aken as a whole, Rock Band is the best music game ever made. As a general rule, I make a point to avoid the use of such superlatives when describing any new release, but in this case it’s hard to overlook the obvious point. As a culmination of years of build up from the best music game maker in the industry, Harmonix has crammed a positively huge entertainment experience onto one small disc. It’s immensely fun and consistently rewarding. Nearly endless replay is bolstered by the promise of a musical catalogue that will have already dramatically expanded by the time you read this. And, played as a group either off or online, almost no game in any genre delivers the same sense of cooperation and immersion. And while all of this is true, taken apart into its disparate components, Rock Band is a game with several small flaws that wise gamers should consider carefully before taking the plunge.
Two distinct things are brand new experiences for Rock Band. The first and more obvious is the drumming system. Complicated and engrossing, the rhythmic gymnastics needed to master this percussion system are many and great. Non-drummers will come out the other end of this game listening to music in a different way – hearing that offbeat kickdrum and applauding complicated drum fills. The only major problem seems almost unavoidable; enthusiastic as you’ll be, it’s easy to drown out the simulated drum parts with your very real banging of the pads.
The second distinct experience here is the group dynamic. While the Guitar Hero series hinted at this, Rock Band fully embraces the idea by gearing all the songs and the brunt of the new gameplay at people who are playing together. A lengthy and varied World Tour mode lets you build a band from nothing into the next big thing. Even the moment-to-moment gameplay is geared towards unison playing and cooperation, and each band member can save the performance from disaster by yanking failed instruments back in. It’s only disappointing that, as of launch, online play doesn’t include the full World Tour.
As any real world band member will tell you, individual parts sometimes have to sacrifice for the band. For all their music game wizardry, Harmonix can’t manage to overcome this problem, and the single-player experience suffers for it. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the guitar gameplay. Even on the highest difficulty, the complexity of the guitar parts just doesn’t hold up well, filled as they are with long stretches of two note chords and repeated rhythmic riffs. For this reason, the torch that Harmonix has passed to Neversoft in the form of Guitar Hero is still the place to go for solo shredders. Similarly, some of the vocal parts just aren’t exciting.
The music itself is top notch. While I’ll leave debating the merits of individual song choices for another time, the track list as a whole is excellent, with choices culled from throughout the decades – almost all of which are the original recordings. Tack on some great bonus songs, many of which star members of the actual development team, and the retail disc is a great start to your Rock Band collection.
Most of the rest is just wrapping paper, but it certainly makes the present look damn good. Character customization and some fun versus modes fill the menu with additional options. Meanwhile, the visuals throw you into a world of music videos with their close-up camera angles and grainy filters. And, as usual, the writing in tutorials, menus, and loading screens has that entertaining sarcastic spin. As a solitary experience, Rock Band is exciting but limited. Play it the way its title suggests, as a band, and this holiday release is hard to beat.