For those about to Rock.....We salute you (Rock Band (Xbox 360))

Member Name: docpov

Product:	Rock Band (Xbox 360)
Date:	07/09/08 (193 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great fun, good longevity

Disadvantages: Expensive

I bet a many of you have stood in front of your bedroom mirror playing the air guitar, imagining you were rocking in front of an adoring crowd, come on own up I can see you nodding from here.
Rock Band gives you the chance to take that air guitar one giant step further, or the air drums if you prefer.
Interested? Read on...

The general premise of the game is a simple one, pick up the instruments and rock out.
There is, however a great deal more to this game by Harmonix than that.
If you have played guitar heroes, then you will have some idea of what the game is about, if you are new to the genre, then I will endeavour to enlighten you.
It could take a while, simple the idea is, simple explaining it in print isn't.

For this game you will need....

To play Rockband you will need the game disc, a guitar controller (to play bass as well you will need to purchase another guitar controller), a drum controller and a microphone as well as, of course an X box (Will be available on other platforms shortly.) There is a slightly tricky bit for potential players; the game disc doesn't come with the instrument pack. More on that later.
So you have plugged all your instruments into the USB connecter and inserted the game disc so you are now ready to rock.
Well nearly, first you will need to make yourself a character to help through a music career. Once that is done you can play.

For those about to rock...

How you begin is up to you. If you happen to be on your own or just have no mates you can embark on a solo career, playing any one of the instruments or singing.
If you do have some mates you can start a band on local multiplayer. This band can comprise any combination of the instruments from any two to all four.
Both single player and band options take you on a tour around the world, playing different venues and different song sets until you finally get to the grand finale which is a marathon session comprising all the games 58 songs. You are going to have to allow yourself a lot of playing time for that one as there is no save option halfway through the gig. Throughout the tour you earn money and gain (or lose) fans, the more fans you have the bigger venues you can play. If you fail a song or abandon a gig you will lose fans.
You fail a song by failing to hit a percentage of the notes. All songs are scored on a percentage basis and you can see statistics of how you did on each part of a song. There is a bonus system. Every so often there is a set of white notes, hit them perfectly and you get a bonus that doubles your current multiplier. Very useful for saving yourself as well if you are in danger of failing the song. In the multiplayer game you can use your bonus to save another band member who might have had trouble and failed the song by using your bonus to bring him back into the song.

Time to play.

To play a song you have to hit notes that appear on a runway on the screen. The coloured bars scroll down the screen in time with the music and it is up to you to strum the guitar and press the matching coloured button on the neck of the guitar. If you happen to be playing the drums then the same applies but you have to hit the matching coloured drum and press the foot pedal in time with the beat. If you are the budding vocalist you have to sing at the correct time and tone. Your words and pitch scroll across the top of the screen. This bit is similar to Singstar.
The runway is overlaid on a backdrop of your character/characters playing a gig, giving the whole thing a lot more atmosphere. This is more for any spectators though I feel, because if you are playing you will need to concentrate on what you are doing.

That is the general premise of the gameplay. There are four difficulty levels starting with easy, which for the guitar means that you play red, green and yellow notes that come slowly down the screen.
Medium introduces the blue button and is a little quicker and has more notes to hit.
Hard adds the orange button and again is faster and has more notes.
Expert is just manic, full speed with more chords (hitting two or three colours at the same time) than the earlier levels and notes left right and centre, coming at you in an endless stream.
The same applies to the bass although on most songs bass is slightly easier than the guitar.
For drums you start off with all four colours and the foot pedal, however the speed is fairly slow and the foot pedal is few and far between. Going up through the levels adds pace and notes and more foot pedal. I think getting the rhythm and coordinating your hands and feet is the hardest bit of playing the drums.
When you start playing you only have a few songs to conquer. As you beat songs you unlock more as well as unlocking new venues and being rewarded with new things you can buy at the music store, such as new guitars or clothes for your characters.

Added to that are other game modes such as quickplay where you can choose the song you want to play and tug of war where you play a song against someone else, the winner being the one who hits the most notes.

To unlock songs, the fastest way is to play through the song sets on single player using medium mode, once beaten you can play the songs on quickplay or any of the multiplayer modes.

Practice makes perfect.

There is also a tutorial mode to help you when you first start and a practice mode to help you nail that tricky solo. This is very helpful if you are stuck on a certain song or part of a song as you can slow down the speed to let you get the fingering right and then gradually increase the speed until you can do it on full speed.
Trust me there are going to be bits that you think you will never master. On some of the harder songs some of the solos are just manic.


Online.

The internet allows you to form bands across the world. Join with other bands or get musicians for yours.
There is an online store from where you can buy new songs. At the moment new songs are being added weekly.
You can set up an Xbox live online account (if you don't already have one) and buy credits with which you can buy new songs. They will cost you either eighty or one hundred and sixty credits per song or you can buy album or song set packs. It isn't cheap, works out at £1.37 per song for a 160 credit song, but having an ever increasing list of songs available greatly enhances the games longevity.

The music.

I am sure from the title of the game you will have surmised that most of the music is from the Rock genre. I will add a full track listing to the bottom of this review.
The range of material is quite wide and with downloadable songs it is getting wider all the time. At the time of writing there are close to 200 songs available for download from acts as diverse as Oasis, Duran Duran, Devo, Judas Priest, Rush, The B52's, The Police and Avenged Sevenfold to name but a few. This total will continue to grow as more and more songs and acts are added.

Purchasing.

The downside, yes there had to be one.
Buying Rock Band is not a cheap exercise. The pricing is actually outrageous. The fact that you have to buy the game disc and the instrument pack separately is ridiculous as neither is any good without the other.
Add that to the fact that we have to pay nearly double what it cost in America is almost criminal.
At time of writing Amazon were selling the game for £39.98 and the instrument pack for £99.98. That is a total of £140 for the whole thing. However that is a lot cheaper than the full RRC and I think with Rock Band 2 on the horizon the price will continue to drop a little.

Conclusion.

I love this game, it is great fun played as a band. We spend hours at it and have become gradually better at it.
Practice makes perfect, they say and in the case 9of this game that saying is certainly true. The solo option is a quick way to unlock all the songs and it is also a great way to practice and become the star of your band.
It is a great party game and can be enjoyed by a very wide range both of age and sex.
Even my six year old has a go, maybe the guitar is a bit much for her little fingers yet but she enjoys the singing and has a go at bashing the drums.

It is the pricing that has forced me to drop my rating by a star. If the game came with the instruments I would wholeheartedly award this fantastic game the full five stars.

I should mention that there have been grumblings on the internet about the fragility of the instruments, especially the foot pedal on the drums. So far mine are all still in one piece so hopefully that won't be an issue for me or you, the perspective purchaser.

The rock band songs (in no particular order)
* Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter"
* Aerosmith "Train Kept a Rollin'"
* The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again"
* Boston "Foreplay/Long Time"
* Mountain "Mississippi Queen"
* The Police "Next to You"
* David Bowie "Suffragette City"
* Black Sabbath "Paranoid"
* Deep Purple "Highway Star"
* KISS "Detroit Rock City"
* Molly Hatchet "Flirtin' With Disaster"
* The Outlaws "Green Grass & High Tides"
* Sweet "Ballroom Blitz"
* Rush "Tom Sawyer"
* Blue Oyster Cult "Don't Fear the Reaper"
* Bon Jovi "Wanted Dead or Alive"
* The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
* Faith No More "Epic"
* Pixies "Wave of Mutilation"
* R.E.M. "Orange Crush"
* Iron Maiden "Run to the Hills"
* Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly"
* Metallica "Enter Sandman"
* Nirvana "In Bloom"
* Stone Temple Pilots "Vasoline"
* Weezer "Say It Ain't So"
* Smashing Pumpkins "Cherub Rock"
* Radiohead "Creep"
* Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
* Hole "Celebrity Skin"
* Garbage "I Think I'm Paranoid"
* Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun"
* The Hives "Main Offender"
* Queens of the Stone Age "Go With the Flow"
* The Strokes "Reptilia"
* Jet "Are You Gonna Be My Girl"
* OK Go "Here It Goes Again"
* The Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop"
* Nine Inch Nails "The Hand That Feeds"
* Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Maps"
* Red Hot Chili Peppers "Dani California"
* Fallout Boy "Dead on Arrival"
* The Killers "When You Were Young"
* New Pornographers "Electric Version"
* Bang Camaro "Pleasure (Pleasure)"
* Crooked X "Nightmare"
* Death of the Cool "Can't Let Go"
* Flyleaf "I'm So Sick"
* Freezepop "Brainpower"
* Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives "I Get By"
* The Acro-Bats "Day Late, Dollar Short"
* The Konks "29 Fingers"
* The Mother Hips "Time We Had"
* Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld"
* Tribe "Outside"
* Vagiant "Seven"
* Coheed & Cambria "Welcome Home"
* Anarchy Club "Blood Doll"

The European version also includes the following tracks.

* Blur - "Beetlebum"
* Die Toten Hosen - "Hier Kommt Alex"
* H-BlockX - "Countdown To Insanity"
* Juli - "Perfekte Welle"
* Pleymo - "New Wave"
* Tokio Hotel - "Monsoon"
* Muse - "Hysteria"
* Oasis - "Rock N Roll Star"
* Les Wampas - "Manu Chao

Rock on.

©Docpov Sept 2008

Summary: Great fun to play on your own, with a group of friends or online. Find the musician within you.