Rock Band

Adding to an already stellar fall for gaming, MTV Studios and Harmonix take their partnership and release Rock Band for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Being their first project away from their Guitar Hero partner Red Octane, Rock Band takes an already impressive gameplay style and builds upon the experience. You will find yourself rocking out like never before, as you now have a drum kit and microphone in your arsenal. Guitar Hero used to be the ultimate rock experience, but now, you can start a band and try to become the biggest sensation in the country.

While the Guitar Hero presentation is memorable, Rock Band takes it to the next level. Keeping the same form of gameplay, they use a modified interface with four sections for each instrument at your disposal. The guitar parts have not changed, but the drum set has four regular buttons with a flying orange bar for the bass drum. The microphone uses a pitch meter and has the lyrics right underneath like a karaoke machine would. Using many types of video effects, the stage looks alive. Band members are more into their performances than in Guitar Hero. The fans are even interactive with your performance. Depending on how you play, you will see them react accordingly.

If you have played through Guitar Hero, nothing really has changed. You still have the same five fret buttons and titling the guitar when you gain enough power will activate your star power (which is called overdrive in Rock Band). The only difference in Rock Band's play style is the Guitar Solo portion and Bass Groove. These two features play out according to which guitar you are playing and are maximized by using the Guitar shipped with Rock Band. The Rock Band guitar has a switch on it that changes the pitch of your guitar to five different sounds, adding your own flair to your solo. You really only get one solo with Guitar though, so this feature is really only meant for Bass players. In addition, the notes in Rock Band are significantly easier than in Guitar hero. I normally play on the Hard difficulty of Guitar Hero, but I can play Expert on Rock band with no trouble at all.

If anyone has played Singstar at all, Rock Band's microphone portion plays out similarly to how Singstar works. The only difference is that Rock Band is in no way nearly as advanced as Singstar's pitch meter is. You really do not even have to sing in Rock Band, but rather just tap the mic on your thigh depending on the pitch of the song. But that really is not fun at all, obviously. The singing could become either very amusing for parties, or something you may never want to use at all if you don't feel like embarrassing yourself in front of friends.

The biggest and best addition you will buy this game for is the drum set. If it was not for this, Rock Band would be worthless to you. The drum kit you receive in the Rock Band bundle is about 75% the size of a real drum set, giving you four pads and a kick drum. You also will be using real drum sticks on your pads for the ultimate feel. The pads are covered in rubber and can take a real beating without giving in. I have noticed a Best Buy demo have a drum pad broken, but people usually are gentler with their own stuff. The only issue with the drum kit may lie in the kick pedal. The kick pedal is surprisingly thin and has very little support. I could see a lot of gamers who get really into a session possibly step right through the pedal if they pressed it really hard, especially on higher difficulties when you may find yourself hitting the bass pedal every other note.

The difficulty of the drum feature ranges just like with the guitar. Many gamers who have never played drums before are recommended to play on Easy first. You may think it is Easy, but doing three things at once (two sticks and a kick pedal) can really boggle down your brain. Once you get up to Expert, you will basically be playing the real notes of the songs. While Guitar Hero can not teach you how to play guitar, the drum set can teach you how to play the drums. Learning the rhythm of drums is 90% of learning the instrument. Putting together all the pieces is the rest. This will be your favorite part of Rock Band without a doubt.

The single player career in Rock Band plays very similar to Guitar Hero, going down a list playing all the songs in the game. But where Rock Band really shines is in the multiplayer career known as Band World Tour. Here, you can create a band from the members in it. Your name will even show up on stage with you depending the venue you play at. Instead of playing down a list of songs however, you will be invited to tour different cities depending on where your hometown is. As you perform, you will gain fans based on how well you do and the size of the venue. The bigger venue you have, the more fans you can gain. Failing or quitting on a song will result in you losing fans, however. As you advance, you will gain things such as a van, tour bus, plane, and roadies which allow you to travel to different cities across the world and play at larger venues. You really do not have much of a choice as to what you will be playing. There are different sets you will play that could be one song, a few songs picked at random, or a set picked by you.

The online functionality of Rock Band allows for leader boards just like Guitar Hero, but also keeps track of the bands in Band World Tour to see who has the most fans in the world. Online you can also join up with your friends and rock out online in Band World Tour, or challenge them head to head. What Rock Band does lack however is a Band vs Band mode. I personally believe you could have a battle of the bands where each band plays the same song and the band with the most points wins. They would not be able to talk to each other while they play, but they would be able to talk in a lobby before and after to pick songs, talk trash, etc. But hey, that's what Rock Band 2 is for.

There are a few shortfalls to Rock Band which really detract from the whole experience. When compared to Guitar Hero, there really are not a lot of songs to play. There are only 45 songs out of the box, meaning you will be playing a lot of the same songs over and over again in band world tour, and there is nothing you can do about it. Also, you really do need at least two people to really enjoy Rock Band's full functionality. There will be a lot of content released for Rock Band each week though, and downloading these songs will allow them to be added to Band World Tour. Since it never really ends, this freshens up the limited playlist. Yet, when you spring $170 for a game, you should expect a little more music right away rather than spend even more to keep the game from getting boring. If you are willing to shell out the money and have a group of friends to play with, then Rock Band should definitely be on your holiday shopping list this season. If you are going to play by yourself or buy the game separately without the drums, then you really are missing out on the biggest addition to the genre.