Nick Adams Games Blog

For those who know their Guitar Hero history, Rock Band is the latest offering from the original creators of Guitar Hero, Harmonix. Having sold off their precious Guitar Hero IP and now rolling with the big boys over at MTV Games and EA, Rock Band breaks their silence in the only way possible with a rock centric music game. With lots of noise!

If you’ve played Guitar Hero, the basic gameplay of Rock Band should be very familiar: there’s a constant conveyor belt of blocks which are scrolling towards you and by using the correct buttons to hit them in time you’ll find yourself creating a song.

Immediately the first thing that sets Rock Band apart from any other competitors is the inclusion of drums and vocals, and the shift of focus from individuals to a group. The Rock Band instruments are wired guitars, wired drums and a wired mic which all plug in via USB. Fortunately, they come bundled with their own USB hub to cope with the strain of the extra devices you’ll be plugging into your games console. Whether intentional or not, the whole ’spaghetti junction’ of assorted music peripheral cables makes you feel as if you’re performing on stage or having a studio session.

The microphone included is a standard quality USB mic with a nice weight to it. Any USB microphone can be used with Rock Band, or you can use any of the headset adaptors if you want to be a show off and sing whilst strumming on guitar or hitting drums. The singing itself is very similar to Sony’s Singstar games – it detects pitch (sung any octave higher or lower than the original recording if need be) but fails to recognise words or phrases. There are parts of the vocal track where you can give your throat a rest and tap out a rhythm.

Drums are definitely the most refreshing thing about Rock Band and they certainly deliver. As you’d hope to expect from something you’ll be hitting a lot over time, they’re very durable and have thick rubber pads capable of standing even the most enthusiastic drum solos. Its not all indestructible: the foot pedal for the kick drum definitely feels more fragile than the rest of the kit. The pads aren’t velocity sensitive, so hitting them harder or softer has absolutely no difference on the sound you’ll be creating. The drumming snobs out there won’t enjoy that all of the pads are at the same height unlike a real drumkit, but for a videogame peripheral they are absolutely fine.

The Rock Band guitar is a lot bigger than its Guitar Hero counterparts, resembling the size of a real guitar. Aside from the main fret buttons, it has a smaller set of frets lower down the neck of the guitar, which come in handy for those virtuoso solos. Its possible to play the guitar solo sections purely by tapping out the notes on smaller fret buttons, leaving a free hand to fiddle about the special effects on the guitar. You can adjust to have wah wah, flange, chorus, or echo anytime you have a solo or use your star power to really take your guitar performance to the next level.

What really brings Rock Band alive is its multiplayer. The core gameplay really pushes for teamwork, if a fellow bandmate fails during the performance you can revive them if you’ve earnt enough star power by hitting highlighted notes in succession. You also get a bonus if you play notes all in unison, and if you all co-ordinate your star power together you’ll multiply the scores of new notes you hit for a short period.

The Band Tour mode is where you and up to 3 friends can form your band and do a career together. You’ll get given various amount of cash and win fans depending on how well you perform on each song, and later you’ll have the chance to travel to various cities playing new songs. For the musicians who really love to live on the edge, you’ll occasionally be offered a double or nothing bet on the condition you play a set of songs to a certain level.

Because you can’t always be surrounded by your bandmates, the solo career gives a chance to play through the song sets at your own pace with your instrument of choice. This gives you an opportunity to unlock the songs for quick play sessions later. As a solo musician, you can also go online and challenge other people at your chosen discipline in the tug of war mode, which sees you and a competitor take turns to play different sections of a song, or you can choose to do a score battle which has both of you playing an entire song to see who ends up with the overall highest score. In the interests of fairness, you can’t do any versus modes against other instruments, though it would have been interesting to see a drummer and a guitarist go head to head.

One thing Rock Band has going for it is a very strong song selection. There’s plenty for all in the standard song set, such as Foo Fighters, Garbage, Radiohead, Bon Jovi, Nirvana, Muse, Weezer, etc. Sadly the bonus songs are really weak and lack the charm from previous Guitar Hero games. Speaking of previous Guitar Hero games, some old favourites return in true multi-part Rock Band form such as Jet’s “Are you Gonna Be My Girl” and The Killers “When You Were Young”. The online music store for Rock Band is fully integrated into the game - no invasive Xbox blades popping up required! Downloaded songs will seamlessly appear in the band career mode, making that much more than a traditional tacked on extra like they have been in previous Guitar Hero games.

There’s a high level of presentation in Rock Band, and lots of subtle touches such as the translucent conveyor belt of notes during the main game and special visual effects during different parts of the songs. The characters in the game have a very cartoon-like crisp character models, but everything is under a grainy fuzzy filter.

The most negative thing I can say about Rock Band should be obvious to anyone who’s seen it in a high street shop: the price is something you could practically put a mortgage on, at launch a complete set up is fetching the same price as a brand new games console! Gameplay wise, the songs are not as challenging compared to Guitar Hero III, which may disappoint those virtuoso players looking for a dragonforce level of difficulty.

If you’re a fan of music games, particularly Guitar Hero, then Rock Band truly is a worthwhile purchase. The single player modes as different instruments will keep you busy for a long time, and jamming along with likeminded individuals as a group really is something you’ll get your money’s worth out of. Besides, whats more Rock and Roll than making an extravagant purchase?

9/10