Rock Band

(untitled review)

Rock Band is the game that many Guitar Hero players (if I count everyone that I know who plays Guitar Hero) have been waiting what seems like decades for.

Rock Band is the creation of Harmonix who originally created the Guitar Hero games (1 and 2) before they decided to go and "do there own thing" while EA gave Guitar Hero over to Neversoft Games. Being that Harmonix where I brainpower behind Guitar Hero, Rock Band is in no way a rip off of Guitar Hero as many ignorant people think.

Instead of Harmonix simply remaking Guitar Hero again, they decided to improve upon it by adding drums and vocals to the list of playable instruments, and that alone gives Rock Band the upper hand over Guitar Hero.

The style of Rock Band's notes is completely different to that of the note style of Guitar Hero. Rock Band uses rectangular notes that line up a lot nicer than the bloated circles of Guitar Hero. The "Hammer-On" and "Pull-Off" notes for Rock Band are slightly smaller than the normal notes, and are easily recognizable once you know that they should be there.

There is a character creation in Rock Band that allows you to spend the money that you've made from playing gigs on clothing and hair styles. There is such a vast amount of stuff, that you'll never end up sticking with the same style and constantly switch between outfit styles (my guitarist currently wearing a cowboy costume).

The Rock Band Guitar is designed around a "Fender Stratocaster" and has an extra set of fret buttons at the bottom of the neck of the guitar. These "Solo Buttons" are used when the guitarist enters a solo (indicated when the fret board goes blue) and allow the guitarist to "Hammer-On" every single note that comes at him/her. The only problem with these extra buttons is that they are ridiculously far from the other set of buttons, so in case you want to play the entire song on the smaller "Solo Buttons" you are by far better off just using the normal Fret Buttons. The Strum Bar on this guitar makes no noise at all compared to it's Guitar Hero counterpart and the Fret Buttons also feel nice to slide on rather that as though you're grating your hands on a blunt cheese grater.

The Drums are the most anticipated part of Rock Band, being able to play the dumbs to your favorite songs appealed to most players more than it should have, and Harmonix have done extremely well to get a decent set of drums designed for their game. Although a little loud when hit, the drums are sturdy and surprisingly easy to assemble, the real drum sticks that you get free with kit include the "Rock Band" logo and drum logo on them just to let you know that you are using the official drum sticks of Rock Band. The Bass Pedal that you use to hit the straight orange notes is easy to use but can sometimes double hit or not register, although that might be out of my friends hitting the thing to damn hard.

Singing I am still undecided about. Although it's fun to sing the proper lyrics to Creep ("F**king" in stead of "Very") or to mess about hitting the mic on your head in the sections when you have to hit tambourine or cowbell notes, it can't be taken seriously. I couldn't see myself being serious with that mic (like I am serious when I play the guitar) but I guess someone's going to have to sing for the band, because we can't let the computer do it, can we?

The music selection is vast and it has a great range of styles. From Radiohead to R.E.M, there's enough choice here for anyone to come away satisfied with what they played. Even some great tracks like "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" By "Jet", "Tom Sawyer" by "Rush" and "The Hand that Feeds" by "Nine Inch Nails", the selection is vast and there is a great difference in challenge across the board.

In conclusion, Rock Band is a great game and it deserves all the praise it gets, no matter the small faults that may bring it down from perfect, it's still one of the best games I've played for a long time, and it's awesome when you and three of your buddies are rocking out to "Foreplay/Longtime" by "Boston".