RB3 Career Mode

By melcene November 8, 2010 8 Comments

A new Career experience... 

 
So there's a new experience to the career mode in RB3.   As you can see from the picture above, the main Career menu has three options:  My Goals, My Song Progress, and My Rankings.  My Rankings is your leaderboard rankings for your instrument of choice, your goals, your overall score, etc.  As far as I could tell when I was playing with it this weekend, you cannot go into specific songs and find out your rankings from here, though you CAN find out your rankings based on location, such as your rankings on all RB3 songs, or all DLC you have (score counted as a total, not per song).

The new My Goals section is very much an achievement section.  Many of these goals you can complete just during the course of gameplay, whether during Quickplay or Road Challenges, or actually using the My Goals section.  These may include things as simple as creating your own band, or something more difficult such as 90% or more on Expert Bass using upstrums only.  There will be goals specific to each RB game, and to RB DLC, as well as goals specific to each instrument, and some generalized goals.  Something definitely interesting though is that although you can complete goals while you're playing in other modes, if you use the My Goals menu, it will narrow your songlist down to the songs that will count towards your goal.  All in all, to me this gameplay mode is across between 360 achievements and RB2's challenge mode.
 

The Road Challenge mode (at the moment, I forget specifically where under the menus this falls) is closer to tour mode than anything else.  As you can see above, you have various venue areas, which you can only get to if you've unlocked the right mode of transportation.  Of course we start in our hometown, although this time around the Hometown is generic.  (Shame really, I liked starting in Seattle.)  But here's the kicker - when you go into, for example, Hometown Throwdown, you won't necessarily be stuck with a couple new RB3 songs that you really hate.  You can choose your setlist.  It will either be RB3 songs, or perhaps Random 90s Setlist or perhaps Custom New Wave setlist.  This is one of the biggest changes to the game, and personally I love it.  Sure, in the last game we always had a Choose Your Own Setlist for each venue in RB2, but sometimes you had to open those up.  Not to mention that sometimes you would always choose the same crap, so even songs that you loved, you might get tired of.  In RB3 though, when you go with the Random or Custom setlists, you are usually limited to a particular genre or decade, which makes you play stuff that perhaps you wouldn't have played otherwise, or maybe stuff that you just haven't played in forever.  I'm really a fan of the new Road Challenge set up.  
 
Now in addition to having to get through these songs, you are supposed to do particular things to earn extra spades, such as keep accurate streaks going, or hit Overdrive as many times as possible.  At the end of a setlist, your stars are turned into spades, and counted along with your extra spades, and go towards your... well, if you look at the screenshot above, and see the bronze, silver and gold icons - that's what the spades are about. 
 
Although I really like the Road Challenge set up, my biggest complaint is that for challenges that have anything to do with Overdrive, the vocalist is completely screwed.  For example, one challenge that I did was simply deploy overdrive as often as possible.  I was able to get it to go off twice over the course of two songs.  How shitty.  I've yelled, whispered, swore at, hit the mic, done high pitches, low pitches, and everything in between.  I hope there's somehow a patch for that, or I'll just have to go back over those particular challenges on another instrument. 
 
 
If I've forgotten anything, I apologize.  Been trying to complete this blog at work while doing other things so my thoughts have been kinda scattered.

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