In 2005, a little-known developer out of Boston brought out a game that seemed gimmicky, contrived, and doomed to failure. That game went on to spawn three sequels across four platforms and legions of metal-headed fans who all eagerly awaited word of the next Guitar Hero game in much the same breathless tones they reserve for the announcement of Led Zeppelin tickets. Of course, the great leaps forward that Harmonix are now known for should come as no surprise, really; Guitar Hero was, after all, the natural progression of music games after their 2002 and 2003 hits Frequency and Amplitude. So after all this success making mad axemen and six-string heroines out of gamers the world over, what could they possibly do to top themselves?
In a word: This.
Rock Band takes the basic formula of Guitar Hero II's cooperative multiplayer and, for lack of a more accurate or poetic phrase, cranks it to eleven. No, I take that back; the cliche is still not adequate enough to describe the advancement of Rock Band over GH. Solo players can take on campaigns in one of three instruments, while a group can play four (bass is not available as a solo tour for some strange reason) in an all-new World Tour mode. Harmonix has had some amount of experience with other styles of music games as well, having helmed the Karaoke Revolution series for Konami for quite some time. And, naturally, having pioneered the 'new controller' genre of games, it's actually expected that a new instrument - in this case, drums - would be offered at some point. Now, imagine getting all of those on the same disc. Whereas before you'd be looking at three or even four games, Rock Band is your one-stop shop for everything you need to start the next KISS. Aside from, of course, two or three other people. The Special Edition package-- currently the only one available-- includes the Fender Stratocaster controller, the custom drum pads and moderately high-quality sticks, and a fairly standard-issue Logitech USB microphone.
One of the big draws to the game is the new drum set controller. Consisting of four pads about the size of dinner plates arranged in a semicircle pattern with a foot pedal, the drum controller is lightweight but sturdy. It is as intuitive as the guitar controller is. More so, in fact, in that the action used is completely analogous to playing the actual drums. Of course, I certainly couldn't let my year and a half of percussion section in elementary school speak as an expert to this, so I called up a drummer buddy of mine and had him put the skins to the test. The assessment went well; he made some note of the excessive tension on the foot pedal and the static arrangement of the pads, but overall he was impressed. What surprised both of us was that he had trouble with the Hard note charts, but he remarked that the sequences were very analogous to how the percussion tracks on the songs would actually be played.
The gameplay is, largely, unchanged from the Guitar Hero or Karaoke Revolution games, but expanded a bit. Notes still descend toward the player along tracks, though they are now bar-shaped (as in Beatmania) as opposed to the round modules seen in Guitar Hero and Frequency/Amplitude. For the instrument-based modes, players must press buttons on the controller in time with the notes as they reach a target area; greater accuracy confers larger score increases, while missing enough notes in a row will end the song in failure. When vocalizing, the player must match his or her pitch to an on-screen general range; the player's range is automatically adjusted so that, for example, a bass or baritone-voiced player will have no trouble with even the highest-pitched strains of Freezepop (no pitch-correction is done, however, so I would imagine that the members of N'Sync would suck, and they wouldn't be too good at the game, either). Regardless of your preferred music making method, accurately hitting specific sections of notes will grant you a portion of Star Power, which can be activated to increase the player's score multiplier. Guitar and bass players can activate it on demand, while drummers and vocalists must wait for the game to present them with the option of activating the power; a notable upgrade over Guitar Hero is that Star Power can be self-sustaining, in that players can refill their Star Power meter while the power is in effect, increasing their total time in the powered mode. If it ain't broke, don't fix it - though hammer-ons and pull-offs are handled much more accurately and don't feel sloppy or too difficult. The interface during performances is stripped down, as well, with everything being far more minimalist in order to highlight the impressive camera-work for the backgrounds. The camera work emphasizes making the performance look like a live concert reel, or a highly stylized music video from the early days of the format; think those old performances from Musik Laden that get trotted out on VH1 Classic every once in a while for established rockers. While some new features are greatly appreciated-- the ability to know your star rating for the performance in real-time, for example-- they're all unobtrusive and very subtle. Overall, if you've played Guitar Hero or Karaoke Revolution, you know how to play Rock Band.
That's not to say this is a 'been there, done that, got vomit on the t-shirt' experience by any stretch of the imagination. The multiplayer World Tour mode is a huge step forward, almost completely eschewing the limited battle multiplayer modes of Guitar Hero games past. Rather than competing, Rock Band sets two to four players on a cooperative journey throughout the dozen or so cities featured in the game. A band starts out in a home city and progresses through the venues offered by that city, which are presented as a list of gigs. Gigs range from single-song performances to long-haul multi-track playlists, oftentimes themed but occasionally randomized. Playing in World Tour mode offers different swag, as well as more money and a new series of achievements (for Xbox 360 players). Band World Tour is offline-only, though the traditional battle modes are playable online as well as a band quickplay mode if you want to jam with friends or random note-slingers.
Players have a larger amount of choice in their character avatars over the customizations offered in the Karaoke Revolution series, and it's leaps and bounds over the static characters offered by Guitar Hero. By completing gigs in Solo Tour or Band World Tour, player avatars earn money which can be spent in the in-game shop. Unlike Guitar Hero, players can replay any song for cash at any time, though 'freebie' items like promotional t-shirts are only available the first time the song is completed. While the avatars in this game are just about as important as the background videos in a Dance Dance Revolution title, they are impressively rendered and work as a new and interesting way to provide some sense of identity on-line while rocking out with other players. For being largely a non-issue, the graphics have had just as much care put into them as every other aspect of Rock Band, with clothing designers having substantial input into the character model art direction; this serves to add to the overall feel, because let's be honest: when you're a big huge celebrity, you're probably not going to want to schlep around in the same t-shirt and jeans you partied in for the last ten years.
Setting aside the fantastic character models, awe-inspiring venues (I so want to see the club that inspired the venue with the televisions), and challenging but fair note charts, it is all about the music. Partnering with EA may have sounded like a deal with the devil to naysayers at the beginning, but to be brutally honest, Ol' Scratch has the scratch needed to get the master recordings of the majority of the disc's impressive playlist. The game offers over seventy tracks on the disc, and downloadable content-- provided weekly-- looks to expand that to an unprecedented degree. Each and every one of the master tracks are reproduced to the same sound as the original discs; only a handful of tracks on the disc are covers, and that brings with it the usual mixed batch of good and bad. The singer on "Ballroom Blitz" just sounds wrong, certainly nothing like Brian Connolly; this same problem is even more evident on the cover of "Train Kept A-Rollin'", where the singer is either not able to match Steven Tyler's voice or just plain not trying. That said, "Green Grass and High Tides" is relatively obscure enough that I wouldn't have known it was a cover (and is sung well enough anyway that I largely don't care), and I think "Paranoid" is actually improved by not having Ozzy singing. More than that, I am floored that it took this long to get rock staples like "Blitzkrieg Bop", "Detroit Rock City", and "Don't Fear the Reaper" in a music game. Some of the current rock tracks, like "Here It Goes Again" and "Dani California" are also good fits, though I will have to ask why Weezer was even considered for this or any game and if the person responsible has been shot yet.
If it sounds like I'm gushing far too much about the game, it's because this one really, really deserves it. It's not all guns and roses, though (whoops, wrong game). Early runs of the special-edition boxes had severe hardware issues, and limited supply, though by the time you read this, both problems should be largely cleared up. My drums had a bad pad out of the box; a free replacement later, the pads work but the d-pad is stiff and unresponsive (but largely unnecessary outside of menu navigation). Vocals remain a tricky thing to balance; the majority of the difficulty comes from a narrowing of what's considered "close enough", and for untrained or shower singers, progressing beyond Easy will likely be murderous. The online play has a couple of hiccups as well. During play on Xbox Live or the Playstation Network, the player performing lead vocals will not have his or her voice transmitted to the other players due to lag issues possibly throwing off the beat of the rest of the band. (Imagine that bit during "Hide Away, Folk Family" where John's voice is off-tempo and has freaky pauses-- that's what would happen.) That's an understandable omission, but the absence of an online Band World Tour option is a very, very curious choice. We're coming to an era where online cooperative play is starting to be expected, and with the abundance of players looking to get their rock on at off-hours, it seems like such an obvious thing to have; its absence is sorely felt, though the Band Quickplay option is still a good, viable option for players looking for some quick jam sessions.
There is just no way around it. Rock Band is, to date, the single best music game on the market, and not merely because it's the four best instrument simulation games available, either. The package brings with it the hardware, the music, and the smooth gameplay and reward structure needed to rock the face off of all contenders for the throne. Still, though, as much as Rock Band blew me away harder than the first chords of "Foreplay/Long Time" ever did, I look at the game with a strange mixture of awe and fear. Awe in that we, the gaming public, could come this close to the experience of being an actual rock star while remaining mostly devoid of actual musical talent beyond rhythm. And fear-- fear of what Harmonix could possibly do to top this.
