LEGO Rock Band

After the labour of love that was The Beatles: Rock Band, Lego Rock Band looks like a bit of a quick, easy cash-in. But writing this instalment of the Rock Band series off would be doing it a disservice, as it improves on the base game with a few interesting new ideas.

First, let’s get the obvious out of the way- yes, this is a Lego game. All of the usual Rock Band 2 art (such as the main menu octopus) as well as the note tracks, characters and virtual environments have been Lego-fied for your enjoyment. While this is neat at first due to it looking quite fresh, the disadvantages quickly become apparent. The detailed character animations of the previous games are completely out of the window, purely because making Lego figurines play instruments accurately would have looked ridiculous. No real lip-syncing is noticeable for vocalists and the character creation is surprisingly limited, especially at the start of the game. Instead of the usual text menus the game uses 3D environments to let the player choose what they want, however this makes everything take much longer than it should due to additional loading screens.  The humorous cutscenes (a staple of the Lego branded games) make a return, however many of them look extremely cheaply produced, with flat textures, pop-in and dodgy animations. That said they do retain their humour, even if a few of them fall flat on their faces. Of course younger gamers likely won’t care about this sort of thing, but there is no escaping that this is an ugly game.

The most important part of a music game such as this is, of course, the music. The song list for Lego Rock band is surprisingly decent, with hits such as ‘The Passenger’, and ‘The Final Countdown’ being included. Unfortunately the ‘filler’ tracks are downright poor, with umpteen songs being standard Emo tripe. Unfortunately some otherwise good songs such as Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ are pretty boring to play on nearly every instrument. It also runs into the same problem Rock Band 1 did in that it makes you replay the same songs constantly, made worse by the small amount of songs available. Sure, Blur’s Song 2 is great, but I don’t really want to have to play it 3 times within 15 minutes. This is helped slightly by the game allowing the use of family-friendly DLC songs which already exist in your Rock Band library, however many sets and challenges only seem to pick songs from the disk. A plus point is that the entire 45 song setlist is exportable, letting you play the songs in other Rock Band games for a small extra fee. Pre-owned gamers beware- in order to export the tracks a single use code included in the game case is needed, so many pre-owned copies will not be exportable, unlike Rock Band 1.

A few interesting gameplay tweaks have been made to the standard Rock Band formula, though. During a standard set players cannot actually fail out, instead they have points deducted and then given the chance to gain them back. This works well and stops the game being as frustrating for the younger players. In a similar vein, a new game modifier lets the player disable the necessity to use the drum kit’s kick-pedal, arguably the hardest part of the drums. This also makes the whole experience much more accessible. Another addition which makes sense is that the points gained from each song are actually usable currency, meaning that getting a really good score is even more rewarding. Another neat addition is the ability to play “radio edits” of songs with long intros and outros, cutting straight to the fun parts. These are all features which should be included into the main Rock band series, as they work well and make sense.

Further additions are the ‘appearances’ of Rock celebrities, albeit in Lego form. Bowie, Queen, Blur and Iggy Pop are all represented and all solicit a giggle. Furthermore, 9 ‘Rock Challenges’ are playable through the course of the career which see your band solve other characters’ problems with the power of rock. While ultimately a background distraction, the game cleverly gives each player a short time out mid-song to allow them to watch the madness unfold in the background.

All in all, Lego Rock Band is decent, but not great. The lack of online modes, short so-so setlist and unpolished graphics mean that it isn’t as good an experience as the main titles in the series. That said, the new modes and Lego facade will be appreciated by youngsters and the main game is still fun.