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Monday 14 January, 2008
[SUMMARY]
- In Rock Band, the player is designed to take his/her pick of using the Guitar, Bass, Drums, or even the Microphone on a quest for cover-band supremacy. During the experience, the simulated band (either controlled by one player or up to a four players) tours through various ‘big’ cities to gain exposure from the smallest shanty bar to huge arenas while playing an all-star list of licensed music from the past five decades. The objectives when playing ‘online’ varies as “Rock Bands” around the world can rank against the other and set target high scores from any of the songs making the Rock Band experience seemingly endless as everyone battles to become the greatest fake-cover band on the planet.
[GAMEPLAY]
At first I was skeptical to want to play Rock Band, considering this was basically hyped up to be the “Guitar Hero Killer” and I was one of the only 73 people on the planet to not be swept up by the universal hype of putting one of those plastic Gibson’s over my shoulder and engage in the next-generation of DDR. Two of my friends accompany me during the opening cinematic and we are welcomed by the surprising ‘Multiplayer: Band World Tour’ feature. Luckily for me, these two friends have Guitar Hero experience so that left me, someone with no prior ability of how to use a musical instrument a shot at the… (insert drum roll) …highly anticipated drums.
We called ourselves the Terrordactyls and played our first gig at this small bar in San Francisco. Surprisingly enough we got a five-star rating and ranked on the high score list online for the song. I was very impressed with the simple in-game interface (originally perfected by Guitar Hero) and how quickly I enjoyed playing the game from behind the drums.
Games focused solely around music (karaoke-type games) are not my usual cup of tea, but I found myself playing more Rock Band than anticipated. Sure the story wasn’t as deep as I anticipated (go to a city, play a gig, do good, get rewarded, rinse wash repeat), but you don’t play Rock Band to live 'Behind The Music', you do it with a collective of friends to experience playing challenging, known songs and feeling like a band afterwards (as sad as that sounds). Soon I would find myself saying ‘nice show’ or ‘great solo!’ in the middle or after we played at a virtual venue. And of course, making the transition from Easy to Medium makes you feel one step closer to wanting to learn how to play actual drums (when you have the 44,300th something best score for “In Bloom” by Nirvana, you would feel untouchable as well).
But the most interesting aspect I found about the game was not the gameplay it self, but the affect it has on the player. I for one am not that big of a rock fan, if anything I’m attracted to more hip-hop/rap in terms of music. But with Rock Band, after playing and singing along to most of the songs with my band, I’ve developed a new found respect for the bands and instruments presented. I’ve found myself humming a lot of the songs on occasion and I commend Rock Band for making this game a great one even for "rock noobs".
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