed Harmonix Guitar Hero. Rock Band literally gives you the chance to become a Rock band all of your own, playing gigs all around the world, you can take the position of any of the band from the Singer to the Lead and Bass guitar through to being the drummer and you can play solo with the game’s AI taking the other parts of the band. On the other hand you can play either co-op in reality with a few mates in your living room or you can play over Live collecting players from around the world to make the ultimate band. The big question is though whether the massive price tag on the game is really worth it, paying out what is affectively the cost of a 360 just for one game does beg the question doesn’t it?

As I mentioned earlier the whole idea of Rock Band is to become a great Rock band and take your band to the top of the world. To do this, you need to work your band up, much like Guitar Hero, from playing the backyard or in Rock Band’s case your hometown’s local stadium to the heights of some of the biggest stadiums in the world.

To make your path to ultimate stardom, you must fret, sing and slam your way along with some of the greatest songs from the world of rock. So let’s start with probably the one instrument that there will be the most fights over, the guitar! The idea of the guitar is almost the same as Guitar Hero funnily enough but there are some very nice little touches that make Rock Band’s fret-style antics so much better. Take the Star Power which has been renamed Overdrive, this again doubles your current multiplier but the added bonus is that as opposed to GH you can keep the bonus round going longer as you can still hit those all important star notes. Now that isn’t the greatest leap from the tried and tested GH style of things but there is another, the solo stages in the songs have a new blue aura around the scroll board to make it easier to see coming, not only that but a percentage appears as you start your solo meaning that you can see how long you have left and at the end how well you have done. The guitar’s scroll board is the same as the one found in Guitar Hero but there are a few things that have changed there too, the user-friendly discs from GH have been done away with and replaced with bar like notes, this does make things a bit less friendly to new comers as you need to be a lot more precise with your strums even more so with knock-ons.

The nicest addition to the Rhythm genre has to be the drum. Tthey are amazingly well built with a lovely feel to them. They are chunky and solid, but when I say solid I mean solid this is a massive draw back with the kit as it is so solid your wooden sticks can make the loudest racket and can completely drown out the television. So you may want to cover the sticks or the skin of the drums with something to ensure that your hard work can’t be heard by the masses. The drums do take some time to learn in fact I would go as far as saying it is the hardest section to nail in the game. Just trying to get your hands and foot to move in the correct way but still keep in time at first can seem impossible but as long as you keep at it then it works out fine.

Finally there is the mic, this really can be a pain but also a blessing, this is where you will see the massive change in how you are judged. If you start to cock-up singing a song then you will drop from green on your gauge to red in a matter of notes, but equally you can get back up to the top with just a few perfect notes hit. Hitting the perfect pitch can be as hard as hearing the sweet music over the drums, but when you get that balance things just fall into place. The lyrics scroll across the screen in time with the music unlike the style used by other singing games like Singstar on the Playstation. Another addition that makes Rock Band smash Singstar is that as percussion sections hit you can pat or tap the mic to make your Rocker take out a tambourine and knock along with your drummer. By far the killer segment of the game is that you have small, and at times a little too small, talking part in some of the songs, all you need to do read out the words that scroll across, this isn’t marked by the pitch system at all. By adding in this small but excellently thought out talkie component really does add a lot to the whole experience and does make you feel like you’re really rocking it out in front of an audience. Along with the talking component there is also a quite clever Overdrive system for the mic as there is no buttons to push to activate it, interspaced between the verses and chorus’ there are golden areas if you made any noises or sounds as the bar moves in to those areas then you will activate your Overdrive.

The way in which the instruments are played isn’t the only thing that has been changed but also how you progress has had a fresh lick of paint. In GH you work through set lists and could move through easily enough as you could chose what songs you wanted to play and just move on after playing three. Rock Band aims a bit high and actually manages it! The idea is essentially the same but instead of playing three chosen songs you need to play out an entire set. Of course you can choose what songs you want to do first but you need to do all of them to proceed. The idea works well up to a point, the problem is that as you take your career along the pathway to stardom, you move from stadium to stadium with each one unlocked after completing the previous one’s set. But this means that you have a problem if you complete up to the top of your skill as it ends up that you can’t progress on to new stadiums in your current difficulty of course it does mean that things are kept fresh as you move to the higher difficulties but it also means that once you’ve hit end of your skill, unless you want to repeat the same song again and again you are stuck, another problem with this system is that if you do attempt the harder difficulties and fail you lose fans with each failure this is then reflected back on the stadiums that you have access to. Each stadium is unlocked not only by completing the last stadiums set but how many fans your band has gained through playing those sets, normally you get enough fans by just playing the sets well and not failing them so it can be easy to regain the fans that you had by just replaying the songs.

Rock Band is possibly the greatest party game ever made giving you a complete and well rounded experience. But its problems do make for some gaps in the play that don’t make it unplayable by any means but it does mean that solo experience can be increasingly annoying. There is also the downloadable content that is currently appearing on Live Marketplace, really helps out to give the game some extra life and a bit more of a personal touch to your game. Rock Band can only be described by its fun factor, through all the techy stuff it really just comes down to having a few drunk mates fretting, drumming and singing their beer soaked hearts out to some of rocks greatest hits!