Rock Band Review

When I was younger I used to play the trumpet. I wasn't amazing, but I was reasonably competent and had a great time playing in the school band and, for a while, a brass quartet. I certainly remember the satisfaction to be had from successfully performing a song, especially a tricky tune, and how much fun it was to play in general. Sadly I gave it up many moons ago, but thanks to music games that doesn't means I have to do without the thrill of performance anymore.

In fact the options open to the wannabe musician gamer are rapidly increasing and by the end of the year it looks like there will be at least three big titles aiming to provide a 'band in a box' experience to Joe Public. But what's with the sudden influx of these music games? Well, if the philosophers Nickleback are to be believed, it's because we all just wanna be big rock stars, live in hilltop houses and drive fifteen cars. Quite. I'm leaning towards the explanation that they're accessible, a lot of fun, and provide that performance buzz, not to mention the huge sense of accomplishment when you manage something that seemed impossible at first.

And despite Konami supplying the Japanese market with plenty of peripheral-based rhythm games over the years it has taken the Guitar Hero series to really bring things to the masses in the West. But for developer Harmonix, the people behind Guitar Heros 1 and 2, toy guitars were just the beginning: teaming up with MTV and EA they decided the next step was the band experience, and in Rock Band we get the first of those 'band in a box' games.

Rock 'n' Roll Star

Rock Band focusses on a typical four-piece band — vocals, lead guitar, bass and drums — and as such each of the tracks break down into those four parts, with the game providing solo career options for all but the bass. It's a strange omission as you can select to play the bass part through the solo Quickplay option, and given everything's there in the game ready to go, leaving it out feels incredibly unnecessary.

However, for vocals, drums and lead guitar the solo careers are there to be tackled and they play out in a fashion almost identical to the aforementioned Guitar Hero games: songs are unlocked in groups of about five or six, with each subsequent group ramping up the difficulty. Accessible at any point is the bonus song list, a set of tracks by lesser known (and seemingly Harmonix staff featuring) indie acts. Only one of these is open to begin with, but completing each opens up the next. Also available at any time are your downloaded tracks (from the ever expanding, and well priced, music store), which over here also includes the extra tracks that came with the European release.

There's advantages to tackling the solo modes too, aside from getting some good practise, as taking on the songs in solo mode is a great way to build up a bit of cash and unlock a number of items for your virtual rockstar. Unlike other games where you pick from a stock list of game characters to represent your onscreen rock-persona, in Rock Band you get to create your own. The system isn't quite as flexible as some of character creation tools (this isn't another EA game where you'll spend hours shaping the perfect nose), but there's a decent set of options for creating reasonably diverse characters. And once you have some money in your pockets there's all manner of clothes, hair styles, accessories, tattoos, face piant and instruments you can pay for to customise your rock star further. It's actually a rather fun distraction and can prove a reasonable time-sink in and of itself once you start exploring all the options available.

Next To You

But enough of this talk of individual, this is Rock Band, so it's not really about the solo game. Don't get me wrong, that area of the game is perfectly accomplished, but it's when you get two or more of you together that the game really starts to show it's star power.

Once there's more than one of you it's time to put a band together, and for a quick game or a random get together you'll be heading to the Band Quickplay option. This is also where you need to head if you want to play online with friends (though don't expect to be able to talk to them over Live as it doesn't seem possible to get the headsets to work, certainly not through the official instruments at any rate).

Whilst the game plays much as you'd expect from the solo modes, there are actually some interesting dynamics that come out of having multiple people playing. Each part has an overdrive mode, which is essentially the star power from Guitar Hero, but works a little differently. Instead of giving the individual a boost the overdrive adds a multiplier to the whole band, so if everyone uses theirs at the same time you can get a massive points boost. But that's not all, overdrive can also be used to rescue a fallen band member.

If someone messes up enough their part is dropped out of the song and they can but watch as the rest of the band plays on without them. However, the crowd won't put up with that for long so a rescue is required from another band member. It works on a "three-strikes and you're out" system, so you can only rescue the same person twice, meaning that if someone fails three times, or aren't rescued, then the band will fail the song and it's time to retry or give up. It's a great system that adds an interesting dynamic to proceedings, as well as a little tension at times, rewarding those who act as a group rather than as a bunch of individuals.

Epic

But the Band Quickplay only really scratches the surface of what's available for budding bands though; for the real action, and depth, you need to head to the World Band Tour mode. In this mode you set about creating a band, giving it a name (another reasonable time-sink), choosing a hometown and then setting the members. The person creating the band is set as the band leader the instrument they are using at the time will be the one that has to be present, whilst other band members and parts can be removed or added to alter the line-up at any time.

Once the band and line-up is sorted you head to your hometown for the first set of gigs you can play. As a start up act you can only play the smallest venue to begin with, which offers a few options such as a few individual songs, a two song "Make your own setlist" or a two song mystery setlist (two random songs). Playing well earns you stars, money and, importantly, fans. As you get more and more popular you unlock more venues and gigs to attempt, and will soon be invited to play a special gig that will earn you a van upon successful completion.

Earning the van allows you to travel to near-by venues opening up more options. Things continue in such a fashion and along the way you'll unlock a tour bus, then roadies, a private jet, a PR firm, until eventually you'll get a chance to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I believe once that's conquered you get to play the Endless Setlist, which is all the songs on the disc on one continuous set, though I'm inclined to think you have to be a bit mental to give that one a go.

It's not going to be all plain sailing, because if you can win fans you can also lose fans. If the band fails at any point during a set then you can kiss goodbye to some of your fans. This certainly adds an element of risk when deciding what to play next, especially when taking on the mystery set lists which can throw up almost anything at any time; I've certainly been stung on more than one occassion by something bastard-ish, like "Green Grass and High Tides", appearing out of nowhere during a mystery set. In fact, because the Euro-version includes a couple of French and German songs, the band vocalist can really be caught out by these random songs when they find themselves having to in another lanuguage (though this can be quite funny for the non-vocalist band members).

In an attempt to mix things up a little, from time to time you'll be asked if you want to perform gigs as a special event, or the venue owner will challenge you somehow. For example, you might be asked to perform the event as a charity gig which will net you some multiple of the fans you'd get normally, but earn you no money. Alternatively you might be challenged to get a 4 or 5 star average to win more fans or more money, sometimes with a risk of losing more fans than you would normally should you fail. This is nice idea, but in reality the amounts of money you win are so tame that it hardly seems to be any risk, unless there's the chance to lose lots of fans, but then you can always choose to not take the challenge.

The subject of fans brings me to one of my few annoyances with the game. For some reason there is a limit on the number of fans that can be achieved based on the lowest difficulty any band member is playing at. So if three of you are playing on Expert, but one person is on Easy, you'll only ever be able to get a handful of fans. This decision seems completely at odds with the accessible, inclusive and open 'jump in' nature of the game and is really annoying for those of us who haven't yet mastered all the parts, or who just want to have fun with it.

Another annoyance is that World Band Tour lacks online support, so you can't team up with remotely located friends and play in a band outside of the quickplay option. This seems like something of an oversight, but one I'd very much expect to be rectified in the recently announced Rock Band 2.

All things considered, World Band Tour is an excellent game mode and really does make for a lot of fun if you can get a bunch of people together with any sort of regularity. I've been staying with a friend during the week recently and we've passed quite a few evenings mucking about with our band "Love All Over Her Face", and we're currently working towards getting into the Hall of Fame. There's a lot of depth and variety to be had across the mode, and there's a lot of satisfaction to be had from pulling off a great set, especially when the crowd starts singing along.

Main Offender/Say It Isn't So

If only it were all sunshine and roses though. The one big issue that I haven't touched on yet is the price, since this can work out to be a very expensive bit of kit to invest in. The RRP on this bastard, due to the game and instrument pack being sold separately, works out at about £180, which is a fair whack of moolah. However, you shouldn't be paying RRP and a number of places are doing a bundle for £150. However, you also only get one guitar in the instrument pack, so you'll need to purchase a second (or more sensibly pick up a copy of Guitar Hero 3 with its excellent wireless Les Paul) if you want to have a full band, but then you're looking at another £50-60. We're talking a lot of cash here folks.

Alternatively, you could choose to just pick up the game on its own if you already have a Guitar Hero guitar or two lying around, which are thankfully compatible on the 360 version of the game (unfortunate PS3 owners have no such luck, not that the PS3 version has made it to European shores yet). You can then pick up the drums, probably one of the biggest draws for the game — and rightly so, since they're a riot to play — separately. That said, I found the cost of getting the drums and game wasn't too far off the £150 required for the whole set and, being the weak willed fool I am, went for that option.

As it turns out I'm very glad I have my Guitar Hero guitars (I have the GH2 Xplorer too) as the official Rock Band guitar is a bit pants. It looks cool, but feels rather flimsy and I've found that the strum-bar isn't 100% responsive, leading to the dropped notes that aren't your fault, which is incredibly annoying, especially in a game that demands and rewards accuracy.

Thankfully the game has proven to be so much fun that it has greatly overcome my annoyances over any little niggles with the game, the price and the delayed European release (the US have had the game since November last year and we only got it at the end of May, and then priced at over twice what our American cousins had to fork out, much to my chagrin). There's a lot of positives about the game and it is an absolute hoot to play, and I'd easily recommend picking it up solus over buying lazy expansion nonsense like the recent Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. However, it's far harder to recommend that you run out and lay down 150 smackers for the full experience. Any way you slice it, that really is a lot of money to shell out on a game and it's going to be hard for a lot of people to justify the expense, which is a shame because this is a title that deserves to be played by a lot of people.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I'll vouch for the crappiness of the RB Fender...I recently got a Les Paul and most of my scores have seen significant improvements. I could get used to the frets, but the strum bar is horrible and sometimes I had to turn the guitar upsidedown to get my rock out to register.

Was interested to see that Europe had a few songs of their own (they've since been released as DLC in the US...Muse is the only group I've heard of though)

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yeah, it's the strum bar that is the cause of any and all problems on the Rock Bar Fender. I think part of the issue is it seems to require a lot more travel before it registers the strum, which gets you out of time. For anyone who's never played on one of the Guitar Hero guitars I'm sure they'll be fine as they won't have any point of reference, but I would seriously recommend picking one up, especially the Les Paul.

The US actually got the extra European tracks as DLC before the game hit shelves over here (you got the DLC on the Tuesday, the game was released here on the Friday). There's some decent songs in the extras, so check them out, but the fact that the German and French tracks can appear in the mystery set lists is a bit arse.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by OmagnusPrime

Yeah, it's the strum bar that is the cause of any and all problems on the Rock Bar Fender.

Unfortunately, that's not true. I had a replacement sent to me for the strum mechanism only to find the next one simply would not activate rock power.

Turns out there's a lot of disgruntled consumers that ended up with one that either does not work, or only works when you shake the ornery out of it like a redheaded stepchild.

Select button works also, but what is the fun in that
you'd think they'd have worked out this technology by now

Since they've now changed the warranty to 3 months, and I didn't pursue another replacement (When I tried, their response was basically that I wasn't entitled to a functional guitar, because I had obviously just gotten one! A-Doi!), I'm stuck with mine unless I do the DIY fix, which is basically to readjust the ball bearing canisters with violence and electrical tape.

EA is not exactly inspiring confidence, new IPs not withstanding.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Can't say I'd heard of issues activating the overdrive, but it doesn't surprise me a great deal. Sprout's RB guitar that he had at the GFF Meet was utterly broken and you couldn't strum down (it just would not recognise the action).

Thankfully my RB Fender is only broken in as much as the overall design is flawed, though part of me worries that if people actually use it it'll end up broken in some way.

That is shit about them saying you couldn't have a replacement though, that's not on.

I was speaking idiomatically.