Not only did Rock Band one-up Guitar Hero when it comes to the guitar, it also features a drum set and a microphone as playable instruments. Together with an additional bass guitar, you and three of your friends can play all on the same screen or online. The lack of different multiplayer modes is greatly made up for by amazing singleplayer and cooperative play. There are 45 original songs and 13 bonus songs, along with a massive amount of DLC.
Unlike its counterpart, the graphics in Rock Band aren’t from half a decade ago, but they still aren’t very good. In a music type game like this you don’t necessarily look for top notch visuals. In fact, 90% of the time I don’t even know what’s going on in the background because I’m busy playing. But the 10% of the time I do notice them I am disappointed. In the game, Story is already sacrificed, but the graphics seemed to also take a hit. It isn’t framerate issues or textures problems or anything of the sort, they just look unfit for the current generation of gaming. Also, even though there are vast options for character customization, your characters will always look like rock stars. Playing with friends, I’d love to make a character look like them, but the characters always have that unrealistic beautiful look to them.
The Rock Band soundtrack is basically the only audio heard in the game. There a huge array of artists ranging from classic and modern hits, to songs never heard before, but perfect for the game. I’d say on paper both Rock Band and Guitar Hero soundtracks are excellent. But what Guitar Hero lacks, Rock Band shines. This game’s soundtrack is most appealing to me not because of the big name band, but because of the depth. Rock Band opened my eyes to a lot of new bands and I have about half the game’s soundtrack on my iPod because of that. It seems as if they took a chance aiming for quality of play instead of just banking on popular songs. And lastly, in both games I found myself only liking 1 or 2 songs per section, but in Rock Band the Downloadable Content just adds so much more. There is such a wide variety of songs to choose from, allowing you to download only your favourite songs. I’ve downloaded seven songs by bands such as Weezer, Oasis, Wolfmother, and Queens of the Stone Age. Because of DLC, the number of songs I love to play easily doubles.
Playing through the campaign on singleplayer felt just like it did in Guitar Hero: repetitive. But in Rock Band there are no boss battles and it’s just straight up playing. But the difference here is if your bored of playing guitar on singleplayer, why not try the using the drums? Or the microphone? This is where Rock Band surpasses Guitar Hero 3 and sets the bar for musical games. The amount of options available to you is unbelievable and where Guitar Hero couldn’t get one right, Rock Band gets three different instruments right.
Rock Band exceeds Guitar Hero 3 in just about every aspect and is one of the greatest party games I have ever played. But lazy visuals and overall repetitive play knock a few points off an otherwise flawless game. While many games exceed in other areas, Rock Band is the most genuinely ‘fun’ game I have played in a long time. The achievements in this game are very difficult and possibly a little too hard, but it doesn’t take away from the enjoyable experience. Wanting to end on a high note, I think the solo in Buddy Holly is the greatest guitar solo in human history.
TheGamer Writes "Harmonix has proven plenty of times it can make Rock Band work without instruments."
I mean, yeah, but was anyone saying otherwise? The fact is people liked the plastic instruments rather than pressing buttons on a controller. They enjoyed the simulated experience.
"Work"? No, but to be good? It's absolutely necessary. Not having the accessories is like playing a lightgun shooter with an analog stick sure it works, but one experience is completely unique and fun as hell, and other is torture trying to make do playing in a way it was never meant to be played
"trying to make do in a way it was never meant to be played"
I disagree. The accessories were a fun gimmick (and very marketable) but they were added AFTER the genre had been well established with games like Frequency and Amplitude (both also made by Harmonix).
The gameplay formula is different on a controller - there's a focus on switching lanes and contributing to all of the instruments.
Never played Frequency, but Amplitude and Rock Band Blitz were really good. I would love to get more of that kind of game. It's basically a different part of the genre, and stands on its own.
The insurmountable difference in popularity between Amplitude and Rock Band proves my point
Popularity isn't proof of quality. If it was, then Harmonix wouldn't be making music for Fortnite now. lol. Our disagreement wasn't over which one is more popular. Amplitude and Blitz just aren't "torture" to play.
Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero Live failed to revive their sub-genre, and Rock Band 4 caused Mad Catz to have to file for bankruptcy. Doesn't mean that instrument-based music games are bad.
It does mean that there's too much overhead and risk for anyone to take a gamble on a big budget game that needs instrument accessories now though.
For the genre to thrive, for now, it needs to do so without the instrument accessories. That's just a fact, unfortunately.
VR games like Beat Sabre (a new sub-genre) and traditional music games make more sense and are more viable right now.
*"If quality is always proved by popularity, then Harmonix wouldn't be making music for Fortnite now."
I think CHEAP plastic instruments is THE reason why the instrument-genre ‘died’.
People invested in buying the game AND the peripherals, so the guitar, the dj-set, the drum, whatever, and the experience was absolutely fantastic. Great fun, great music, etc.
But then the instruments would break. A button would stop working, or your hits wouldn’t register, and that kind of hardware failure would end in you not being able to play the game as intended, and thus you not getting the scores you deserve.
So, now you had a great game, but a broken instrument, and nobody is gonna buy a new plastic instrument every 3-6 months in order to keep playing the game.
A solution would have been to release better quality instruments (obviously), at a slightly higher price, so you could have kept the new games coming and the genre alive, but sadly, that didn’t happen.
The only issue I ever had with any of the hardware was the drum pedal on the original rock band set stared to crack in half. The reason I, and other friends I know who played, lost interest is they weren't putting out new tracks that we were interested in anymore. I think earlier this year I looked through the releases for the last 2 years or so, and there was maybe 3 songs I would have bought.
Yeah I had this happen too with my drum controller, I ended up attaching a metal strip to it which fixed it up nicely.
Bust a Groove, Gitaroo Man and Parrapa the Rappa were such good games. Neither needed any extra peripherals
Music rhythm games dominated the video game market in the mid-2000s. Unfortunately, the genre would fall from grace shortly after finding success.
More like faded away than failed. Failed implies it was new and didnt take off... that is not the case. Rhythm games were hugely popular but the lights dimmed and the show is over.
You would think the current situation would cause a resurgence but im actually seeing more people picking up real instruments and learning to play. My son is one who started out on GH and now he plays real guitar.
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I also got into playing guitar through Guitar Hero and Rock Band. And I know at least three other people who did the same.
Still get Rock Band out a few times a year. I really don't think you can say it failed when they're still bring out DLC every week! They must be making enough money from it to keep the licensing going!
Basically the reason the artist Prince did not want his music on those types of games. As he believed it was better for kids to actually learn to play a real instrument than to play with toys that really did not teach how to read music and how to actually play an instrument correctly.
A lot of music now a days is just done on a sound board and the creator has no real clue if the music was put on a sheet in front of them to play. The term musician has taken on a new meaning in recent times.
I lost interest when they stopped allowing you to use the controller to play with, just couldn't get into playing with the guitar.
Rock band 4 allows controller. Though I just bought RB4 again so I can replay my favorite music rhythm game.
I didn't know that. I haven't played a lot of Rock Band, but have a lot of Guitar Hero, I'll definitely check it out.
Not the sole reason, but over saturation by Activision releasing 5 GH games in one year, charging full price for all of them while only Metallica and GH5 were worth it.
I dont think these games failed at all. People aren't going to keep buying games and peripherals over and over. All songs need to work on either rockband or guitar hero thru updates. Guitar hero live was actually good but rockband with all its songs and same equipment killed it.
I'm sure part of the reason they faded away, at least over the long term, was that you couldn't download them digitally.
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The rockband guitar looks more realistic but it doesn't have the same weight to it that the GH one does. Also, I hate the fact that the fret buttons on the RB guitar are 'clicky'. It somewhat distracts and slows down the speed at which one can play. The buttons are also flush with the fretboards so once a while you can get lost as to which finger is on which fret button.
The guitar really doesn't support hammer ons and pull offs as well, and seems nowhere near as responsive(how much do I have to push to sturm a note? SERIOUSLY).
The other thing is the diffuculty spike. There is literally 2 songs(run to the hills for drums and GGAHT for guitar) that are REALLY difficult. I breezed through all the others.
GH3 took some practice the last coupel songs, but this was extreme.
Again though, the buttons really hate to do pull offs.
I agree with this review and score 100%(okay, maybe .4 higher in score, IMO).
Nice reivew.