Rock Band - First Impressions
Author: Vince | Date: May 30, 2008
So it has been 7 whole days since us Europeans, myself included, got our hands on Rock Band, and for me it’s been 7 days of rocking out. So I’m going to give you my initial impressions…
The first thing I noticed was how easy it was compared to Guitar Hero, myself and Mr Geekboy can already five star most songs in expert co-op with the bass and guitar, but the note charts do seem to fit more with the music as appose to GH’s random widdles. The game also has a far better line up of songs (to me anyway) than any of the GH games, with great tunes such as ‘The Hand That Feeds‘, ‘Enter Sandman‘, ‘Suffragette City‘, ‘Go With the Flow‘ and of course ‘Here Comes Alice‘, and that’s not even getting into the DLC. Which brings me on to my next point… DLC… When RB hit our shores the entire back catalog of downloadable songs, with even more gems like ‘Message in a Bottle‘, ‘Still Alive‘ and ‘Buddy Holly‘, granted they are not free (apart from ‘Still Alive’), but the pricing seems more reasonable then GH and you have the option to buy single songs, so you don’t have to buy 2 songs that suck in order to get the good one.
Next up ‘the tools of rock’, or the instruments as most people call them. The guitar is far nicer than either the GH3 Les Paul or the GH2 Xplorer, it weighs virtually nothing, the neck is slightly longer and therefore more comfortable for people who aren’t kids or midgets to play, it has an awesome effects switch which changes the effect that is activated in ‘overdrive’ (Rock Band’s answer to ‘Star Power’) between flanger, wah wah, echo, chorus and off. The strum bar is nearly silent, so no more clicky clacky while your playing and you have a full size whammy bar at your disposal, which has a far looser and smoother action than the GH controllers. The drums are excellent, nicely spaced and great fun to play… Other than that they really are just drum pads, although I finally realised yesterday that colours for the drums are in a different order than the guitars. As for the microphone, well it’s just a mic, and does everything a mic should (once we realised that you need to plug a controller in for it to work). In fact you can even use the headset microphones that come with your Xbox if your feeling tight.
The thing that really leave Guitar Hero dead in the water though is Rock Band’s multiplayer experience. Nothing quite beats having four people making total asses of themselves for fun, having someone start singing rhubarb in the place of every word of the song because they haven’t got a clue what the real lyrics are, or even how the song goes, or trying to play whilst holding back the laughter, especially difficult on the drums! But when all of you get in the groove, it’s epic… The fact there is four of you also makes the multiplayer far more accessible, I have had people playing RB that would not have picked up a GH game if you paid them to! It also leads to arguments about who is doing what…
The only real drawbacks I found with the game are with the the positioning of the back button on the guitar, it is right underneath the whammy bar, so if your not careful when do some extreme whammying you’ll catch it and set it off unintentionally. And then there’s the overdrive… There are 2 problems with it in my mind, firstly that the singer and drummer can only activate their overdrive at fixed points in the songs, so there is only certain times that the mystical 8x multiplier is available. Secondly, when the drummer completes a series overdrive notes, or activates the overdrive, the note track pulses a yellowy orange for a second, and if your really unlucky and have a bass pedal hit (or a crazy string of them) coming up, then sometimes you can’t see when the bar is on the line because it’s the same colour as the background…
My final thoughts, in the words of GLaDoS… This was a triumph, I’m making a note here, huge success. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… Rock Band is made of win - in fact, forget that, it is win. Well, if you like rhythm games anyway.
Totally agree with you on the songs being easier than Guitar Hero, as evidenced by this pic right here. That said, while some of the songs are easier, I think a lot of it is down to the people making the game actually knowing the songs musically, and aranging the notes and chord progressions more logically. Random triplets and widdly bits are a lot less common, and when they do appear, they actually fit logically with the music, rather than just being there to screw the player over.
Rock Band is probably the best party game ever made, and indeed one of the best games ever made full stop. It’s actually managed to drag me away from GTAIV, which is quite a feat.
As there should be no such thing as a perfect review score, I give Rock Band 9.7 out of 10. Everything works together perfectly, and nothing glaringly obvious is wrong with it. Also, the selection of songs easily beats Guitar Hero’s.
I’m just watching Queen, live at Wembley on TMF and its made me realise what Rock band needs…
Not just more Queen tracks but Whole live concerts as DLC. I would happily pay to reinact Queen @ Wembley
I’m sure there are many other classic shows that they could convert but Queen first please!
That’s actually a really awesome idea. Live Aid is another classic concert that springs to mind, as well as Bon Jovi at Wembley in 1995. Not that anyone woud want that..!
More Queen tracks would be good. Like, more than none. A little “Bohemian Rhapsody“, gentlemen?
The other thing I think it needs, is the ability to create your own setlist and play through it… Not just the 2-3 song ‘create-a-setlist’ that you get in band mode, but just a quickplay setlist of however many songs you want to choose.
Needs more cowbell.