Rock Band Review

Rock Band Review: Instruments

Gather four friends to play one of four instruments. The kit comes with a drum set, a guitar, and a microphone for the singing portions. If you want a fourth friend to play the bass portion of the songs, then you need another guitar. One from the game Guitar Hero seems to work on the Xbox 360 version, but not on the PlayStation 3 version.

Each of the instruments packs its own fun. You might find your band fighting over who gets to play the drums, since they are the most fun things to play. The guitar sections resemble Guitar Hero sequences and have similar gameplay techniques like solos, and Overdrive mode. For the one who sings, there’s not much going on. The game scores the singer on pitch and length of note, but bigger scores are accumulated through the awesome thrashing and pounding of the other players.

The guitars and drums have the ability to freestyle at the end and scores are significantly increased if they work well together. You can play a ‘solo’ type game while in the band, but it is a team effort and if you want to get those Epic scores, you need to be a team player. Overdrive allows the band to pop out ridiculous scores. Singly, when overdrive is activated, players can get 2x multipliers. As each player turns on overdrive, you can get 4x, 6x, and the max, 8x, when everyone is in overdrive mode.

Sometimes, a player may fall behind, or be off, or just plain stinking. Overdrive mode can also be used to save that player. If a drummer is missing a lot of hits and is holding back the other team, someone with some overdrive energy can help bring that drummer back. This is useful when you go into a track knowing that a player has a tough time during certain parts of the song.

Songs of Rock Band

At the time of this Rock Band review, there are 45 songs initially available, with 13 more to unlock. Not a bad number to start with, but during certain modes, like Band World Tour, you will annoyingly repeat songs. In order to keep the song list fresh, you can download song packs at 3 songs for $5.49 or $1.99 for each song.

Sample Song List

• Ballroom Blitz – Sweet
• Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden
• Cherub Rock – Smashing Pumpkins
• Creep – Radiohead
• Enter Sandman – Metallica
• The Hand that Feeds – Nine Inch Nails
• Sabotage – Beastie Boys
• Wanted Dead or Alive – Bon Jovi

The bonus songs seem to include those groups that just haven’t hit commercial success, except in video games. Songs by Freezepop and Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives (like Guitar Hero) are in the game. Song packs are going to include Metallica, The Who, and Nirvana.

Team Play

The core of Rock Band is team play. You have to play as a band. There are solo modes in Rock Band, which pretty much give you practice you need in order to play the team modes, like Career and Band World Tour. You need at least two players in the non-solo modes. The computer A.I. will fill any open spots so you can complete the band experience.

Just a Good Ole Party Game

If you like Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution, then you’ll have no problem enjoying this game. While the difficulty is just a little easier than either of the above games, playing the team modes is where you’ll have the most fun. You’ll need your entire band to make it through the hardest levels and you need to make sure they are well practiced because you don’t want to have the band split up, do you? The only thing that would have made Rock Band the ultimate party game is the addition of a dance mode. Yeah, Britney Spears look out.