Some thoughts on Rock Band 3

By JJWeatherman November 2, 2010 32 Comments

Note: I'm sorry for any typos that may be present. I'm a bit tired and am choosing not to proof-read this super throughly.
 

This isn't a review (I do plan to write one), but more like a stream of consciousness type deal where I'm going to talk about how I feel about Rock Band 3. I have quite a few things to talk about, so this may get rambly. Fair warning. 
 
Rock Band 3 is easily one of the most anticipated games of the year for me personally. I've been into rhythm games since playing Guitar Hero 2 at a friends house back in the day. Since then, I've been deep deep into a variety of rhythm games. No other games have grabbed me quite like the Rock Band franchise though. I liked the style of Rock Band over Guitar Hero. The fact that they evolved the genre by introducing vocals and drums didn't hurt either. I played countless hours of RB1 and 2. I beat the endless setlists for each, multiple times. When I say multiple times, I mean a minimum of three times each. Needless to say, I was primed and ready for the launch of Rock Band 3. I showed up to my local Gamestop on Monday night, about 11:30 for the midnight launch. I stood in line with a bunch of other people (mostly there for Fable), and I finally made it to the counter and paid an unreasonable amount of money for a single video game. After getting it home and playing for almost exactly a week now, that amount of money I spent still feels unreasonable, but I don't regret it one bit. With that, I'm just going to jump into a bunch of random thoughts. Starting with: 
 

The Keyboard and Pro-Keys

 
The new keyboard peripheral is what ended up costing me so much money, but I'm glad I got it. Pro-Keys are probably the biggest change from RB2 to Rock Band 3. (It could probably be argued that Pro-guitar is bigger, but I can't comment on that as of now as I don't own a pro-guitar.) The first thing I did when I popped the game in was jump strait into Pro-Keys. I didn't want the watered-down experience of regular keys, I wanted to jump head first into this new and magical world of Rock Band Pro-Keys. I think I made the right decision, as learning my way around the keyboard, and advancing from easy onto medium (and in some cases hard), has been the most rewarding Rock Band experience I've had since I first played the drums in RB1. Harmonix has effectively translated keyboard play to Rock Band, and it's actually fun. I can't say that I have any piano training or anything, but playing Pro-Keys honestly feels like I'm playing a real instrument (probably because I basically am). The songs Harmonix has chosen to fill out the on-disc setlist are, in general, fantastic choices for playing Pro-Keys. There are actually a handful of on-disc that aren't keyboard compatible, which is weird, but most are. Not to mention the three free Doors tracks that were up on the marketplace; Light My Fire is one of the best keyboard songs currently in my library. I guess what it comes down to, is that the keyboard is a great addition. It's challenging as hell, but as someone that's deep into Rock Band, that's exactly what I want. 
 

I want to mention the hardware itself a bit. the keyboard is about two feet long counting the little handle that the overdrive button and touch strip rest on. Speaking of the touch strip, it's kinda crazy. I was never a fan of Guitar Hero's guitar touch strip, but this one is at least out of the way. It works as you'd expect; just drag your finger across and it will gain you bonus overdrive or whatever. It's really sensitive though, as I just rest my hand over it a bit and I can hear it accidentally altering my notes as I play. There are 25 keys which are marked off in sections with the standard red, blue, yellow, etc. I can't really talk a lot about octaves or notes or whatever as I have very little knowledge of keyboards in general. It all feels nice and sturdy though. For what it's worth, there's a full sized keyboard in my house that I was messing around with yesterday. I'll just say that the keys on my RB3 keyboard feel nicer than the keys on that full-sized, semi-expensive keyboard. 
 
The keyboard's a great addition that adds tons of fun and breathes some much needed fresh air into the series. I recommend picking up the bundle, or if you have a PS3 or Wii, pick up the keyboard separately. 
 

Pro-Drums

 

If I had to pick one instrument and call it my favorite, it would definitely be the drums. I even wrote a damn blog about my insane ION drums at one point. It's OK though, I didn't pay full price, I bought them used off of a friend. :) I also recently carved a pumpkin in the design of the Rock Band drum logo. As you can see, I'm a fan of drums, and I was really excited to dive into pro-drums as well. So I started playing pro-drums and I quickly realized that, "wait a second, I was kind of already playing pro-drums before...". I've had three cymbals set up for quite some time now, and I've been using them. Sure, I wasn't 100% loyal to the song in terms of always using cymbals when there's cymbal sounds and drums when there's drum sounds, but I was pretty close a lot of the time. Maybe I should take a step back and mention that the big feature in pro-drums is that it charts cymbals and drum pads separately now. That means if you hear a hi-hat, you'd better get that lazy arm up to the hi-hat cymbal. No unauthentic play is allowed in pro-drums. So as I mentioned, I'd already been doing this a bit whenever I could distinguish which pad or cymbal I was supposed to hit (at times it can be hard). The biggest challenge has been breaking the mental block of always going for a pad or a cymbal on certain songs. Since in RB2, you could hit either, and either would count just the same, I'd become used to playing certain songs in certain (incorrect) ways just out of convenience. Pro-mode says "Fuck You" to convenience and has tripped me up a couple of times, as I have had to readjust on the fly. I know this isn't the most common situation for most people to be in. I'd imagine most people are starting their cymbal-using career right now, and are probably struggling at least a bit. The best tip I can give in that situation is to set up your cymbals to exactly how you like them, and then just play some simple beats. Getting used to the placement of the cymbals was the hardest thing for me to do. I was constantly swinging and hitting air the first time I tried. That's embarrassing, but true. :P 
 
There's not a whole lot more I can say about pro-drums. They're a great minor step up from what already existed. The thing is, the abstraction of playing drums was already extremely minimal, especially compared to playing the guitar. With Pro-Drums, abstraction has been basically eliminated completely and you're now playing honest to god drum parts. Even hi-hat rolls have been recharted to the hi-hat cymbal instead of being unrealistically charted to what is otherwise the snare pad. Pro-Drums are great. Pro-Drums are realistic. Pro-Drums are fun as hell. Moving along. 
 

UI and gameplay changes

 
This is kind of a wide spanning topic. I'll start with the in-song UI and gameplay. This is basically what you know and (hopefully) love. You earn stars that build in the corner as you earn points. You have a meter on the left that shows everyone's instruments, and how close the players of said instruments are to being yelled at for failing. The note tracks still scroll, and you still get little colored rectangles flying towards your face (often much to fast). There are some little tweaks here and there though, that in my opinion, aren't necessarily for the best. Exhibit A: Solo indication. It's probably a case of me not being "used to it" yet, but I often have no idea that I've transitioned into a solo while on guitar for example. The percentage counter has been removed (yet is still there for keys for some reason) and the blue color that the makeshift fretboard turned is now reserved for when you're in 4x multiplier mode. Therefore a new light blue highlight is the new solo indicator and it's really too subtle. You might think it' no big deal to not know exactly when you go into a solo, but I use the solo buttons on my guitar, and it's a big problem when it's not obvious as to when I can or can't finger tap sections of songs. This isn't a huge giant deal, as most of the time I can easily tell when I'm heading into a solo, but it's annoying when it catches me off guard. 
 

There's a new prompt while playing guitar and drums to look out for as well. For example, when there's a super fast drum roll, instead of being forced to be super accurate and hit every note perfectly (no more, no less), it gives you a darkened section and you just need to hit the roll as fast or faster than what is charted. It's an interesting change that also applies to guitar on those fast sections where you're hammering-on/pulling-off yellow and blue really fast, for example. Sorry that I don't know all the "proper" terms, but that's why I play Rock Band and not a real guitar. :P I like this system, although I'd really prefer if pro-mode forced you to play the exact part, RB2 style. Hitting rolls too fast is definitely easier than nailing it, but that's not what I want from the mode that's supposed to push me as far as possible. 
 

I mentioned earlier that cymbals are charted on pro-drums now. This is simply indicated by circular "gems" coming down the lane for cymbals, and the standard rectangles coming down the lane for pads. The guitar's notes are unchanged. Smaller gems still indicate hammer-ons/pull-offs. The keyboard is what is interesting/frustrating in this department. On standard keys, you get the five lanes and it's basically just like playing guitar. Pro-Keys, though, charts every last key on the keyboard. This shows up as colored sections with multiple black and white keys within any given section. I used the word 'frustrating' earlier because learning where to put your hands with this UI is pretty tough. Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but it's really tough. I can't think of a better way for Harmonix to chart pro-keys though, so I guess it'll just be a long learning process.  
 
I'll also just throw it out here that unison bonuses when playing alone are stupid. The point of a unison bonus is to reward the band when multiple players all nail a section. It's less exciting when you know that all your A.I. band mates will never mess up. Minor point.
 
This is getting long, so I'll end this section with the general "out of song" UI. The song selection screen is something thats needed an overhaul for quite some time, and it got it. I was really excited for this, but it has issues. First of all, it lets you sort your likely enormous library by almost any method you see fit. Want to see every song in your collection that supports keys, was made in 1980, and that you've scored 5 stars on? That's doable. You can even save setlists locally now for replay later. A feature I really like is being able to take those saved setlists and share them with friends and create challenges out of them. Harmonix has already started created setlist challenges that auto-populate into the saved selist menu; pretty slick. The options are all there, and once you get the hang of quickly jumping through a couple menus, it's a nice and powerful sorting too. As for the issues though, I've ran into a couple while using keys specifically. The Music Library allows you to choose which instruments previous scores are displayed on the selection screen. I decided to use the keyboard to play a guitar part, but after I was dumped back to the selection screen, the game thought my keyboard was a guitar and wouldn't let me display keyboard scores anymore. I had to play another full song on pro-keys in order for it to recognize that i was using a keyboard again. Also, the selection screen will display which friends you're close to, score wise, but it takes forever to switch to that display after selecting the song. That should have been a toggle option. Again, more nit-picky stuff, but they just seem like easy mistakes that should have been fixed. 
 

The main menu of the game is... interesting. It's not the strait-forward menu that you've come to expect out of Rock Band games. Instead it's a shell in which up to four players can jump in or out at will (including mid-song). Pressing start brings up the options for each player. That leaves things like "Get More Songs", "Play Now", and "Career" left on the menu. Career isn't actually where you go to play through what is the games makeshift story mode, though. To do that, you select Play Now and then select Road Challenges. At that point you're into something more recognizable as Rock Band career mode. This is all pretty confusing and I'm sure I'm explaining it poorly, but It's the early morning and I didn't sleep much. :P Suffice it to say, the menu  system works, but it takes a bit of poking around to learn where everything is located. I really like the "shell" system that allows jumping in and out. One of the best improvements of the game in my opinion. It's so useful when trying to get a band set up and rocking. 
 

Rocker Customization

Customizing your Rocker had been changed up a bit, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. You can still do basically the same things as RB2, and in some cases you can do a lot more. I've posted my own Rock Star to the forums. I encourage you to post yours, too! But anyways, the facial customization has been blown out, allowing full tweak-a-tude of your avatar's nose, mouth, eyes, eyebrows, etc. You can randomize and come up with some pretty ugly mugs. The part I'm not sure about, though, is the decision to get rid of the concept of money within Rock Band. It definitely streamlines things a bit, but you're now forced to earn specific items of clothes by completing challenges. Now if I want to buy a certain jacket and tie *cough* on my guy, I have to complete some crazy set of challenges instead of just clicking A and spending 500 Rock Band bucks. I like the idea that it gets you to play more challenges and whatnot, but it can be annoying. 
 
I don't know if this really counts as customization, but assigning stand-ins for your band could have been done better. Instead of just selecting a few characters to stand in, they could have allowed you to pick which instruments they'd stand in for. I want the guy I created to be my lead singer, to always be my lead singer, but I haven't found a way to make sure that happens. 
 

Training

 
All the same training options are in there from RB2, but now with Pro instrument training as well. I'm just going to say it right now: Pro-Keys training is an absolute bitch. I've completed the easy and medium trainers so far, but the hard lessons are bat-shit bananas. That's not even getting into the expert trainers. It's pretty impressive the kind of depth that the trainers go into at times, but it's baffling other times when it seems like they just expect you to know certain things. The difficulty curve is not nice. Hand position on Pro-Keys is probably the biggest issue here. It's been brought up by lots of people and for good reason. It just seems counter-intuitive to be asking you to play these complex patterns without showing you how to properly attempt it. It will probably come with time, but including some diagrams, or better yet video, would have gone a long way in helping me learn the most efficient hand positions. In the case of Pro-Keys though, there are 17 different exercises that each have multiple parts. That's a ton of stuff to learn and once you can get it all down, you could probably take that right over to a real keyboard or piano. It's an awesome idea that I just wish was executed slightly better. I'm still looking forward to the day I can complete all of the Pro-Keys trainers. For now though, it seems insurmountable.
 

Also new to the practice modes is the "Learn A Song" mode. This take you step by step through a real song (as opposed to the little training beats) until you can theoretically memorize the parts and go play them for real. This is a pro-mode only feature, and in fact I think it's just for keys and guitar. Pretty cool though to think that you're learning a real song by repetition through a mode in Rock Band. 
 
All other training stuff is kinda as you'd expect. Freestyle drum mode is in there, as is regular practice mode. 
 

Setlist

 
A lot of people still put a lot of stock into the quality of the on-disc setlist. That's understandable, but the way I see it, Rock Band is more of a "platform" than ever before. I currently have 533 songs, completely independent of the ones that came on the Rock Band 3 disc. That's kind of insane, yes, but it almost makes the RB3 on-disc setlist irrelevant at this point. It's a good thing though regardless, that the Rock Band 3 setlist is probably the best of the series yet. A lot of it was built around the Keyboard, but that doesn't detract any from the fun you can have on other instruments. Songs, from the intro video jam, "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" by The Doors, to "Space Oddity" by David Bowie are featured. "Roundabout" by Yes, "Imagine" by John Lennon, "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Crosstown Traffic" by Jimmy Hendix, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen are some of my personal favorites. Really almost every single song on there is fun to play though. Sure there's a handful of songs that I would have left out (I'm lookin' at you, "Du Hast"), but everyone has different music preferences and I know someone at Harmonix had to fight hard for that one, as with the rest of the tracks selected. I honestly couldn't be much happier with the setlist. It's incredibly fun getting some people together and playing "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis & the News. Good times. :) 
 

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