[Multiplatform] Rock Band: Soon to be available for thirty billion Euros

This game is awesome. Save up your money this holiday and get Rock Band instead of Mass Boredom, or Guitar Rehash 3.

First, the bad. Playing the drumset part on expert gives me falsely failed notes on at least 1 of every 20 notes. Even on parts of the song that repeat the same rhythm for about 16 measures, I will try ignoring the screen and play solely to the beat as one would in a real band, but it still doesn't give me above 95-ish%. As someone who has played the drums since 7th grade and in the high school Jazz Band for 3 years, this is extremely annoying.

Now the guitar. I really like everything about the new guitar, except the strumbar. It feels broken (it isn't, of course), and is really hard to get used to when you're used to the Guitar Hero guitar controllers. Other than that, it is great, and I love that it is a realistic size/shape moreso than any of the GH controllers. Side note: Anyone with a brain will also see how superior the 360 version is due to its wiredness.

The included 4-port USB hub is a nice and needed addition, but it is cheap, plasticky, and took awhile to get it to even work. Not that relevent though, as most people already have decent USB hubs, or are at least able to get them for $10 off newegg.

Also, there is no easy way to switch instruments, other than having everyone log out of their instrument controllers, and logging in to other ones. Very annoying when you're just trying to quickly swap around what parts you each want to play every couple songs.

Now, the good. Everything else. People complaining about the pricetag are morons. $169 is a great price for what you're getting. The vocal part is hilariously fun with how it shows you the tone you need to sing along with the tone you're currently singing, and it is not overly harsh in judging your voice as far as the score goes. And that's the opinion of someone who hates singing. The only thing I was hoping for is an option to turn off the real voice track completely and only play your own through the speakers, for laffy-taffy karaoke parties, etc.

Other than a few minor issues, the equipment included in the box seems very solid and is fun to use. The song list is pretty strong. Easily better than GH3, though probably not quite as good as GH2. The characters/stage/audience/etc have a much nicer look to them than the cartooney jokemode look of Guitar Hero. It's also entertaining to get to design how your character looks, and buy not only instruments in the store, but also a very wide variety of clothing and accessories to fully customize your character.

The DLC for Rock Band, compared to GH2/3, is an exponentially better value. First of all, you get 4 parts (with 4 difficulties each) with each song you buy, rather than 2. They're cheaper. A bundle of 3 for $5.50, compared to GH2/3's bundles for $6.25. OR you have the option to purchase songs individually. $2 a song compared to SOL (Bundles Only) in GH2/3. And there's simply more selection.

Rock Band, buy it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

No, all instruments from all versions can only be used on the system they were designed for. And you won't find instruments sold separately until early next year.

On an unrelated note, the guitar career is unbelievably easy. Unlike GH2/3 on Expert, I haven't had to use practice mode once. I got to the very last song without failing anything, but then tried the last song this morning and failed in the last solo part which is a lot harder than anything else Rock Band throws at you, so it caught me off guard. I'll have to try again tonight.

The drum career was similar, in that it was smooth sailing (went through on Hard my first time through) all the way until the end. Then the second-to-last song (the Iron Maiden one) took me awhile to nail, while the very last song was no problem on the drums. I would have started on Expert if I had known the achievements stack, but it's fun enough to want to go through again anyway. If you can do Hard on drums, Expert isn't that much more difficult, so far at least.

All that's left now is the vocals, which I am dreading. I don't understand the scoring very well, and I will arbitrarily do really good in a song or just fail it in the middle, even though I always feel like I am doing a terrible job at singing.

There's nowhere I can't reach.