Rock Band notes, #1
So we got Rock Band as a wedding gift from
Justin (decisive winner of the Most 3lit3 Wedding Gift contest). We spent just about all of our indoor time at our mini-honeymoon condo on the beach playing Rock Band, with Colette singing and guitaring, and me either guitaring or drumming. This being my first dabbling into the rhythm game genre, I thought I should write out some initial thoughts.
First I’ll talk about what I like:
Almost every aspect of the game is phenomenal. The first time I saw anyone rocking out to this game, I thought “damn all that stuff looks chincy, the guitar looks worse that the Guitar Hero ones and the drums will break in no time. Also it’ll get boring once you play all the songs.” Not so. The drums actually feel great for a “revision 1″ product. Future peripherals in Rock Bands 2 or 3 will be even better. And the track list is varied enough to provide lots of different options, and replaying them is only as annoying as your dislike for the specific song. For me that means there are only a few I generally avoid. Playing each instrument is pretty fun, but the funness rises an order of magnitude with each new person playing. 4-player bands are incredibly exciting, especially playing something like Tom Sawyer with everyone at least on Medium difficulty.
Now for something more negative:
The design of the Band World Tour mode is poor at best. It’s a blast when you want to do what the game wants you to do. However, when starting a band, whatever instruments you start with and whichever person is the leader are all settings that are stuck that way for eternity. I suppose it’s slightly more comparable to a real-life band that way, but mostly I find it completely annoying. Having to constantly sign in and out or switch bands in order to play a different instrument is just a pain. Can’t I just do whatever I want? The lack of a real “party mode” is basically inexcusable to me. When playing with new players just trying the game out (even on easy), if they fall out of the game, it’s game over for everyone. They need to have a party mode with no “fan approval” meter, or whatever it is, so that when a newbie is playing drums, they’re free to play without feeling like they’re losing the whole time. We also need better support for a single Live account to be able to sing and play guitar/bass/drums at once. Colette’s too good for one instrument!
We got in lots of game time over the past couple weeks. I’m getting pretty decent at drumming, but I think I’ve hit a difficulty wall: I can pretty much own every song on Medium, then I get owned the second I tread into Hard mode. Guess I need to practice my Fisher-Price drumming skills.
My favorite songs to play so far: the Rush songs, Gimme Shelter, Won’t Get Fooled Again, Weezer songs.
Tags: EA, harmonix, party games, rock band
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