Token Female Gamer

Sit up Music industry and listen, for your future has just been redefined, again. Interactive music is by far the most interesting and innovative direction music has taken since the record player. This it the time to get involved, help not hinder. Your industry needs this boost of fresh energy that this venue is providing. If handled in an intelligent manner it could be quite a boon.

Rock Band developers meet iTunes. This is a match made in heaven and would blow the socks off of everyone on the planet. Please make it happen.

Another thing, could you please have more song expansions that focus on different genres? I have so many friends that would kill for a best of 80s or best of 90s. Throw us ladies a bone please.

The Beatles expansion is a good start. =)

My Impressions

Rhythm computer games have been a fan favorite of mine for a long time. PaRappa the Rapper, Dance Dance Revolution, and Taiko Drum Master just to name a few.

Then along came Guitar Hero and a new age of guitar solos and hair band music took over the genre. The game was aptly named since it clearly glorified the guitar with its choice of music and style – style and music that I was extremely happy to see go the way of the Dodo back in the 80s. I found the whole experience extremely repugnant.

Thus passed Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2 without much of a blip in my usually enthusiastic rhythm game world.

Rock Band was promptly lumped into the same category. I assumed it was Guitar Hero with way more stuff. It too was fast tracked onto the ignore list and passed without much of a blip.

After Rock Band Two came out we were invited over to a friends house for a party, which turned into a Rock Band party (most of them do now a days). I did my best to avoid the whole scene, until I heard one of my favorite songs, Radiohead’s Creep.

Shocked, I went to watch. Rock Band had a song that I knew and LIKED!

It was all over for me. We got Rock Band 2 that night.

Side note: Creep actually has some really mean guitar sections. =)

The Undead Muppets
Members:
Piggy – vocals and drums (me)
Beeker – guitar, drums, vocals (husband)

Members that play with us when they are in town (friends):
Animal – drums!!
Janice – guitar and vocals
Dr. Teeth – guitar

Review

Release date: Oct 19 2008
Website: http://www.rockband.com/

Developer: Harmonix
Platform I play on: PlayStation 3

Game Summery

Play lead guitar, bass, drums, or sing. Rock out with friends and enjoy pretending to be a rock band. Tour the country in your bus and then the world in your airplane! Don’t forget to update your wardrobe and tattoos as you become more famous!

Game play

The game play itself is fairly standard rhythm game style. There is a moving track for each player that shows which note to play when it reaches the “play it now” bar.

Rock Band 2 is played with instruments that come bundled with it. (Side note: it only comes with drums, microphone and one guitar. So if you want four people to play, you have to purchase an extra guitar.)

Drums and Singing are pretty much like you would expect. Guitar and base are just like Guitar Hero. (If you haven’t played Guitar Hero, basically the neck of the guitar has five color buttons that you hold down in conjunction with the strum button to register a sound.)

Various modes let you practice instruments or just play a quick song here and there, but to have access to all the items and songs you have to play through the tour, which is basically a large variety of song sets. Each song or set you play in this mode give you stars based on how well you played. The more stars you garner the more things get unlocked.

As you play, your chosen avatar gets to perform in the background. Different cities and venues will have different stage set ups. It is quite engaging to watch the performances, but that’s an activity that is best left for when you are not a participant.

World and Story

Form a Rock Band and tour the world! Play in famous cities like Paris, New York, Tokyo, and Istanbul. Become infamous, hire and fire staff, build up your musical skill, and perfect the art of performing.

Graphics

The look of this game is very similar to its previous incarnations. The interface really sets the mood for the whole event by using tattoo patterns that just barely animate as the background.

The character art reminds me of a friendly cartoon version of Iggy Pop with some cuddlier Kiss flavor thrown in and maybe a dash of someone with loads of tattoos like Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

When you create your avatar, face, hair, and color choices are available for customization. As you become more famous and make more money you can buy clothes and accessories for your character as well as piercing and tattoos. The whole system is very customizable; it just takes a bit of time. For in-depth body modification I suggest waiting until you have alone time.

The game also lets you customize your movement and demeanor. The choices come in the form of music style – Punk, Goth, Rock. These determine how your avatar animates and poses.

Replay ability

There is a ton of playtime built into the game – 84 songs with four levels of difficulty (easy, medium, hard, expert). That is over three hours of continuous music (average 3 minute song length). But replaying songs is a large part of how you build up skill (even real rock bands need to practice).

So lots of actual content coupled with almost infinite amount of replay ability makes for a solid chunk of game. And if you get bored with those 84 tracks you can download the Rock Band one songs or purchase new songs off the Rock Band Network.

Here is a complete list of rock band songs available.

Multiplayer

Play with up to three other friends, or play online head to head.

Rocking with a whole band is what makes this game fabulous. Sharing the triumphs, hamming up performances, garnering more fans as a group makes the experience that much better.

Things that bothered me

-My eyes!
After watching a rapidly moving bar on the screen for a while my eyes insist that now the whole world is in motion. It feels like loosing my land legs, only it’s my eyes. It doesn’t help that the whole game interface has very subtle animations.

-It would help to have a listening station.
Even though there are quite a few songs that I know, many of them I have never heard before, much less know the lyrics.

When playing, the melody is often difficult to follow and the lyrics are broken up into syllables. There is a practice option for singing, but it would be more helpful if I could practice by listen to the music and reading the lyrics in plain English.

-Song list is limited.
I understand that there are only so many people working on this and they can only do so much. That being said, I wish there were more songs that I liked. It is clear that they tried to be as cross genre as possible. This makes good strategic sense, but for me personally it means that I enjoy probably a fourth of the songs that are available.

It would be more then awesome if I could link my iTunes playlist and play using a selection of my favorite songs.

Time played

Rock Band is a time warp. We start and five sets later four hours have passed by. I am fairly sure we have topped thirty hours, just not by how much.

Game finished

We have not quite unlocked all the cities, though we have unlocked all the songs and the bus and airplane. Anyway we are far from finished since it’s really about having a good time playing with friends rather then unlocking all the songs.

Rating

Mood Progression

Last Thoughts

My husband likes to rock out with his cock out! (His quote! He dared me. )

Tags: cooperative, friends, music, ps3, rhythm, vitual-life

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Console Games, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.