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Game Objectives:

It's just like the Guitar Hero series, but with a couple changes:
There is a new Fender model guitar with a 5-selector switch that allows chorus, flanger, delay, auto-wah, or no effect at all (original track recording tone).
You can play the drum tracks with the drum set
You can sing the songs Karaoke Revolution style.
The visual note-scrolling layout is blocks instead of circles.

... otherwise, if you've played Guitar Hero, you'll know what to expect here.

The New Guitar Controller

... really IS a piece of shit! I used it for about the first four songs, but then I noticed how many times it wasn't registering my chords, and I failed a song that I knew I shouldn't be failing. I plugged in my trusted LP for GH3, and I got like 98% on the song. I don't care that there are 5 upper frets that you can use during the solos and not have to "pluck" the notes. It's just a hassle. You not only have to reposition your fingers during a solo - and go back AFTER the solo to the oversized and squishy lower frets - but they are pretty small. Upper frets in a real guitar are pretty small, too, but I don't see the fun in having to look down at your guitar and reposition your playing - missing notes in the process - to mush on upper fret buttons. It's a big waste of time and energy.

I give them some points for the effort of trying new things. The bigger fret buttons SEEM to be a better idea, but it doesn't work well in reality. It would be cool if they made the buttons more reactive, and bounced back a little more freely. I like that you can change effects, but frankly they don't sound that good compared to a nice REAL LIFE pedal or processor. The worst of all is that I strum and strum, yet many times the game wasn't noticing that I was hitting notes. THAT'S the biggest bummer of all!

The Drum Set

I have about 30 hours of real life drum playing experience. I started out in hard mode, and I only got through about 6 songs before I said to myself, "Oh my gosh, I totally suck at this!" The biggest issue is that I am not a real life drummer. The other reason is that there are no symbols, so changing some of the drum pads to accommodate pieces of a REAL drum set that this virtual setup does not provide can REALLY mess up one's timing and ability!

I will say that playing this game in hard mode with the drum set is quite fun! After beating the game in Expert mode with the guitar solo tour, I can now play in quickplay on the drums any song I want, so I can fail to my heart's content and not be so worried about advancing!

I am a little worried about how well this drum set will hold up, though, because I have the wrist action thing down pretty good where I hit the drums fairly loudly. I think I'm beating the crap out of this set! Time will tell (after about another 100 hours of gameplay) if I'm too hard on them or not.

Microphone

It works alright. Not much to say here. I mentioned in my demo review about how it would be great to play at parties and stuff. I can't say I will do it often while I'm alone, though. What's the fun in that?

I plan on hooking up my XB-Live account real soon (as soon as I go to Fry's to get a 100' LAN cable). THIS is where this game will probably shine! Online group play! YES!

The Game Itself

Being the fairly loyal Guitar Hero addict that I am, I have to say that this has enough of what made the series so fun so far in this game as well. There are also some nice improvements to the game itself that add to my enjoyment in many ways. My biggest gripe is with the new controller, but I'm done talking about that.

The use of Star Power is pretty sweet in Rock Band, because if you are using your Energy (Star Power) and come across another series of Energy notes, you can hit them all and add to your current Energy bar, meaning you don't miss out on potential Star Power points while USING Star Power. It sometimes felt like a penalty in GH, since you can't easily know when you're wasting an increase in the Star Power meter since you already have it initiated. With Rock Band that no longer becomes a concern.
When I played the demo, I was not warmed over to the new scrolling outlay for the guitar parts. They are rectangles instead of circles, and it feels like that's most appropriate for a percussive instrument, but not so much for a guitar where you can sustain notes. It feels as if a guitar should have "rounder" notes. I realized immediately that the demo version I played had screen lag. I'm thankful for this, because on my home TV I had NO PROBLEMS AT ALL keeping in time with the notes. Hammer-ons and pull-offs are shown by half-size rectangles.

For the guitar part itself, I only played a tour in expert. It's MUCH much easier than GH3. I did not fail a song once (after I switched to my old controller), and only came into a little bit of difficulty at the final 7 songs. Before that, I was breezing through like a hot knife cuts through soft flesh. I don't think Rock Band is working so hard to keep the guitar players from being severely challenged as much as they are centering on keeping the "fun" aspect at a higher level. I don't mind that too much. I actually gold starred 3 songs on my first try in Expert. That shocks the hell out of me! No song was less than 4 stars, either. The best thing about all of this, though, is that the game feels as if it is more appropriately designed to match the level of difficulty of the tracks themselves, and didn't do much to increase difficulty to an illogical level just to make it "hard" when it doesn't need to be (unlike in GH3). I did find several instances where the hammer-ons and pull-offs were more excessive than they needed to be, but that's a small complaint.

After completing the guitar tour, I only had about $1000 for The Store. Once there, you can find a HUUUUGE list of clothing apparel, guitars and jewelry for your avatar. It's obvious that they have created this Tony Hawk styled list of options so you can customize your character for online play. I'm a little upset that I quickly chose my character and didn't work on specific facial/body options when starting the tour, because now I'm stuck with this dude any time I play on that name! Kind of lame. I thought maybe I could change that in the future, but I was wrong. You can change clothes, tattoos and guitars. But the face and body type remains the same. I would have chosen a girl instead! It's more fun looking at an animated chick while playing than it is looking at some animated DUDE.

Final Thoughts

Harmonix has sold off Guitar Hero and bought into this admirable concept. It's getting a little scary, I admit. Here we are now with a game that can have a singer, bass player, drummer and guitarist playing at the same time. Instead of really PLAYING IN A BAND, you're doing this game. Some people think that's sad, but how is this any different from doing any other multiplayer kind of game? Are the Halo fans pathetic for spending their time online against other people instead of going out to the shooting range and shooting real guns? This is a GAME, and it's a pretty fun one at that.
This series has progressed quite a bit since its inception. It's done a good job trying to reach out to the online community, and Rock Band has tried especially hard to provide players with enough character altering options to give yourself a unique and personal appearance to the rest of the players out there in Cyber World. It's got a great list of songs. It's a fucking low down dirty shame that they had to throw Fallout Boy in there, but it's not like you can please EVERYONE with EVERY SONG. They did that to make the 13 year old boys in girl jeans and long bangs scream with joy. Alright. I just won't touch that shit unless I have to.

GRADE:  B

Reviewed 11/23/07