So how does Rock Band compare to its cousin Guitar Hero 3 when it comes to rock'n? Take a look at our full review and find out who really wins this holiday seasons battle of the bands.
For Those About To Rock, We Salute You
The music/rhythm genre set out to mash up two forms of interactive media, (obviously) music and video games. Guitar Hero took the first step in taking this genre out of the primordial ooze by simplifying a complex musical instrument (the guitar) and put the player in a setting that made them feel like a Rock God. This struck a chord with millions of players – by giving them the ability to so easily participate and interact with the music they love, a new hit was born. With the Guitar Hero franchise being such a colossal hit, where would developers try to take us next?
The answer is Rock Band, the $170 collaboration between media giants Electronic Arts, MTV, and developer Harmonix (co-creator of the Guitar Hero series). While Guitar Hero primarily focuses on one player and one instrument, Rock Band sets out to further evolve the music/rhythm videogame genre with the addition of drums, vocals, and a Band World Tour mode that encourages local play and interaction. Does Rock Band bring the noise enough to leave Guitar Hero quaking in their combat boots? Well, that’s going to depend a lot on how you feel about a few things…
Bang A Gong (Get It On)
Easily the focus and most talked about addition to the genre are the Drums. A lot of this focus is probably due to the fact that, unlike the simplification of the guitar by mapping notes to five buttons, the drum charts much more closely match their real life counterparts. In other words, successfully banging the kit in Rock Band is probably going to give most players a greater feeling that they’re “really playing music” than they would with the guitar. The drums are without question very exciting to play, and give you a great deal of satisfaction even when playing on Easy. As much as I loved Guitar Hero, I never reached a high with it as I did when I nailed Boston’s “Foreplay/Long Time” on the drums. Plus, move over Wii-Fit, if you really get into the drumming, you’re going to get a workout quite unlike any other in videogame land.
The kit that comes with the bundle comes with four pads (labeled red, green, yellow, and blue) along with a kick pedal for the bass drum (labeled as orange). The kit is surprisingly well built and doesn’t feel cheap. Be wary that many people are reporting issues with the drum kit – everything from the pads not being responsive to the kick pedal breaking to microphone static. I myself had issues with pad responsiveness, but EA sent me a working replacement in less than a week without any hassle. A word of warning – these things are LOUD. Living in an apartment or in a household with young children that go to bed early is going to be a hindrance to your ability to play. The relentless clickity-clack-clack is most likely going to drive someone a little nuts.
As fun as the drums are to play, they are probably going to create the largest barrier of entry to people new to the genre. Even on the Easy difficulty, all four pads and the kick pedal are used, so in general they prove to be more challenging than the guitar. If you or someone you want to play with is rhythmically challenged or has trouble moving their leg independently of their two hands, they’re going to have an uphill battle. By the time you move to the later tiers of Medium and Hard, it takes no prisoners. If you’re trying to get a casual gamer in to play some Rock Band with you, the drums are probably not the best place to start.
Unsung Heroes
If drums are the new hotness, the vocals (unfortunately) have the reputation as the wallflower of the group. But what most people may consider the most undesirable part of Rock Band turns out to be arguably the most fun component – especially in a group environment. The vocals work as an extension of Karaoke – a graphic representation of the pitch scrolls across the screen along with the words while an arrow indicates whether you’re flat or sharp relative to the current pitch. The game grades you on rhythm and how well you stay with the pitch, so it doesn’t care whether you’re singing the correct words and you could hum your way through these songs if you so choose. Some songs and phrases grade you purely on rhythm and not pitch, such as Faith No More’s “Epic” (the “rapped” verses) and the Beastie Boy’s “Sabotage” (pretty much the whole thing). The microphone even doubles as a cowbell, triangle, or handclap as many songs have you tap out a simple rhythm during breaks between singing or instrumental portions.
The microphone itself is pretty much what you would expect. It feels comfortable in your hand and you can adjust the responsiveness in the menu options. Menu navigation while using the microphone is handled by the console’s controller. As far as accessibility is concerned, if you’ve got some casual players that want to give the game a try and aren’t afraid to sing, vocals may be the place to start. Things don’t really start getting challenging until the last set or two on the Medium difficulty, where the designers thought they would load all of the helium voiced singers – Rush, Boston, Coheed & Cambria, and Iron Maiden. Guys will definitely need brush up on their falsettos. Things will be more difficult for women, as the game only includes a handful of songs that utilize female vocalists, so the fairer sex may not have as much fun with it.
Ol’ Reliable
The gateway drug into Rock Band is without a doubt the guitars. Most people interested in this game have at least some familiarity with Guitar Hero, so the guitar aspect of Rock Band will probably be the starting point for most players. In execution, the game works just like Guitar Hero, you have a chart of “notes” that scroll down the screen and you pluck the strum bar as it passes the play field at the bottom of the screen to play the “note”. Other than some aesthetic details (such as rectangular notes rather than round), if you’ve played Guitar Hero, you know what you’re getting here with Rock Band.
Much has been said about the difficulty relative to that of Guitar Hero III’s – and what you’ve heard is true, it is indisputably less difficult when directly comparing difficulty levels. On Medium and Hard, for instance, the charts move slower and there are far fewer Hammer-Ons and Pull-Offs in Rock Band than in Guitar Hero III. That is good or bad depending on your school of thought. If you’re a guitar masochist who lives and breathes “Reigning Blood” and “One” on Expert, you’re going to think Rock Band’s charts are a joke. But for most players, Rock Band provides a more gradual climb when moving between difficulties and the Hard and Expert tiers will provide more than enough challenge.
The Fender Stat that comes with the bundle is somewhat of a mixed bag. Aesthetically, it’s very nice – it looks much more like a real guitar and is larger than the previous iterations included with the Guitar Hero games. The strum bar is much quieter than the GH models, but it is also spongier and can be less responsive. The guitars also have “solo” buttons and an effects switch that can be deployed during solos, but they don’t add up to much more than a neat gimmick and are hardly critical to your enjoyment or success in the game. There’s been a lot of chatter about the reliability of the guitar – many people have reported that their downstrum had stopped registering altogether and had to have EA send out a replacement. The 360 version is wired, while the PS3 version is wireless. Disappointingly, the Rock Band guitars will not work with the Guitar Hero games (but the Guitar Hero guitars will work with Rock Band). Assuming you have no issues with hardware, the guitar of choice is all a matter of personal preference.
We’re With The Band
For the person playing alone, you’ll have essentially three careers playing three different instruments at your disposal. When you’re ready to rock with at least one other person, you’ve got the Band World Tour mode at your disposal. Band World Tour (BWT) is essentially a career mode for multiplayer, which allows you move from venue to venue playing songs as a band and accruing points (which, in the game’s terms, are Fans and Stars). Your band will earn Stars based on the Star Rating earned for the songs played, but you’ll also earn Fans based on the difficulty your band is playing at. New venues, challenges, and cities are unlocked by earning a certain number of Stars and Fans. The BWT mode will earn your band a Van, followed by a Bus, and then a Jet with your ultimate goal of being inducted into The Hall of Fame.
Once a person is designated as leader of the band, they have to stick with the same instrument throughout their BWT career (although if they chose guitar, they can switch between guitar and bass). While the leader has to always be present in order to play, any other players can join and the band can forge ahead, as long as there are at least two of you. As you accrue Stars and Fans, more venues will unlock allowing you to dig deeper into the mode. Completely clearing every city and reaching 1 million fans and beyond will require everyone in the band to be playing at the Expert level.
Flirtin’ With Disaster
Rock Band has so many things going for it, but it also isn’t without its flaws. For one, the hardware reliability mentioned earlier is obviously a sticking point and a knock against the game. So far, EA seems to be doing the right thing by getting replacements out to people quickly, but it still leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
While overall the graphical presentation of Rock Band is generally superior to that of the Guitar Hero series, Hammer-Ons and Pull-Offs in the guitar career are much more difficult to see than they are in the competition. HO-Pos are graphically represented as being about 1/2 to 2/3 of the size of a normal note and have identically coloring, so they are often hard to detect, especially on harder difficulties with more notes and a faster scrolling chart.
Although there is the option to play online as a band in Quickplay, there is no option to play the Band World Tour mode this way. BWT is purely a local multiplayer only endeavor. Finally, the BWT mode does something screwy with the Fans cap. The maximum number of Fans that your band can earn is determined by the difficulty at which your band is playing. The difficulty at which your band is playing is bottlenecked by the player playing at the lowest skill level. For instance, if you have three people in the band playing on Hard and one on Easy, the band’s difficulty is registered as Easy and the maximum number of Fans you can earn is capped as such thereby stonewalling your progress in the mode. If one member is playing at a lower difficulty, there is no incentive for the other band members to challenge themselves to play at higher difficulties. The designers really need to create some way to implement a weighted average system, so that casual players won’t feel like they’re holding everyone else up and those playing at higher difficulty players will be rewarded somehow.
The Big Rock Finish
So now for the big question, which is the better game, Rock Band or Guitar Hero III? That’s a difficult question to answer because any fan of music/rhythm games is going to need to have them both. But say you can only get one - do you crave extreme challenge, prefer a more solitary gaming experience, and have more of a fondness for hard rock/heavy metal? If so, you’ll probably prefer GHIII if forced to choose. But if the multiple instruments sounds appealing (and the drums and vocals don’t scare you off), you have friends over occasionally that may find this kind of thing interesting, and prefer a more generalist soundtrack steeped in more classic rock, than you can’t go wrong with Rock Band. Even if you’re a fan of Guitar Hero and have no interest in the drums, vocals, or that “band” stuff, Rock Band warrants at least a rental because the guitar career is fun in and of itself (especially if you’ve felt put off by GH III’s sometimes punishing difficulty). Who knows, maybe you’ll get it for the guitar and the lull of the rest of the package will draw you in…
