review time!!!!
A handheld version of a popular, plastic-heavy music game doesn’t need to be difficult. Just ditch the instruments! For Guitar Hero: On Tour, Activision created an unnecessary and obstructive dongle to affix on the DS, making that game out to be more of a gimmick than anything. For Rock Band Unplugged, Harmonix thankfully didn’t feel the need to ship you a drum kit eleven times the size of your PSP. Their past work on games like Frequency and Amplitude carries over in literal ways, and it works. The full experience of the console Rock Band is available, just without extra plastic.
What strikes immediately is that the game works! Backbone Entertainment faithfully recreated the Rock Band experience, from customizable characters to set design to menus to note accuracy. The extra flair that surrounds the game is well-preserved but shallow. The meat of the game, the actual playing of the songs themselves, feels natural. Four (instead of the regular five) buttons are used: Left on D-Pad, Up on D-Pad, Triangle, and Circle. Instead of choosing one particular instrument to storm through one song with, you play all four instruments during the same song. The L and R buttons switch between bass, drum, vocals, and guitar tracks. Technically you don’t play them all at the same time, but strings of notes come in completable bursts. After you hit the bass notes, drum notes may come to the right of you. If you had completed the bass notes accurately you can switch back and forth to whatever next instrument needs help, but if you failed the bass notes you’ll have to keep working on them, leaving other instruments in the cold, eventually failing. Unplugged isn’t about accuracy like the console versions are, but more about balance. You are in control of the whole band, not just yourself.
The World Tour mode is intact, creating a “campaign” outlet and where you’ll discover most of the songs and sets. While it remains fun for a couple hours, near the tail-end you’ll grow increasingly agitated and weary. Unplugged features forty-one songs: a decent amount, but not enough to sustain a career that forces you to play well over forty-one times. Playing “Livin’ on a Prayer” for the tenth time might drive you straight into the asylum, partially because you’re playing a song for the tenth time and partially because classic rock gets a pass because it’s old. DLC can be incorporated into the World Tour, but the pricing for Unplugged is outrageous. Two dollars a song doesn’t sound too bad, but two dollars a song is the exact same price for the console version of Rock Band, a party game with multiple plastic instruments and four players. The asking price might be too much for one person sitting alone in the dark looking at a screen and banging on nothing. DLC is also no longer being added, and the only free song is Portal’s “Still Alive”: it helps, but it makes a total of 42 songs you’ll have to play a hundred times. This neglects to mention that the overwhelming majority of songs are stripped right from the console version of the game. I had already played “Livin’ on a Prayer” far too many times with a fake guitar, but at least there were friends behind me laughing.
These problems do not kill Rock Band Unplugged, but they are easily fixed with more updates or a sequel, neither of which is likely to happen any time soon. For an eight dollar purchase (at your local Best Buy) it is a good game; a fun distraction. The songs, even while being stripped from one you already have, are enjoyable due to the different format. Unplugged feels significantly different from the console edition or other rhythm games like Audiosurf or Groove Coaster, and is a worthy purchase for the several hours of entertainment it holds. It’s just too bad that it didn’t fire on all cylinders. It’s not as fully featured or smartly designed as some of its competitors, but at a bargain bin price you can’t go all too wrong. Just expect a neat toy and not a classic.
