Green Day: Rock Band
MTV Games, Harmonix
Available for Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3
Another day, another band inspired music game. It began with Guitar Hero Aerosmith and ever since band inspired music games keep hitting the market whether we like it or not. Green Day is the newest band to have game dedicated to their long and successful career by the developers at Harmonix. Green Day: Rock Band allows you to rock out to the boys’ career from the Dookie album all the way to the 21th Century Breakdown album.
The game has 47 songs from several Green Day albums, Dookie, Nimrod, Insomiac, American Idiot, Warning and 21th Century Breakdown. You can also purchase a few downloadable songs from 21th Century Breakdown album that weren’t included on the disc. There are no songs from Green Day’s first two albums, Kerplunk and 39/Smooth and I have heard of no plans to make downloadable packs for them either. Overall the selection of songs is excellent and the level of difficulty is perfect for a skilled Rock Band or Guitar Hero player. I was playing the hardest songs right of the bat with only a few missed notes here and there.
The gameplay of Green Day: Rock Band is your standard Rock Band game with a career mode, both offline and online with the option to play with up to 4 players. You also have a quick play mode with 4 players, both online and offline. You can play guitar, bass, drums or sing. There are also 4 part harmonies just like Beatles Rock Band, even though Green Day only has 3 members. There are three venues and three incarnations of the band you can plan during career and quick play mode. These venues and band fashion statements are from various points in Green Day’s career.
As you play through career mode, you gain cred points based on your star performance rating during a song. Those cred points can be used to unlock a song challenge and eventually, bonus materials about the band like interviews, photos and more. If you are a massive fan of the band, this is where the real goodies come in. There are also the standard achievement/trophy challenges in game that have been toned down to a more achievable level this time as opposed to the ones in Beatles Rock Band.
After playing through a hour of the career mode, I was disappointed to see a lack of real creativity in this game. For a band that inspired a rock musical, you think they could have come up with better song background then just the band jumping around on stage. Beatles Rock Band setup each song as almost a mini history music video with cool references to the song’s moment in the band’s career. Octopus’ Garden had the band change from playing in a sound studio to playing underwater in the ocean, while St. Pepper/With a Little Help from My Friends had the band in a garden playing in their St. Pepper costumes like the album cover. Green Day: Rock Band seems to lack any real imagination in this department and it made me wonder why even bother making a game dedicated to this band.
What also surprised me is the fact that this game even got made in the first place. Now don’t get me wrong, Green Day is the perfect band to rock out to but for a band that is so controversial and against censorship how could they ever agree to make a mainstream game that censors their lyrics? Guess even rebels have a price at which they’re willing to sell-out.
As far as Rock Band games go, Green Day: Rock Band isn’t offering up anything more than series of downloadable album packs that got some Green Day band avatars and few extras slapped on for show. When compared to Beatles Rock Band, this game should feel ashamed to even call itself a band inspired music game. But if you really want to purchase this game, do it cause you really love Green Day and not because you feel the need to add another Rock Band game to your collection – how else will these game companies learn when enough is enough?
Beatles Rock Band
EA, Harmonix
Available for Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360
The last couple of weeks have been like a dream for this game reviewer as I’ve been able to review childhood memory inducing games like Batman Arkham Asylum and Tales of Monkey Island. Best of all, they didn’t suck which is a huge bonus when you are dealing with subjects so near and dear to your heart. Unfortunately, this week’s review didn’t escape my red pen of doom despite my love for the subject matter.
Beatles Rock Band hit stores on the historical date of 09/09/09 and being the fan that I am, I scooped up a copy in order to rock out to hits like Hey Bulldog, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and more. The game centers solely around the Beatles and their musical career, so don’t expect to find any other band’s music here like in Guitar Hero Aerosmith or Metallica.
Story mode takes you on a journey through the band’s entire career from their humble beginnings playing the Carven Club to their performance atop the Apple building. Rather than playing venues, story mode has you playing moments or albums (chapters) in the Beatles’ career and the songs that were out for them at that time. While this is great for a huge Beatles’ fan to follow all these amazing moments, the difficulties of the songs were all over the place which made story mode the worst place for a new player to start off. Luckily there is a training mode for newbies to learn how to play each instrument which can ease you into the game.
On the other hand, seasoned players will find the difficulty of the songs rather low and can probably finish the story mode in a day if they want to. Actually there’s even an achievement for it, so if you are a seasoned Rock Band or Guitar Hero player I say go for it.
As you progress though story mode, you can unlock photos and secret videos from the Beatles collection with 3 & 5 star performances. Once you clear a chapter, you also unlock a challenge mode that allows you to play through that entire chapter’s song list non-stop and compare scores with your online friends. Other modes include the co-op online story mode and quickplay mode, or the competitive tug of war and score duels modes. There is also a “no-fail” mode which can be turned on for new players, so they can always finish a song no matter how badly they play it.
A new feature exclusive to the game is the 3 person melodies option which allow up to 3 people to sing during a song but there are also some missing features like the freestyle drumming, customizable band members or the whammy bar affect. Apparently, a lot of features were removed to preserve the music and the memory of the artists which in the long run is really okay by me. Besides do we really need another rapping Kurt Cobain? (Note: I don’t listen to Nirvana and even I thought that was wrong, Guitar Hero 5)
Now, I only grabbed the game disc as I have enough band peripherals to start 3 fake bands but for first time buyers, you can pick up two different kits: the Special Edition Beatles Rock Band kit which includes one basic guitar controller, basic drum kit, microphone and Beatles Rock Band game ($159.99CAN for PS3 or Xbox360) or you can pick up the Beatles Rock Band Premium Bundle which includes one Höfner bass controller, Ludwig-branded drum kit, microphone, mic stand, Beatles Rock Band game and additional special content ($249.99CAN for PS3 or Xbox 360).
Unfortunately this does not cover everything you need to fully play the game as a complete band as you still need two more microphones and probably two mic stands, and another guitar. You can pick up a Rickenbacker 325 guitar controller or a Gretsch Duo-Jet guitar controller for $99 each, microphones will run you about $50 each and mic stands probably about $20 each, so by the time you are done you are looking at spending about $500 on all the equipment if you want all the premium quality equipment.
And we haven’t even purchased any downloadable content yet. Yep, after spending all that money on the game and all the peripherals, you still have more money you can dump into this game via the online Beatles music store which at the moment has only one song, All You Need is Love (Proceeds go to charity) but there will be a whole bunch soon as Harmonix plans to release whole albums. And don’t say you won’t buy them either, you devoted fans as the game is missing great songs like Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby and my favourite, Yesterday, so you won’t be able to stop yourselves from buying more music as they purposely kept back the some of the good stuff.
Visually, this game blows all other Rock Band incarnations away and makes you almost want to hand the controller over to someone else so you can focus all attention on the background animations. Like the Yellow Submarine come to life, Beatles Rock Band is a rainbow of colour and music splashed upon the screen in some of the best digital cinematics I have ever seen. Songs like Octopus’ Garden and The End bring the beauty of the music to life on screen with elephants, flowers and fishes.
When reviewing a music game obviously audio is a key component and there was nothing wrong with the sound here. Some songs were rearranged beautifully for the game and everything is a master track – no covers here. Extra features in the game included audio files from the Beatles private collection which still sound pretty darn good for their age. Overall, the music sounded fantastic and they still had this Beatles’ fan singing along with or without a microphone.
Games like these are really hard to review because as a fan you want to scream, “GOD, YES! BUY THIS! 10/10” but as a gamer you see the flaws and can’t in good conscience give a perfect review. I don’t expect uber-fans to listen to my review because if you are a fan, you probably already bought this game and are writing a letter to the editor trying to get me fired for what I’m about to say, so Beatles fans ignore me. Music game fans, listen up though as this is not a good investment unless you like the Beatles. Stick to the main Rock Band games because the store downloads will never be compatible with other Rock Band games and the difficulty of the songs in Beatles Rock Band will have expert players bored to tears.
Rock Band 2 MTV Game, Harmonix Music VS Guitar Hero World Tour Activion Blizzard, Neversoft Entertainment
Both Games Available for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii
When faced with reviewing both of the top music videogame currently on the market, I thought it would be more fun to review them together to see which game came out on top as the best. Guitar Hero World Tour will be bringing their new instruments to the battle while Rock Band 2 must stand their ground as the current band game title holder. Two games enter, only one game can win - who will be crowned the ultimate music band game in this first ever versus review?
Controllers
Rock Band 2: The controllers haven’t changed that much since the originally Rock Band came out on the market. The drum set had new quieter pads and the kick pedal was made with metal this time around as to withstand those heavy footed drummers. The guitar was now wireless with a new wooden look to it, but the strum bar still didn’t click when you strummed it and it was stiff as ever.
The microphone was still pretty much the same too with good sound. My biggest disappointment with the kit was that the new cymbals that I had seen at so many preview events on the drum kit were not included in the new Rock Band 2 kit and you had to buy them separately at a later point.
Guitar Hero World Tour: Having an entire band in a box included with a Guitar Hero game is something new for the franchise, so it was quite interesting to try out all the new instruments that came with the kit. The drum set had quiet drum pads and a set of rubber cymbals which was nice, but my set had a problem with the red drum pad being not sensitive enough, so I had to really wail on it when I played. Nice thing is that Activison was aware of the problem at the time and was fixing it with free adjustment kits.
The guitar had been changed to include a new touch fret bar for special notes, but I had problems with my guitar notes sticking in place and had to call Activision to replace it. The strum bar worked fine though and still clicked in time and flowed smoothly. Honestly though, I didn’t like the new look of the guitar and went back to my old Guitar Hero guitars after a while. The microphone was pretty much the same setup as the Rock Band 2 kits and sounded great when you belted out some Jimmy.
Graphics:
Rock Band 2: RB has always chosen to make their band performances look like a music video with special effects and filters, but while some people prefer this, I think it makes the game look terrible and would have rather the developers stuck with just a normal concert performance.
The band members in the game I felt were very stiff when they played and the lip syncing in the game never looked right. The bands never really looked like real bands playing.
The different stages that your bands play on weren’t anything special to look at either which really made watching the bands perform my last priority when watching others play this game. The crowd had to be the coolest part of the band performance as they seemed to react and sing along with your band as they got better.
Guitar Hero World Tour: GH has more of an animated style for their band performances which makes watching any one play the game fun. The bands have always entertaining to watch and the developers did a great job of motion capturing the moves of Ozzy Osbourne and the other musicians in the game.
I was happy to see how perfectly the leader singers were matched up to the song choices in the game too. Each character looked like they should be singing that tune which made watching the band perform all that much cooler. Each band really moved well this time around all most like watching a real band.
The different stages in this game always had great effects, backgrounds and the added touch of in game advertising actual worked well here. The only disappointment was the crowd suffering from multiple clone syndrome and lack of varied movement.
Sound:
Rock Band 2: Of course, being that we’re looking at music games you would expect the sound to be excellent here and you would be right. The game comes with 80 songs and a code for 20 bonus songs, that all range from the 50s to the present. Almost every song is performed by the original artist and sounds as good as it did the day they first sang it. A new bonus feature allows you to rip 55 of the 58 songs from your Rock Band 1 disc onto your game system’s hard drive in order to play it whenever you want.
One thing that did irk me about the sound in Rock Band 2 though was the problem with running a set of songs that changed from a female singer to a male singer mid-way. The game would choose one band only for you for all the songs and never change up the leader singer to match the voice for the different songs, so you would have some husky black dude singing Paramore or something. Guitar Hero World Tour: Again the sound in this game was amazing too with almost every one of the 80 songs in the game coming from the original master tracks. Music in this game varied from the 50s to the present, but I found I liked the variety of songs more on Guitar Hero. That’s just my personal choice in music though.
I was disappointed by the midi sound in the track creator though. I figured people would be able to create real sounding music, not something that sounded like it came out of a 80s videogame. I’m sure it would have been hard to do anything else though.
Game Play:
Rock Band 2: The single player mode has you playing different cities and venues trying to collect a certain amount stars before you can move onto the next gig. During each song, you collect money, fans and a star rating based on how well you play or sing the song. While this is a great way of integrating all the elements of a rock band into the game, I found that you are forced to play the same tunes over and over again in order to collect enough stars to progress in the game and I found this got boring real quickly.
The multi-player modes allow you to play online or locally but choosing songs online with strangers was hard without a headset for the Playstation 3. I lost a lot of lead singers because they didn’t like my song choices.
Choosing a character was easier this time around as you could just pick a pre-made character and jump into a song; no more making a character for each band or instrument. You can still modify your characters though and create the ultimate band member to play through the game as, but you can’t modify their faces and body type selections were poor.
I did like the new Battle of the Bands mode which allows you and a band to play challenges against other bands and see who successes at playing the set better. There’s a new challenge everyday and some of them are instrument specific, just to mix it up. If you manage to get the top score on the challenge, the score will remain there until someone else beats it.
Guitar Hero World Tour: The single player mode is pretty much the same as previous versions of Guitar Hero, where you are given a venue and a list of songs to complete in order to move onto the next venue. When you choose to play with your friends in a band either at home or online, you can all progress through the venues together with all your stats, items and cash intact. You can choose to play with your own gamer tag too, or stay under the main gamer tag when playing a local game.
Your character is now completely customizable from their face down to their clothes and new items can be unlocked and purchased as you play through career mode, so you can modify your character more later on down the road. There aren't as many item options here as what you'll find in Rock Band 2, but you do have a good assortment to work with.
The newest addition and most important addition to the main game play besides the addition of extra note highways for your other band members on screen, is the purple lines that now appear between notes. These notes can be played like normal or you can use the touch fret bar notes instead for a different note sounds based on how to touch the fret.
In quick play mode, 6 songs can be chosen as a set to play back to back now to eliminate having to go back to the menu after every song. Also Guitar Hero has a new music creator section that allows you to lay down your own music with the instruments only in midi form. You can also check out other people’s music in GH Tunes and download them to play in game.
Downloadable Tracks:
Rock Band 2: One of the areas where the Rock Band franchise really shines in the amount of downloadable tracks they pump out each week for their game. Full albums and more are released each week for the Rock Band library from artists around the world and MTV Games plan to release a ton more by year’s end.
Guitar Hero World Tour: Activision has been slow to release a lot of tracks for the GH series which I think is hurting them in the long run. Even when they do release some downloadable content, some of the songs are by artists I’ve never even heard of. I do appreciate the free tracks they supply which happens more often than in Rock Band downloads.
Overall:
So if I didn’t own either game right now and I could only choose one to purchase based on what I know after this review, I would probably buy Guitar Hero World Tour. By now, Activision has fixed all the problems with the instruments since I got my band kit back in October 2008, so the instruments possible breaking on me now wouldn’t deter me from buying the game.
The instruments were far simpler and more comfortable for me to use and I liked that the drum kit came with the drum cymbals. Plus I liked the music selection in this game better and I preferred GH’s way of progressing through a career mode. Finally the music creator allows any budding artist to try their hand at creating their own tunes which will hopefully encourage them to pick up a real instrument and create some music if they haven’t already.
Guitar Hero World Tour Rating: 9 out of 10 Rock Band 2 Rating: 7 out of 10
Rock Band MTV Games, EA Games, Harmonix Music Available for the Playstation 3, Playstation 2, Nintendo Wii & Xbox 360
Last week I talked about my first experience with the Guitar Hero series, so this week I thought I’d follow up with the other popular music game taking the gaming world by storm, Rock Band. I’ve been holding off on buying this franchise because I couldn’t justify spending $169.99 on a videogame, but when I got the chance to get this game without forking out an arm and leg, I couldn’t resist.
Rock Band, for those of you living under a rock, is a videogame that comes with a fake guitar controller; a fake drum set controller and a microphone which all can be used to rock out to your favourite tunes. Players must follow a series of coloured coded bars with their instruments to recreate the music. The cool thing is you really do feel like you’re playing an instrument especially with the drum set.
While Rock Band for the Playstation 2, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 have been out on the market for a few months now, my Nintendo Wii version just joined the party recently and unfortunately doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that its brother versions do. Though priced the same, the Wii version doesn’t include any online play, character customization or any downloadable content. You can buy an expansion game to add more songs to your track list, but the game really could have done with some downloadable tracks instead.
Missing content aside, the game does have a long list of sweet tracks to choose from with artists like Weezer, Garbage, Nirvana, Kiss, etc. and you can play with up to 3 players straight out of the box, 4 if you buy another guitar to play bass. This makes for a great party or family game which will attract all ages and skill levels. The single player game allows you to play from all four instruments through quick play or career mode.
The guitar controller is a lot stiffer than the guitar hero controller I have which made it really hard to hit the notes perfectly. After practicing for a while, I found strumming hard was the only way to get a good response out of the controller. So in other words, this new technique killed my hand and I was forced to move on to the drums.
The drum set controller is setup much like a real drum set with 4 pads, a kick pedal and two real drum sticks. To work them, you hit the colour drum pad to match with the colour note on the TV screen and while this in theory seems easy, you have to think about how hard playing real drums are and apply that to this. Some people might be better at the drums than others, but I’m not one of them. Plus the drums are extremely loud and you tend to hear the clacking of the drum sticks on the pads rather than the beat of the drums on the game’s soundtrack, which really sucks. Felt pads for the drum pads can help with the noise though.
Singing in the game isn’t any different than singing in Singstar or American Idol; as long as you aren’t tone deaf than you can’t really screw up the song. The neat part about the singing though is that you can buy a Rock Band microphone stand or use a real one to play guitar and sing at the same time. Multi-tasking for the win! But if that doesn’t work for you, then just pawn the microphone off on your woman or your talented male friend.
If you actually pull your head up out of the note track for a minute or two, you’ll actually notice that Rock Band sports a rock band playing in the background during the game play. A fuzzy looking, rock impersonation of the band you might be trying to play at that specific moment. While this is neat, I really didn’t pay much attention to it as I was too busy glued out the notes rolling down my music bar. Audio is pretty damn good for the Nintendo Wii and even the microphone sounded decent coming through my $300 sound system.
Considering that the gaming market is struggle to find games that everyone in the family can play and enjoy together, especially in a large group, I think Rock Band is a great game for anyone to own on any console. However it’s hard to justify buying the Wii version at the same price as the PS3 or Xbox 360, when it’s missing some key components like online play and downloadable content. Still I know the Wii version will fly off the shelves either way and I highly recommend this series on any system.
Tomorrow Rock Band hits the shelves for gamers everywhere ... except in Canada. Due to the lack of units, Rock Band has been delayed in Canada until December 14th.
Thanks to the supply and demand factor, I will be adding "Do you have Rock Band?" to my "never ending horde of annoying questions at work" list. Thanks a lot!
